Once More Into the Witch

I know, I know . . . I’ve posted some of this before: actually  eighteen years ago. Eighteen is a significant number in Jewish culture: the numerical value of the Hebrew word, which means life, is eighteen. Donations and contributions to shul and charities are given in multiples of chai: one times chai is $18.00, two times chai equals $36.00 dollars, three times chai offers $54.00, and so on and on. In 2006 I felt compelled to address a latest bit of idiocy from the Christian Extreme Republican Right. Dylan then articulated my despair. He wrote in “Stuck inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again): “And here I sit so patiently/Waiting to find out what price/You have to pay to get out of/Going through all these things twice”

I read in The Forward (16 June 2006) that in a footnote on the third page of Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she writes “Throughout this book, I often refer to Christians and Christianity because I am a Christian and I have a firmly good idea of what they term, but the term is intended to include anyone who subscribes to the Bible of the God of Abraham, including Jews and others.” I have to say this, but not in these exact words: The absolute effrontery of that ignorant pedant to conflate what Jews believe and what Christians believe in a single belief. I only wish Hitler was so inclusive, a word, of course, anathema to Republicans. What ignorance and hubris the statement reveals about this spokesperson for the a) Christian Right; b) the Republican establishment; and the Conservative Clowns. Her words are too stupid to address in substance, but her words are too stupid to ignore. The Washington Post ran a contest in which they challenged readers to take a common word and change one letter to invent a new word, and then to give that word a definition. The all-time favorite was ignoranus: someone who is both stupid and an asshole. I think Ann Coulter is an ignoranus. Writing somewhere she responded to the image if Gus Walz, 17, who in ecstatic pride sobbed “That’s my dad,” while clapping as his father, Governor Tim Walz, gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In response, Coulter tweeted a video of Gus Walz’s reaction and wrote, “Talk about weird.” I was appalled and yet shocked at her remarkable insensitivity, her ignorance, and her completely unwarranted chutzpah. (That’s a Yiddish word that means ‘gall’).  In my amazement at her idiocy I decided (again) to discover just a bit about her personal credentials that gave her the authority to make this judgment. I realized that no credentials permit such ignorance. But in the process I learned that Ann Coulter has been engaged to be married a number of times but has not yet married. She has no children. Thus, Ann Coulter joins in the community described by the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance (who the ignoranuses support) as cat-women! Perhaps she can post her thoughts regarding the ignoranus comments of Vance.

I apologize for at least the partial repetition of a portion of the 2006 posting, but perhaps what the reprise has suggested to me is that the nastiness and cruelty that spews from the small minds and unkind mouths of the present day disgraceful gang of lowlifes—I hesitate to call them Republicans ( an association I reserve only for Abraham Lincoln)—defines them this  ignoranuses of the first order. Ann Coulter is certainly not the only fool but she seems in the moment one of the more obviously stupid and horrifically disagreeable ones.