Categorical Aperitif

Strangely, the thing that stood out for me most when I read yesterday's Media Matters post on Ann Coulter's upcoming appearance on Today—"stood out" rather in the way that assorted chunks stand out in a puddle of cat puke, that is—was her idea of how to slur "Republican turncoats":

On the bright side, look at how low the mainstream media have had to stoop lately to find their Republican heretics. The most famous "former Republican" is Kevin Phillips, who attended Bronx High School of Science, Colgate University, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard Law School. Even John Dean was at least a practicing lawyer. The 2008 version is Kathleen Parker, who went to Converse College and the University of San Francisco. The educational attainments of Republican turncoats may change, but curiously, their gender always remains the same. They are women, not limited to the biological sense. [Page 114]

Yep, there you have it: Kevin Phillips, one-time Nixon adviser and architect of the Southern strategy, now defender of traditional conservative/democratic principles in the face of Bush-Cheney irresponsibility and authoritarianism, is just a big 'ol girl, and so is fellow former Nixonite John Dean and contemporary not-Republican-enough right-wing columnist and presumably actual-lady-parts-having Kathleen Parker. Being educated is bad enough, but being educated and not a far-right troglodyte? You might as well be mainlining estrogen.

It tells you something about Coulter's audience that she expects it to accept idiotic "reasoning" like this without question, but you have to admit there's a kind of curiosity value in how she's been able to turn elementary-school taunts like "faggy faggy four-eyes!" into a political philosophy. No doubt this is one of the questions that doe-eyed, emasculated anthropologists picking through our civilizational remains in the future will strain their limp wrists trying to answer.