…for the performance artist formerly known as Ann Coulter [via TPM]:
In the column, titled “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded To ‘Idiotic,’” Coulter called Dr. Kent Brantly’s humanitarian work in Liberia nothing more than the efforts of an ego-driven Christian and “the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.”
…Coulter then said Brantly left the country to provide health insurance for Liberians because he wanted “his membership in the ‘Gold Humanism Honor Society.’”
“There may be no reason for panic about the Ebola doctor, but there is reason for annoyance at Christian narcissism,” she wrote.
I guess this is what you write when you hear that anguished sound inside your head, the one that asks “why aren’t they paying attention to MEEEEEE!!!???”
At least that’s what I hope. Worse, by far, would be the thought that what Ann Coulter says does in fact reflect broader opinion; that within our great polity, a substantial number of people believe that the suffering of others merits no concern; that there are “right” people to care for, distinguished from those wrong ones — wrong by geography, class, color, what have you.
I’m no Christian myself, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, and in the tradition that I inherited we have a term “tikkun olam” — to heal the world. From earliest Hebrew School — at least at the commie-liberal orthodox synagogue in Berkeley, California in which I was brought up and became bar-mitzvah — we were taught to view tikkun olam as the singular obligation (one most of us meet terribly imperfectly, of course — but it matters that it’s there as the challenge/demand). I’ve spoken since with rabbis and other teachers who render the essential demand of Judaism on its adherents in almost-Christian terms, in which the law is secondary to action: keep the Sabbath* and do tikkun olam. That much, and you have the sinews of a good life.**
There is, of course, a Christian formulation of the same idea, one that comes to much the same point. Matthew 25:34-40 puts it pretty plainly:
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Which leads me to a last thought. If Ann Coulter thinks that the Jesus of Matthew 25 is a narcissistic Christian, and she does in fact speak for any recognizable segment of the American conservative movement, then you know all you need to know about the theology of those self-proclaimed guardians of values. If there is in fact a Christian God, a Christian heaven, and especially, a Christian hell, then it would take a Dante to describe the destination for which Coulter and her ilk are bound. It’s beyond me.
*Which I also do most indifferently, though I find that creating what Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Joshua Heschel called sacred time is always restorative, on those rare occasions when I can actually bring it off for even a couple of hours.
**And so it is, I believe; certainly, as an atheist Jew, that’s where my religious tradition retains its claim on my head and my heart.
Gustave Doré, illustration to Dante’s Inferno. Plate IX: Canto III: Arrival of Charon. “And lo! towards us coming in a boat / An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, / Crying: ‘Woe unto you, ye souls depraved!'” (Longfellow’s translation), 1857
Mustang Bobby
To quote Lawrence & Lee in Inherit the Wind: “You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow something up.”
Cervantes
Having given it a great deal of thought, I have to say your explanation is better than any I could come up with.
Cervantes
I know it was probably an accident but I do like “tikkun loam” — a lot!
canuckistani
She was the one who was governor of Alaska or something, right?
Tinare
She’s just a hateful, hateful woman.
Comrade Dread
This is what happens when you try to mix Christianity with Randian ideology.
Altruism becomes narcissism. Selfishness becomes virtue. Prosperity becomes a sign of God blessing what you built with your own two hands, while suffering is God smiting you for your own stupidity, laziness, or unrighteousness.
It’s a gospel that the devil, if he exists, would smile upon.
BGinCHI
Shorter Coulter:
Look at Jesus up there all narcissistic and shit. Hey dude, stop being such a martyr. Did I mention I went to Cornell? No, not the Ag part, the part where you treated people like shit and drank a lot at swell parties. Are you even listening!!??
SatanicPanic
“there is reason for annoyance at Christian”
Why does Ann hate Christians?
Cervantes
You’re kidding, right?
Ann Coulter wouldn’t know Jesus if he were to show up on a cross outside her front door saying “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Suffern ACE
I was not raised this way, but I would have a very difficult time not stepping over Ms. Coulter if she was lying in the street in clear distress.
Ripley (Whiskey Fire version)
How would he be providing health insurance to Liberians? Is he a broker/agent?
Go away, dumb lady!
sparrow
I may be wrong, but I have a hard time believeing Ann Coulter actually believes a word she writes. I mean, she is definitely a cruel, terrible person, but I bet her actual feelings about people dying on the other side of the world, and the doctors that treat them, are merely “meh”. All the outrage is for effect. She’s a troll, basically. One in a long line of grifters.
burnspbesq
This pretty much says all that needs to be said.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ann-coulter-kent-brantly-telescopic-philanthropy/
lamh36
#JusticeForRenisha
Tom Levenson
@Cervantes: That’s one for the “damn you autocorrect” files. Thought I caught all of them in the editing process; didn’t. Now fix’t, alas.
