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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Look Ma! I'm writing!

Even though the Time magazine cover story on Ann Coulter is behind a subscription wall at time.com (the last time we checked), the full story by John Cloud can be had at CNN (here). What struck us was the peculiar way the piece was written. It's got an irritating, cutie-pie, I've-got-a-thesaurus-at-home style. Consider these lines: (emp add)

She composed herself and offered a very Ann Coulter answer.
... covered her mouth with a delicately thin hand ...
... what I saw of Coulter in that moment was a personality far more labile and human than the umbrageous harridan I had expected ...
I began to wonder, in a moistly liberal formulation, whether Ann Coulter might be ... misunderstood?
She's an omnivorous reader (everything from her friend Matt Drudge's website to the works of French philosopher Jacques Ellul) ...
No one, right or left, delivers the required apothegmatic commentary on the world with as much glee or effectiveness as Coulter.
It is almost impossible to watch her and not be sluiced into rage or elation ...
But Coulter's influence on the culture is both more diaphanous and more significant than the calculations of book sales or Web postings suggest.
Coulter is more like Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of this magazine's co-founder, who rankled the Roosevelt establishment in the '40s with her take-no-prisoners opposition to the New Deal and communism.
... Luce called Vice President Henry Wallace's liberal approach to postwar foreign policy "globaloney," a proto-Coulterism that shocked many in Washington.
The combination of hard-charging righteousness and willowy, sex-kitten pulchritude is vertiginous and - for her many young male fans - intoxicating.
One consequence of Coulter's feline aggression is ...

Labile, umbrageous, moistly liberal, Jacques Ellul, apothegmatic, sluiced, diaphanous, Clare Boothe Luce, proto-Coulterism, pulchritude, vertiginous, feline aggression.

To be blunt, is this the vocabulary of red states? (or even blue states, for that matter) People actually shell out money for this writing style?

And what's with "Coulter's influence on the culture is both more diaphanous and more significant"? Those words are practically antonyms.

What a mess.

posted by Quiddity at 4/19/2005 01:32:00 AM

6 comments

Ugga,

The Coulter article is the "puff pastry" piece of the year, to date.

The fluffiness of this airweight story about a shrill, self-shilling tout like Ann Coulter is somewhat odd, it seems at odds with (M)Ann's "Brunhilda-esque" attitudes.

Further, the article seems like a sales push item backed by a publisher trying to pump up interest in an author who has a new book coming out. I would not put this past Regnery, Murdoch, nor Scaife.

Perhaps Cloud's stilted, blatantly wordy, and ponderous style is a telegraph of what he really thinks of (M)Ann, but cannot tell us directly. It makes you wonder.

By steve, at 4/19/2005 7:36 AM

For "labile" read "labial".
VKW

By Anonymous, at 4/19/2005 9:47 AM

Truly an issue of the mag that will be sluiced into my trashcan...my vocabulary increased x2 though. I actually liked the pairing of significant and diaphanous. I think those words aptly describe the situation of the repubs and the whole highjacked social conservative movement.

By Anonymous, at 4/19/2005 2:47 PM

So, big question: how does it compare to the average Joel Stein piece? (Is he still writing for Time?)

By Anonymous, at 4/19/2005 3:46 PM

I was already depressed, but I read this piece to mean that the media groundwork is being laid for a massive assault on liberals, traitors, and other terrorists. Coulter's legitimacy just took a big jump, and she was more accepted than she deserved before this.

I imagine that the full witch hunt will be coordinated with the first stages of whichever war Bush starts next.

I hate to be Cassandra or alarmist, but I think that everyone should expect the worst. This story gives us a real good idea which way the media will fall when the time comes.

I really believe that most liberals and most Democrats have no idea how bad it will be.

John Emerson
ex-Seeing the Forest
ex-Zizka

By John Emerson, at 4/19/2005 9:29 PM

John--Sad to say, but there may be more truth to your comments than any of us are willing to admit. The way the rhetoric has been ratcheted up--and the fact that it is now being openly coupled with religion--makes me think that a jihad/holocaust against "liberals" is a definite possibility.

And Time, Fox News, and a host of right-wing publications, TV, and radio shows will be the collective Beobachter.

Derelict

By Anonymous, at 4/20/2005 12:18 PM