I think Ann Coulter is ridiculous. I cannot stand her political views, or frankly, almost everything of hers I’ve ever read or heard. I think she’s a buffoon. I think she says outrageous things deliberately to provoke reactions. I don’t think she deliberately provoked the reaction to her latest shocker, though. This one was Coulter Foot-in-Mouth Disease.
People are all over her for her saying that Jews will be “perfected” if they convert to Christianity. Some Jews are defending her.
You want my opinion? Honestly, I couldn’t care less what Coulter thinks about Jews, for two reasons. First, because Omri is right about one thing: If you are secure in your own belief, you don’t care much what people from other religions think about yours. Mind you, I don’t like it when my religion is insulted or denigrated—but to tell me that I’d become “perfect” if I would only cease being Jewish? Shyeah. Pull the other leg, Annie. Because in my world, you’re the one who’s following the wrong religion. (And yes, I would be happy to discuss it with you, but not in a church or even in a synagogue. Just a discussion, bubelah, and I know enough about my religion to show you where you’re misquoting our Torah in your Testament.)
But the second, more important reason I don’t care what she said about Jews; In the grand scheme of things, there are far more dangerous people than Ann Coulter. On my “Worried About Attitude Towards Jews” scale, Coulter doesn’t even make an appearance. She does not have a grand following of believers the world over who will take her words, absorb them, and then act upon them. She hasn’t got that kind of power.
Who does have that power? Muslims like the ayatollahs in Iran, or the religious leaders in the Middle East who have been poisoning the minds of their followers against Jews for decades (if not centuries). The Pope has that power, though it hasn’t been used in some time. Christian religious leaders have that power. In fact, the reason Jews the world over have a knee-jerk reaction about this is because in the past, when Christians have declared that Jews needed “perfecting,” that statement was generally followed by pogroms, murder, forced conversions, and the destruction of Jewish life and property.
There will be no such consequences over what Ann Coulter said. She is not any kind of religious scholar or leader. She’s a writer who makes money by writing controversial books and columns. Really, I’m not worried in the least. I am far more worried about the words of hate from Iranian leaders, as they try to perfect the technology to give them a nuclear bomb. The Mad Mullahs and Ahmadinejad aren’t worried about the “perfection” of Jews. They want us all dead. Even their so-called “moderates” have called to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.
Really. Coulter is a demagogue. She said something offensive. I’m missing the actual news in this story. I think I can go to bed safely tonight without worrying that Ann Coulter is going to work on “perfecting” me.
Which is not to say that she isn’t a schmuck for thinking it. She is. But we already knew that.
There are bigger fish to fry out there. Coulter doesn’t rate the attention.
Not being a follower of the lady’s writings, nevertheless I have stumbled on a few samples of her penmanship. Nah…
And I side with you absolutely on the issue, adding maybe that our dear colleague Elder went a bit overboard with that “Coulter is a very intelligent woman.”
Not quite.
Actually, I agree with him. She is a very smart woman. But she’s still a buffoon.
She seems to have a whole lot of men under her spell, though. Really. She isn’t that good-looking.
I will not dispute that Ann Coulter has a fine intellect;however,I will dispute that she has attained perfection. Far from it in my opinion.
I looked at the transcript of the original interview that was quoted in a number of places and found that the real idiot was the person interviewing her. It appears that he kept trying to twist what she said to make political points and she kept trying to explain that she believed that her religion was true. She was wrong of course, but kept saying that it was her personal belief and the reason that she follows it. She did not want to make us follow the idiocy.
Sabba,
I also read the interview transcript. Coulter actually said that Christians (and she did not frame it personally) believe that us Jews will be perfected when we (voluntarily) accept Jesus. That’s standard Christian doctrine. I don’t regard this as any more anti-semitic than Christianity in general, and it is a lot less threatening to us than Islamofascism.
The media have blown a misquote out of proportion. It is the flip side of the media ignoring the half of General Sanchez’ speech that blasted the media for its anti-military bias in covering the Iraq War.
chsw
The part that bothered me is not the garbage about our being perfected; it’s the crap about how America needs to be all Christian. McCain claimed recently the Constitution mandated this; our local hospital in Richmond has an all-christian chapel because “it’s a christian country.” This attitude is dangerous, and no less so because a bleached-blond skank with no body fat and a prominent Adam’s Apple says so…
“If you are secure in your own belief, you don’t care much what people from other religions think about yours.”
Words aren’t harmless. There are people out there who will take the idea that “Jews need to be perfected” and use it as an excuse to do really horrible things. And television personalities like Coulter have a lot of power to influence in those rural areas where discrimination against Jews is most likely to happen.
Let’s be brutally honest for a minute. Jews and Christians certainly disagree on religion. That’s the way it is. However, if a Jew moved in next door and invited me to a Jewish celebration at his/her house, I’d go, and be as polite as possible. And I expect that the opposite would be true, if perhaps, I invited my neighbor for, say, a Christmas party. I suspect our children would play together, we would agree/disagree on politics, sports, the economy, etc, etc, etc. What we wouldn’t do is try to kill each others’ children, blow up each other’s homes, nor would we plan on mutual destruction via suicide bomb. Neither would Ann Coulter. But the American Journalism community does have to distract all of us, Jews and Christians alike, of all of the news about a certain religion, that does do all of those things – towards Jews and Christians alike – or anyone else who “doesn’t agree with them…”
Meryl, I know that Christians post here all the time, or at least me, and perhaps there has been unintentional disrespect at time, through ignorance, but seriously, I fully agree with Israel’s right to exist – and views of the Muslim terrorists (but I repeat myself…)
Robert
Clicked “Submit” too soon!
My point is the Media is using the tired old “moral equivalancy” to make Muslim terrorism look less reprehensible (“Look, Christians like Ann Coulter are anti-Semitic, too!”).
Robert
I don’t think the issue is whether Coulter is antisemitic; I suspect she is a worse thing, the person who will say anything for personal gain. I am more disturbed by her attitude that this should be a “christian” country, that America would be a better place if everyone were a christian. She may not believe it but too many others do.
My brother went to high school with Ann Coulter for four years (they were seniors when I was a freshman). They were in several honors classes together, and attended the same parties on occasion. According to him, she was just another one of the smart kids back then and didn’t particularly stand out in terms of having outlandish views or craving attention.
I realize that Ann Coulter is pretty over the top, but seriously, if you copy and pasted one of her articles, changed any references to liberals or the left to references about “neo-cons” or the right, you’d have pretty much what a hundred left wing commentators in the MSM and a few thousand posters on morons.org and dailykooks.com post on a daily basis…
Robert
All this pretzel twisting to defend Coulter – liberals this, the media that – is b.s.
She’s made nasty comment about gays before.
And now she said the U.S. would be better off without Jews.
F*ck her and anyone who defends her.
I should point out this part of her interview.
Take a look at Cross Currents which also points out
Note that her attitude is that we (Jews) have to obey the halachah and it is just that it is easier to be Xian. This is definitely not the idea of an anti-Semite.