Mustang Bobby
@sparrow: I would like to think that she is the Andrew Dice Clay of punditry and that it’s all an act. But if it is, she’s really too good an actor at it not to at least drop a bead or two. No one who hasn’t won an Oscar or a Tony is that good. No, I think it’s all real. More’s the pity.
Comrade Dread
I’m pretty sure her hostility to Christianity is due to her potential victims being able to repulse her with crosses and holy water.
BGinCHI
@Suffern ACE: Why wouldn’t you step on her?
She would be right there.
Cervantes
@Tom Levenson: As a bi-lingual pun, though, it was good. Maybe not good enough for Alan Turing, but really good.
Bobby Thomson
@Suffern ACE:
Tom Levenson
@burnspbesq: Skimmed Dreher’s post. He buys into the “charity tourism” critique: how dare you privilege one set of sufferers over another. I know that he hedges and does condemn Coulter — but the hedge says much.
(One thing it says to me: the commitment to zero-sum thinking by conservatives. Concern for sick Liberians means that there’s no room, none, left for poor Texans. I don’t’ think St. Francis saw the world this way.
vtr
It’s best not to read much into anything a Republican says. It has been a generation since one meant what she or he said. It’s all agitprop.
dedc79
Hear similar (and similarly ridiculous) complaints in other contexts. People who argue that those who donate their time/money to the protection of animals should properly be spending that time/money on the protection of human beings. As if there’s some universal heirarchy of causes we must all except and we can’t tackle the second one until the first one has been completed.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: When people who are doing nothing go about judging people who are doing something, what could possibly go wrong?
Seems like some historical figure said something somewhere about judging others.
Nope, can’t think of it.
Bobby Thomson
@burnspbesq: That column and its comments are surprisingly good.
JGabriel
Tom Levenson:
Tenth Circle Added To Rapidly Growing Hell.
Betty Cracker
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Nate Dawg
So glad someone wrote about this here, and a great job pointing out her wretchedness.
Read the comments at Red State on Erik son of Erik’s rather lame defense of her, and it was brutal. This went over like a turd in the swimming pool on the 4th of July.
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
Yeah, I’m surprised how candid she was about Christianity fucking off and dying. Usually they qualify it with some bullshit about how the real Jesus would only approve of charity for the right kind of people, or whatever.
2liberal
is it meta-ironic that you are paying attention to her?
Tom Levenson
@Betty Cracker: Yup. Exactly that. (Recall perhaps the greatest line ever in a legal movie…Paul Newman in The Verdict: “Act as if ye had faith and faith shall be given to you….”)
Iowa Old Lady
What must it be like to live inside Ann Coulter’s head?
MattF
I liked Coulter better when her jaws were wired shut. Which is to say, not at all.
Tom Levenson
@2liberal: Yes.
scav
Christian Narcissism aka caring for others must not be allowed — it is idiotic, close the borders, deny the hospital doors. Christian Morality, when expressed in denying health care, health care products, health care information and health care decisions to others must be enshrined, indulged, and the Law of the Land. They’ve really moved into a post-Compassionate Conservative agenda.
BGinCHI
@Iowa Old Lady: Pretty bad if you are allergic to bats.
Suffern ACE
@Tom Levenson: if Christians here would help the poor here, there wouldn’t be a need for government social spending. Or is the argument that government programs are forcing well meaning Christians to go off to disease ridden places. If we had more disparate poor here we wouldn’t have an Ebola risk. I’m not following his argument, or hers.
Also, Drehers notion that only concernative Christians are outraged by coulter is funny. Of course they will be a majority of the complainers. No one else reads her stuff on their own.
raven
The Michigan Fiber Festival has a sheep costume parade!
Calouste
@Tom Levenson:
“The most important thing is honesty. If can fake that you’ve got it made.’
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Ewe always herd the one you love.
David Hunt
@Cervantes:
She’d just move him to the lawn of a black person and set him on fire.
MattR
@Chris:
I haven’t read her full article (and you can’t pay me to do so). I initially thought that I actually agreed with her because I thought she was calling out Christian charities for combining charity with prosteltyzing (which I think is an unsavory practice). But after reading a few articles about it, it seems like Coulter encourages Christians trying to convert others as they perform charity. She is just upset that these doctors are not trying to convert the heathens in America (which she thinks will do more to help those in Africa than direct assistance because a better America makes for a better world). I saw this one quote from Coulter’s article in Raw Story.
weaselone
So the woman who wrote a book about liberals entitled Godless is ragging on Christians for helping sick poor people. I think someone just dug up irony’s corpse and unloaded both barrels into just to make sure.
