In Praise of Dreamboat Annie

Annie Coulter, the Scarecrow of the Apocalypse, just can’t help helping the Democrats raise money. I turned on “Hardball” on MSNBC yesterday (as I confess is my custom) till I saw the host sitting down with Coulter when I couldn’t reach for the clicker fast enough. For all the good it did me...

News of her latest dust-up – this time (again!) with the wife of Dem candidate John Edwards – is all over the media this morning, and sure enough, video of the confrontation is already running on Edwards’ campaign website and is the focal point of what will probably be a very well-received campaign-contribution pitch from same.

[“Hardball” host] Chris Matthews then goes on the Today Show the next morning, looking all hang-dog and trying to project some vague form of stunned regret, an emotion too close to an actual human’s for him to pull off completely successfully. As I type this, he’s still essaying outrage about her remarks on his show, which is like booking a howler monkey for your kid’s birthday party and not expecting it to throw its own shit all over the front room.

“I am shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is going on here!” Disingenuous prick.

The theory that Coulter does this stuff to sell more books seems off-base to me, though. The group consisting of people who are going to buy her books is finite and well-established, I’d guess drawn from the same dwindling pool of Americans - currently hovering around 30% in most polls - who think we’re helping in Iraq and that W is doing a heckofajob as POTUS. People who buy her stuff are going to buy it whether or not she gets into a new pissing match with a high-profile liberal or two every publicity tour. She just pukes up her YouTube moments to alert her admiring fan-base that she has a new collection of hateful, malignant swill available for their dutiful consumption.

As for Elizabeth Edwards, who literally phoned in her part this time around, she had to know what she was doing. They were probably editing the campaign commercial during the course of the on-air altercation.

In the end, the whole predictable episode is good business for everyone involved. Coulter’s audience, probably not big book-readers as a general rule (ahem…), are alerted to the fact that bookstores everywhere have a new collection of twiggy blond hate-baiting available for purchase with a cover photo of the author they can masturbate to; the Edwards campaign gets to remind Democrats he’s still running for president and could use a few of our hard-earned dollars, by the way; and Chris Matthews gets clips of his show out there to every Tom, Dick and Mary Jane who formerly didn’t even know NBC had a cable news channel to begin with, nor that he (Matthews) even existed.

As an unrepentant capitalist, I pronounce Ann Coulter good for the economy; and as an equally unabashed left-wing liberal, I’m pleased as punch to have this dizzy dame as the voice of the Republican party.

Preach, sister, preach! We’ll take all the help we can get.