Natasha: Ann Coulter As Cartoon

Boris and Friend
Given that three new books have hit the stores and book review sections, all about the GOP’s version of Tokyo Rose, Ann Coulter, it seems an excellent time to explore just who she is and what she means. To me I have always thought of her as Natasha. That is Natasha as in Boris and, the two bumbling cartoon spies created by the immortal Jay Ward as foils for Rocky the Flying Squirrel and his dim-witted sidekick, Bullwinkle the Moose. Boris and Natasha spoke some generic foreign accent that sounded like Khruschev after too many vodkas as they hatched various ridiculous schemes to take over the world on behalf of one “Fearless Leader,” who bore a spooky resemblance to Heinrich Himmler. Boris was the Lou Costello part of the team, a chunky guy with a pencil mustache who had trouble tying his shoes. Natasha not only was the brains of the outfit, but also could get off some great one-liners that cut into someone (usually Boris) like a knife.
Ward’s brilliance lay in taking a venerable Hollywood stereotype and turning it into, well, a cartoon. The stereotype, of course, was the femme fatale whose major weapons were her mind and her tongue as much as they were her abilities to mix a potent poison or stick a gun in someone’s back at just the right time. All of us can name a long line of Hollywood stars who made fortunes (and Oscars) playing this role from Marlene Dietrich (Natasha’s voice was a parody of hers), through Bette Davis and Joan Crawford to Dynasty and even “reality” shows like Survivor. James Bond films have always have a Natasha as does just about any modern thriller or disaster film.
The idea of a woman who is pretty, smart, talks with a potty mouth and seeks to stir up trouble is an archetype that resonates with something deep in the American psyche on the same level as the barroom bully who argues about everything and will back it up with his fists. In fact just about every Western I have ever seen usually had an Ann Coulter, usually with long blond hair, breasts about to fall out of her dress as she lounged by the bar with the characteristic hand-on-hip posture that you knew sooner or later would start a fight.
That the archetypes of the Barroom Bully and the Barroom Babe should become the staple of what I term the Raucous Right is fascinating. Many years ago William F. Buckley and William Rusher were the archetypal right wing ideologues, men with impeccable manners, a vocabulary honed as sharp as a rapier, and nimble minds that could tie an unwitting victim in the fallacies of their own logic.
Today the Raucous Right has made a very conscious decision to take discourse from the salon to the saloon or even the dark alleys “outside,” as in the “you want to take this outside” taunt heard in any bar worth its neon sign. This has been a major contributor to the Era of Bad Feelings and has run in parallel with a similar development in sports talk shows. Unlike Buckley, who loved to intellectually best his opponents, these bad actors don’t care. They just keep taunting “come on draw, you yellow-bellied coward,” or “aren’t you man enough?”
It�s a Hollywood script or the WWF, not “news” or “journalism.” The words come from actors, not reporters or thoughtful commentators. The implications of this are obvious–the opponents in a political debate are worth neither the time nor the respect. Although Rush Limbaugh and company like to think of themselves as John Wayne, they are, in fact, not even Liberty Valence but more like those scruffy crooks and liars that always lingered just behind the shoulders of the man in the black hat.
Ann Coulter pushes this increasing confusion between Hollywood and information to the next extreme. I have no idea what she is like personally (Joan Crawford could be even nastier in person than on the screen according to various bios), but clearly in her books and in front of the media she is playing a role. That the media and the public should buy into this role has more to do with Coulter’s ability to play Natasha well than with anything she actually says or does. As in any Hollywood drama (Dynasty comes to mind) her appeal comes from the audience wondering how far she will go.
When Coulter appears on talk TV, she is a failure if some absolutely nasty soundbite does not come out of it and make the papers the next morning. My guess is, going in, she knows what that soundbite will be, and like any good actor, knows that timing is everything. Throw the punchline out there right away and the drama is over, wait too long and the audience gets bored. Coulter is the acknowledged master at salting her opinions with outrageous quotes, the kind of thing that ends up at the water cooler when two people say, “Did you hear what SHE said…”
If we follow this thread, we have to ask why does the Republican Counterrevolution feel compelled to hire actors to serve as its intellectual voice, to talk with everyday Americans about why they should support the Counterrevolution? To begin with, it shows they think, contrary to what they say, that most of us Americans are not very bright, that invective and twisted facts and hate speech are what we crave. An Austrian corporal thought the same thing.
We also need to ask why should the Counterrevolution feel a need to muddy the line between Hollywood and journalism? The answer to that is easy: the more that line is muddied the harder it is to determine whether the playing field is level. Everything becomes sham when all life is the equivalent of tourist Tombstone where they reenact the gunfight at the OK Corral every day with a preciseness you could set your watch by.
Finally, why is the media buying these acts? In the days of the Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh would have a lost a rather hefty lawsuit (see the Supreme Court’s Red Lion decision if you don’t believe me) and any reputable publisher would have shown Coulter the door because their fact checkers would have rejected all the distortions and falsehoods in her books. Fox News maintains they are only giving the people what they want, but surveys seem to show they are merely feeding their GOP audience? Meanwhile the Republican FCC looks the other way, even though we own the airwaves.
As for Coulter/Natasha, the question is, who is her Boris? And where is Fearless Leader?
Crossposts: My Left Wing, LeftWord, The Strange Death of Liberal America
Tagged with: Ann_Coulter • Austrian_corporal • barroom • bette_davis • Boris_and_Natasha • contempt_for_the_American_people • counterrevolution • crooks_and_liars • FCC • fearless_leader • fox_news • GOP • Hollywood • joan_crawford • John_Wayne • Liberty_Valence • media • natasha • raucous_right • Red_Lion_decision • Republican_Party • rush_limbaugh • sound_bites • tokyo_rose • western • william_f_buckley












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