Calouste
@scav:
Was there ever anyone who believed anything about “Compassionate Conservatism”, much less acted like it?
(Of course the phrase suggests that compassion is not a default attribute of conservatism…)
Cervantes
@David Hunt: Ouch!
Paul Gottlieb
You’re really over-thinking this. Ann Coulter would blow a dead donkey if she thought it would get her 5 minutes of attention. I’m sure that she feels some measure of joy when a decent man trying to do some good in this world dies, but the chief motivation for her is always the desperate quest for attention. Among the wicked stepsisters of the right, she’s not the smartest one, and she’s not the prettiest one, so she has to try to be the most loathsome one.
Betty Cracker
@raven: I sure would hate to be stuck behind that lady with the windmill hat at a football game!
Linda Featheringill
As has been pointed out here before, if Jesus were around today, preaching his hippie/commie bullshit, the Christian Right would kill him. Or at least they would try to do so.
Randy P
Even the Christian Right believes in sending missionaries to the third world. How does this attitude not run up against the evangelical wing? She’s dissing the whole concept of evangelism.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
I don’t think Dreher is buying into the idea of charity tourism; I think he’s using Coulter’s column as an excuse to ask why people see charity that needs doing far from home but not in their own back yards. It’s a good question, and one that will probably improve the person who considers it in their own lives. I have a nasty suspicion of why they tend not to see the charity that needs doing in their own neighborhood: it’s a lot easier to make up excuses for doing nothing but wringing your hands about problems on the far side of the world than problems you can easily get to.
Visceral
It’s actually a pretty widespread belief on the right: that liberals basically compete with each other over how “righteous” we are and whose displays of empathy, charity, and self-denial are therefore fundamentally narcissistic. Coulter only states it explicitly, though she’d have done a lot better to call us Pharisees.
scav
@Calouste: well, my uncle is rather dim, kind but dim, he thought GWB was the educational president and was genuinely baffled that my teacher aunt wasn’t a solid supporter. So, technically, a non-zero number. But apparently even the thin facade of pious and vapid platitudes are no longer needed.
MomSense
@raven:
Awesome!! I didn’t know they had a fiber festival. I especially like the Darth Vader.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Fantastic!
Villago Delenda Est
Ann Coulter’s greatest regret is she was born a number of decades too late to take the place in history that was seized by Ilsa Koch.
danielx
@sparrow:
And one who’s about six years past her sell-by date. Nobody pays much attention any more, so she has to get more and more outrageous to try to get attention, and it’s still not working. Even a lot of libs – dare I say most (like me) – don’t give a shit what she says. Her frustration level must be off the scale by now, a state of affairs which I find positively delightful.
dmbeaster
@Mustang Bobby:
Except that unlike Coulter, even ADC would not kill the Koala bear.
PurpleGirl
@MomSense: I have a book that highlights fiber/wool festivals all over the country. It’s really great.
If you wanted to, you could use it as a vacation/travel plan and go to many festivals.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Re Dreher’s article, you write:
Good reminder, thanks.
SatanicPanic
This is also a great illustration of one of my favorite wingnut constructions- the “how can you be concerned about this, when (blank) is happening”. (blank) is almost always something wingnuts have either mocked liberals for being concerned about, or have never shown any concern about in the past. Oh yeah, Ann Coulter doesn’t want people going overseas to help people, because she wants to help people here. A likely story.
Villago Delenda Est
@Visceral:
She can’t do that. The Pharisees are the good guys, as far as she and the rest of the reactionaries are concerned.
scav
@SatanicPanic: Remember, the poor here are generally told to shut the fuck up, sit down and wave the foam finger because the poor elsewhere have it so much worse.
The Dangerman
Coulter’s spew isn’t going over well with many of the people that claim to be Christians at RedState….
…but at least (for her) she is getting attention from someone. There is no limit to her strange version of Performance Art to get her name in print.
Villago Delenda Est
@Calouste: I thought it was sincerity. Oh well, same basic meaning.
Violet
@raven: LOVE!
Omnes Omnibus
At bottom, isn’t the main tenet of just about every religion: Don’t be an asshole. How well any religions followers adhere to this is open to question, but that is something different.
SatanicPanic
@scav: Do you remember that “these are the REAL 99%” pasted over pictures of starving African babies meme that was going around?
