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Soulless
Susan Estrich
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Soulless
Susan Estrich
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"A word to those of you out there who have yet to be offended by something I have written or said: Please be patient. I am working as fast as I can." âAnn Coulter, 2006
Is she ever!
Ever since the publication of her Clinton-bashing debut, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, right-wing fire-brand Ann Coulter has made herself one of the most talked-about figures in contemporary American lifeâand has done so by issuing a near-continuous barrage of insult and invective, which has been described as "shameless, " "cruel, " "shrill, bombastic, and mean-spirited, " "grossly inappropriate, " "hate speech." She has called the 9/11 widows "witches" and "harpies, " referred to Muslims as "ragheads, " called Al Gore a "total fag, " and said that both New York Times editor Bill Keller and antiwar congressman Jack Murtha deserved to die. Yet with each new statementâand each new book launchâCoulter somehow manages to co-opt the media as a megaphone for her attacks, while emerging from the backlash miraculously unscathed.
Until now. With Soulless, political commentator Susan Estrich takes on Ann and the "Coulter culture" she has created, exposing how the pundit provocatrice has downgraded our political discourse with her irresponsible rhetoric, personal attacks, and slanderous asides. Trawling through Coulter's history of often-violent public statements, Estrich asks which are more cynical: the pundit and her headline-grabbing drive-by character assassinations, or the networks who happily bring her back for more. Soulless also casts a light on "the Anns, " wannabes like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, whose imitation Coulterisms coarsen our culture with every passing news cycle. And, most important, she challenges usâthe readers, the votersâto remember that behind the huckster's rhetoric lurks a dangerous reactionary whose real agenda is wildly out of step with the American public.
As Estrich says, "She knows exactly what she is doing. And she is scary as hell because of it."
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7.
THE MORAL MAJORITY IS US
For the Right, morality is not about social justice or equality.
And when the pollsters talk about the dominance of moral values, they do not mean values in the broad sense; they do not mean what you and I mean.
When Ann calls us immoral, there are only two issues she is addressing. We know what they are. They come from the political playbooks, not from Scriptures.
Abortion and gay rights. Women and homosexuals.
Wedge issues. Intended to divide.
But here is the key point. We need not be defensive. We need not be afraid. The moral majority is us. We have not yet won gay marriage. But someday we will. And basically, we can win everything else if we frame it our way. Or rather, she loses every time if we frame it right.
So why does it never feel that way?
According to Ann: âNo liberal cause is defended with more dishonesty than abortion. No matter what else they pretend to care about from time to timeâundermining national security, aiding terrorist, oppressing the middle class, freeing violent criminalsâthe single most important item on the Democratsâ agenda is abortionâŚ. No Republican is so crazily obsessed with any issue as the Democrats are with abortion.â
Hereâs what would happen if Roe v. Wade were overruled.
Abortion would not necessarily be legal or illegal. It would depend on state law. Every state legislature would be free to do something it has not been free to do since Roe: to criminalize abortions prior to viability or to impose whatever burdens they choose on the ârightâ to abortion.
Abortion would be on the agenda in every state legislature, which would mean it would be the hot issue in state legislative and gubernatorial contests across America.
A new generation of voters and would-be voters would have concrete reason to understand that their access to abortionâand potentially other reproductive servicesâwould turn directly on the outcome of forthcoming elections. For the first and perhaps only time in their lives, they would see a reason to vote.
Explain to me why Ann Coulter would want this to happen.
Explain to me why this would be good, positive, and helpful to the Republican Party.
And Iâll explain to you why she really only wants to focus on âpartial birth abortion,â the made-up term for a second-trimester abortion procedure rarely used but chosen for its gruesome characteristics to give conservatives something to be against. Itâs the only issue she can win. Maybe. At least if you donât explain to people why it is that a woman might need a âpartial birth abortion.â
People rarely change their minds about abortion in a debate. Iâm not likely to come up with a new argument in the next few paragraphs that will always work to change the minds of those who disagree with you about abortion.
Thatâs not how it works. How it works is that the questions change and that changes the answers. Whether there have been any other changes in attitudes toward abortion in recent decades is much debated. What is clear is that the country is fundamentally pro-choice. The evidence is undeniable.
Thatâs why you can win every argument.
This is how attitudes toward abortion are measured. Or at least it is one of the basic methods, one that has been used for a long time. Itâs the method that gives you the long view.
Every two years, a statistically relevant sample of the whole population is asked a series of questions about when, if ever, they think it should be possible for a woman to obtain a legal abortion. The questions are phrased in the most neutral, unemotional way possible, in an effort to measure beliefs, not fondness for political rhetoric and red meat.
Whatâs stunning, to me, is how many people say yes to at least some of the questions.
Take the test yourself, for starters, and measure your own attitudes.
For thirty years, the question has been asked in this way: Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if:
- The womanâs own health is seriously endangered.
- She became pregnant as a result of rape.
- There is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby.
- The family has very low income and cannot afford any more children.
- She is not married and does not want to marry the man.
- She is married and does not want any more children.
Two things are quite stunning about the charts that document Americansâ answers to these questions.
The first is just how stable they are. You can drive yourself completely crazy detecting slight dips in attitude toward abortion from 2002 to 2004, but they are slight. What is striking, overall, according to Morris Fiorina in his book Culture War?, from which the chart below is taken, is the flatness of the lines from 1972 to 2004. Fiorina constructed his charts from the General Social Survey and other studies of public opinion and the Stanford professor and Hoover Institution senior fellowâs point is that attitudes toward abortion vary far less than you would think.
