Wednesday, December 08, 2004

 
Malkin Award?

First of all, I should express regret for having written that I was waiting for Andrew Sullivan to pen "Sod and Man at Yale" and "I am Richard Simmons." I'm not sure that it could have been written as anything other than gratuitous gay-bashing, but I should have tried. However, I doubt that A.S. will get much support for his efforts to quash playground type insults in political writing; they're too damn much fun to read and write. Is is so terrible that some on the Left get some solace and jollies from Molly Ivins' invective? Granted, Ivins herself shows the effects of too of her own bile and what may be a primitive, ugly Marxism, when she wrote "I still think politics is about screwing and who's doing the screwing." And many others are glad that Malkin, Coulter and others weave humor, irony, and insults into their serious arguments. And Democrats would be something other than human if they didn't have at least a little schadenfreude over Rush Limbaugh's abuse of narcotics.
Ann Coulter's column of June 3, 2004 began with a funny and insightful defense of Paul Wolfowitz. Along the way, she came up with a "wish *I'd* said that" quality "The answer is and was: Because by the time Saddam had nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be able to do anything. That's why it's known as the "Cuban missile crisis," not the "Cuban missile triumph." (For the record, as long ago as I can remember, I thought that the Soviets' placement of nukes in Cuba was within the rules of great game as it was played at the time and that Kennedy's confrontation was unnecessary as well as dangerous.)
Ms. Coulter ended her piece with "The good news is: Liberals' anti-war hysteria seems to have run its course. I base this conclusion on Al Gore's lunatic anti-war speech last week. Gore always comes out swinging just as an issue is about to go south. He's the stereotypical white guy always clapping on the wrong beat. Gore switched from being a pro-defense Democrat to a lefty peacenik just before the 9-11 attack. He grew a beard just in time for an attack on the nation by fundamentalist Muslims. He endorsed Howard Dean just as the orange-capped Deaniacs were punching themselves out. Gore even went out and got really fat just before America officially gave up carbs. This guy is always leaping into the mosh pit at the precise moment the crowd parts. Mark my words: Now that good old Al has come lunging in, the anti-war movement is dead."
But does it qualify for Sullivan's Malkin award? "Cliched"? -lemme see now...bearded leftists and Muslims-yep; cliches...fat people; yes, again..whites without rhythm-check. "Playground insults"? Check and double-check. "No originality"? Well, the juxtaposition of those cliches is arguably itself, original. "Assumption of reader agreement"? C'mon most people mostly read stuff with which they mostly agree. Ann's sketch of Gore here was so good that even some of his supporters may have gotten a chuckle out of it.
While the above "Coulterism" might not qualify for an A.S. Malkin Award, it's hard to see how mediocre or unoriginal invective can be suppressed without risking the disappearance of the gems.
Sullivan's uses the image of Monty Python's dead parrot, which has become something of a cliche. And it wasn't, of course, really from Norway. Still, it's use spiced up his sentence a little, and I'll probably enjoy reading more of his award-winning quotations-even if sometimes for the "wrong" reasons. Moderates need not be boring, although many are, and remembering Gerald, I, for one, won't be pining for the Fords.....