Yeah guys, using the old “don’t you know that other kids are starving in Japan?” thing that most kids can refute by age 8, that’s clever.
cmorenc
@Mustang Bobby:
Although both Coulter and Glen Beck are both bona fide conservatives in outlook, nevertheless at their respective cores, both are far more “method actor” show-persons in the mold of political P.T. Barnums than hard-core true-believer ideologues. But each, in playing to their paying audience, bury themselves so thoroughly in their roles that they sometimes lose the distinction between what they actually believe themselves and playing to the beliefs their audience wants to believe they genuinely represents.
The difference between Coulter and Beck is that Coulter really does have a “mean girl” streak in her basic personality, even aside from politics. She shares this trait of basic meanness at the core with Rush Limbaugh. With Beck OTOH, for all the reprehensible, stupid, or outrageous things he’s said in his talk host role, there’s actually some elements of decency in his basic personality which occasionally manage to surface. Not that this happens often enough or completely enough to earn forgiveness for his reprehensible stunts, but – for example, he was one of the very few (perhaps only) right-wing talk hosts to give Obama credit for having the chops to approve the high-risk successful mission to get Bin Ladin. And lately, he’s one of the few RW talk hosts to show at least some sympathy and make some supportive moves toward the child-refugees from central America (not that he’s suddently changes his basic anti-immigrant stance, but the pure hate seems drained out of him at least).
I can almost imagine myself having a pleasant couple of beers chatting with Glen Beck, but the probability that he’d eventually say something outrageous enough to spur an irresistible impulse to punch him out tends to bring me back from entertaining such thoughts.
ranchandsyrup
it’s always projection. ann would only do something for others if it increased her standing or got her more attention.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Protestant fundamentalism in the US has all but abandoned that tenet.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
In Mother Night, Howard Campbell had noble reasons for his pretending to be a Nazi: among them, to help the Allies win the war. Coulter has no such excuse — nor am I convinced she’s pretending.
sm*t cl*de
Echo-y.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, now that I think about it, “Don’t be an asshole, ” coupled with my dad’s backpacking and camping advice “Leave the place cleaner than you found it” pretty much sums up a pretty good way to live.
Pogonip
I think Ann should buy himself a new dress. I swear he’s been wearing that same black cocktail dress for at least twenty-five years.
There used to be an independent bookstore nearby, and when one of Ann’s new books was on the rack, I asked the clerk, “Does anyone buy these?”. She replied that most of Ann’s audience was older white, ex-military guys with a crush. ” Don’t they know ‘Ann’ is a man?”. “If they do,” she replied, chuckling, “they don’t mind.”
Granted there is a small chance that ‘Ann’ really is female, and if that turns out to be the case respectable transvestites everywhere will probably be relieved. Whatever Ann’s true sex, his, or her, act is so unpleasant I don’t know how he or she has been able to sell it all these years.
lou
I wonder if Ann realizes she’s dissing someone who works for crazy rightwing evangelist Franklin Graham’s operation?
Turning off a whole chunk of the rabid rightwing fan base — good plan, Ann!
Schlemizel
The Bible is like a mirror. If an ass peers in they will not see an apostle peering out.
I was raised a prairie Methodist, old school, I had aunts that would not play cards or see movies. I went to religious training every Wed for most of the school year (we got released from public school if we were signed up at one of the churches willing to hold session for us). As a teen I read the Bible & it changed my life. If you read it like a normal book the contradictions are so glaring as to destroy belief. I can justify anything I want with passages from the book. Little Nazi Annie does it all the time as do her fellow travelers. A second read through with consultation from a minister ened my faith. I almost admire those who can actually study the book and retain a belief in a deity. Hell is other people. Heaven could be but not when people like Annie are among them.
cokane
Personally I think you’re exaggerating a bit on Coulter’s influence in the movement.
Edit: She’s basically been surpassed by Sarah Palin. She made a splash as a bomb throwing conservative in the 90s, then a super-hawk while Bush was still somewhat palatable. Now she’s nothing. I don’t think she represents anything and wouldn’t be surprised if she gets more hate-clicks from liberals/moderates than conservatives.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
It depends on what bullshit you want to pull from what section of their book. Certainly almost all of what is recorded from Yeshua in the NT is all about kindness and helping (though not all, as any “good” Xthian conservative can tell you) but everything that surround what people wrote a couple hundred years later they think he said is a very mixed bag, heavy on the punishment, the condemnation and the self-centered self-aggrandizement so popular with too many religions.
Give me a topic & I can probably find a bible verse to support any and all positions on that topic including many that were unknown by by the nomadic shepherds who compiled the bullshit at the core of the 3 best selling divinely inspired drivers of the modern world.
