[Addendum: 6.09.06, 2:43 pm EST: I feel it behooves me to inform readers that I don't approve of the invective used by Ann Coulter. I do not condone it in others. My point here is to show how easy it is to write the way many writers ALWAYS write. Sarcasm, invective, acrimony: these are generally easy, though, it is worth noting, such is usually associated with "wit." For more complete thoughts on this, see my comments at the end of Playing Hockey With Ann Coulter.]
Seriously. With all the wagging about Ann Coulter these days, I must say this: I would take Ann home to my mother (or just home) any day before I would take this, uh, pundit, to the beer tent at the county fair. OK. I am married, so I can't take Ann home. But even if I wasn't married, Maureen Dowd could not move in my circles, largely because the only circle she moves in looks a lot like a pentagram. She makes the Stewart Gardner Museum look like a tattoo parlor. I would rather scour junkyards for sheet metal with Ann Coulter than do anything on a yacht in the Aegean Sea with Maureen Dowd. And this for no other reason than that Ann Coulter, at the very least, understands.
If Ann Coulter makes people scream with her outrageous words, Maureen Dowd makes her very words scream for help, shrieking for mercy; for no American writer abuses language with greater facility. Ann Coulter may throw plates at your head, but Maureen Dowd wants to put electrodes in your skull. Her aim is to anesthetize and electrocute; she hopes to scramble your brain. Ann just wants to shock you back to the sanity Ms. Dowd has zapped from your cranium. Coulter may make you squirm and cringe, but Dowd makes you ask the waiter for the check before the appetizers are cleared. They may both be witches, but one is wicked and nice and the other is just plain wicked.
(Again, see how easy it is to write sardonically, sarcastically; in a spirit of meanness?)
Is it too much for me to declare that every paragraph of Ms. Dowd's essay is wrong? Alas, her essay speaks for itself.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Ann Coulter, Maureen Dowd
No comments:
Post a Comment