Popular Attitudes Toward Abortion Since Roe v. Wade
Source: Calculated from the General Social Surveys.
Source: Calculated from the General Social Surveys.
But Professor Fiorinaâs second point is even more telling. Virtually everybody in the country supports legal abortion in the first three instances cited in the survey questions. By huge, overwhelming majorities, in both red and blue states, Americans favor abortion in those first three categories. According to Fiorinaâs breakdown, âresidents of the red states supported legal abortion in about 3.5 of the 6 circumstances, a bit lower than the national average, while residents of the blue states supported abortion in about 4 circumstances, a little higher than the national average.â
Overall, the majorities on questions 1, 2, and 3 are just enormous, in the 80â90 percent ranges.
It is certainly true with abortion, more so than with most issues, that she who controls the questions determines the answer.
If you want to prove that the country (as of 2003) is equally divided (46 percent to 46 percent) between those who think abortion is murder and those who donât feel this way, and that the division is closer than it was in 1995 (40 percent murder, 51 percent not), you can. Thatâs all true. But it is also the case that almost two-thirds of all Americans support the United States Supreme Courtâs decision in Roe v. Wade protecting a womanâs right to choose, prior to viability, whether to continue a pregnancy, and that Republicans and Democrats, Catholics and Protestants, even churchgoers and non-churchgoers all tend to agree that there are at least those three circumstancesâa risk to the health of the mother, rape, or a strong chance of a serious defectâwhen a pregnant woman should be able to secure an abortion.
Fiorina writes: âThe fact that the differences among Americans are as small as they are is widely understood by social scientists and widely obscured by political debate.â
Consider what that means. There really is a consensus in this country about abortion. Itâs just that most people donât know about it.
And Ann takes advantage of that fact to turn people against each other.
Knowing that there is a consensus, however, can at least help you win the argumentânot by convincing anyone, but by asking the right questions instead of falling into her traps.
If youâre in an argument, and you ask someone (Ann Coulter, for instance), should a woman be able to get an abortion if her health is endangered, Ann will say noâbut 90 percent of the people listening will disagree with her.
If you ask, should a woman be able to get an abortion if she became pregnant through rape or incest, Ann will say noâbut 80 percent of those listening will disagree with her.
If Ann starts going on about partial birth abortion, and you say, but what if there is a strong chance of serious defects in the babyâyou win the argument.
And if she says, but most of the cases donât involve serious defects, look at Ann, or whomever youâre talking to, and ask: Will you make an exception for those that do? They wonât. But if they will, ask if they will also make an exception for the health of the mother, when it is endangered.
Ask them how much danger the mother must face before they will recognize an exception.
Ask them how much additional risk they think a mother should bear.
Reasonable danger? Serious health risk? What pound of flesh do they want from women?
On the issue of abortion, there is indeed a gap between the extreme and the middle, but the gap is between the extreme that Ann represents, and the rest of America, which supports a womanâs right to secure an abortion in at least some circumstances (my definition of pro-choice) and has done so since 1972âeven at a time when the country didnât support Roe, which they do now.
There is a gap between the overwhelming majority that wants to find common ground, and the only group that doesnât. And what group do you think that is? Surprise: it is the small minority, the right tail of the right tail, that supports a total ban on abortion. They are the only ones who donât want compromise, donât want common ground, donât want peace.
How can it be that weâve won and it feels like weâve lost?
This is what happens when the losing side makes all the noise, when that noise is mean and sometimes vulgar, and when they are dominating the discourse and insisting on continuing the conflict.
Hereâs something even more âfunâ to note, if anything can be fun in a debate about abortion.
It is also, potentially, very significant.
The only cases where a majority doesnât support abortion are the truly elective middle-class situations: where a married couple chooses not to have more children, or where a woman is not married, and doesnât wish to marry the man.
These are what I call the âdoctorâs office abortions.â These are the abortions that white middle-class women get in doctorsâ offices, that college girls get in clinics, and that suburban women get from their own OB/GYNs.
Imagine what would happen, speaking purely politically, if these abortions were to be outlawed.
Talk about all hell breaking loose.
Talk about bad news, electorally speaking, for the party considered responsible.
Remember those numbersâabout the one group that, had it voted for Kerry in the same numbers as it voted for Gore, would have elected him. Those were women. Plain old-fashioned married suburban and rural women. The kind of women who can occasionally get pregnant when they donât mean to, or canât afford to, or arenât married, or know women this can happen to. They are women who may one day find themselves happy they have a right to choose.
Abortion is not a voting issue because the overwhelming majority of voters in this country are pro-choice and they donât need to vote the issue.
Want to make them?
Want to force them to?
Prohibit the abortions they say theyâre against.
Of course we would never hope for that, weâre too decent, but just imagine it happened. Who would vote in that election? Who would win?
You know that is the game Ann would play if she had our hand.
The Supreme Court describes the abortion question as a âclash of absolutes,â as if both positions have equal weight and the task is somehow to figure out how to navigate between them. Not so. In fact, there is a small minority of absolutists on one side, and everyone else is in the pro-choice middle.
Itâs hard to imagine anyone who would be âforâ abortion in every circumstance; no state has ever allowed that, and no one I know has ever advocated it. The Constitution, certainly, has never mandated it.
Moreover, the fact that you believe in sorting things through doesnât mean you necessarily believe in the government sorting t...