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
I think that was actually the major point of Dreher’s column. He’s saying that Christians shouldn’t be in such a rush to condemn Coulter that they glide past a reasonable criticism buried among the filth: that they’re in too much of a rush to help people far away to worry enough about those closer to home.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Honestly, though, the kind of man who’s willing to travel thousands of miles to give medical care to Ebola victims is almost certainly doing more than his fair share of charity work at home, too. IMO, Dreher’s criticism best applies to those people who send money to World Vision or other evangelical “mission” organizations but screech about their tax money going to black and brown people here in the US.
wenchacha
@lou: My first thought as well. I was pissed to see Franklin Graham’s duplicitous mug onscreen when the US missionary doc became ill. I don’t want FG to get any publicity unless it is bad.
Old Annie C once said,
She really doesn’t even know who she wants to insult most. what a bunty bunt.
Peter
Christianity is a mess of contradictions, at least three competing narratives which can be used selectively to justify anything. And that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Trying to shame professed Christians by quoting the Bible at them will never work, because they’re not even trying to be logically or ethically consistent; they’re just trying to justify power.
Pogonip
@Schlemizel: Oops, this was for the other person, the ex-Mwthodist: best place to get religious questions answered is asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com . Also fun to read in general (Sister versus the chewing gum is, in my opinion, a classic comic essay).
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Schlemizel: To me, the central tenets of Christianity come from the Sermon on the Mount – which largely said “don’t be an asshole.”
MomSense
@PurpleGirl:
I think I am going to have to do that. I started designing recently and sent some things to a costume designer (she does movies and tv shows) and she wants to have me make some things for her. Now I have to build up my courage to submit designs to yarn companies, magazines, etc. Visiting all the fiber festivals would be a great way to network–and fun. I wish I had more time to work on designing but it is only something I can do after work, kids, chores, pets.
chopper
@MattR:
Not the Christ you believe in, lady.
Pogonip
@lou: @Mnemosyne: He was there before the outbreak; his mission was to provide ob-gyn care. He just happened to be in the area when the outbreak started. As usual, Ann didn’t know what he was talking about.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Pogonip: ABORTION DOCTOR!!!!!!1111!!ELEVEN!!
chopper
@Roger Moore:
Eh, when you actually look at how people are doing in that part of Africa (especially with regard to medicine) it’s no contest. Those people need more help than do poor people in Oklahoma. I’m not saying being poor in America is easy or fun, but there’s more work to do in Africa.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
No doubt & I agree but there is so much that contradicts the “don’t be a dick” message & that is the focus of far too many religions
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Schlemizel: Fine. You are right. There is so much bullshit attached to so many religions that my qualifiers of “At bottom” and “How well any religions followers adhere to this is open to question, but that is something different,” are meaningless. Sorry I even mentioned the thought.
Platypus
The idea that people will consistently do ‘altruistic’ things for selfish reasons, to feel better about themselves, is absolutely essential to Randian (and more generally right-wing) thought. It”s the only way they can argue against social contracts without having to admit that they think killing and maiming people for profit is just dandy. Without it, their entire pseudo-intellectual edifice falls apart . . . and yet Coulter is dumb enough to condemn that impulse. Her callous egocentrism got boring long ago, but her self-defeating stupidity continues to entertain.
Patricia Kayden
@lamh36: Good.
Patricia Kayden
@dedc79: Have also heard people criticize Oprah for building a school for girls in South Africa rather than here. As if she does no charitable acts in the US.
Yellow Dog
“Well, she’s 200 years old,
So mean she couldn’t grow no lips.
200 years old,
So mean she couldn’t grow no lips.
(Boy, she’d be in trouble if she try to grow a mustache.)”
Lihtox
Sounds like Ayn Rand reborn, to me.
Sherparick
@Tom Levenson: These people, who love to call themselves “Christians,” I think are the point of George Bernard Shaw’s aphorism: “Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.” As with most things human, there is probably a mixture human motives here with the Demon Spawn of a union buster: perhaps it is saying something provocative to attract attention and engage in some trolling to boost book sales and hits to her page and perhaps, seeing how Laura Ingraham has suddenly become a right wing force by advocating concentration camps and machine gunning little kids, that she is trying to grab some attention from the Conservative Id. Also, personal spite should not be discounted, since AC likes to imagine herself a paragon of Christian Virtue, and this particular doctor and nurse conduct strikes at her pose.
brantl
Her belief that charity should ONLY happen at home is IGMFU, one step softened so that her nieces and nephews won’t view her as the monster she actually is.