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License to Be Bold
Ann Coulter talks about finding the courage to speak against the liberal agenda.
Listen to Ann's InterviewFrom America Online this is 'Required Reading' with the AOL Book Maven, Bethanne Patrick.
Bethanne Patrick: Hi, this is AOL's Book Maven, Bethanne Patrick, and today I'm speaking with Ann Coulter who is just out with a new book called 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism in America.' Ann, you just told me you were out until 3AM last night with Bobby Weir.
Ann Coulter: My life-long crush.
Bethanne Patrick: I love it. You have to tell us more about why you got to go out with Bobby Weir. Everyone should know that Ann Coulter is a big Dead-head.
Ann Coulter: Yes, well they saw an interview I did recently and invited me to the show. It was at Radio City Music Hall, and it was one of the greatest nights of my life. I was like an Orthodox Jew meeting Moses. Bobby is of course every girl's lifelong crush and he's every bit as cool and as wonderful as I could hope he could be. And the band, 'String Cheese Incident' started for them. It was one of the greatest nights of my life.
People are often incorrectly surprised that there are a lot of conservative dead heads. I'd mentioned that in an interview, and actually on the 'Tonight Show,' that one of my friends -- who was a fellow dead head -- would get up in the morning, smoke a bowl, turn on Rush Limbaugh, and start making his candles for 'Grateful Dead' merchandising. I met his brother at the show.
Bethanne Patrick: I've heard this a lot. You're not the first conservative to be a big Grateful Dead fan. How do you reconcile the free-wheeling ideas and lifestyles of other Dead-heads, and the band itself, with your own, very hard-core, right-wing, conservative beliefs?
Ann Coulter: I actually think the lifestyle is more consistent for a right-winger. I mean, the smoking issue, for example. Conservatives don't have a problem with personal freedoms. Liberals are the ones going around taping up no smoking sings every place. And this is one of the things I always loved about 'Dead' shows, they genuinely were friendly, or we were, since I considered myself one of them, genuinely interested in other ideas, and they wouldn't get angry and pout-y, and call you a fascist and walk away. You could talk about anything.
A lot of my San Francisco Dead-head friends were total Dead-heads, and often, I admit, many of them gravitated towards liberalism because of their interest in drug legalization laws. However, you start with that and the whole edifice starts to fall of the usefulness of government regulation generally.
Bethanne Patrick: So, how is your reception at these events? Bobby and Phil and everyone else, they see Ann Coulter and they don't say, 'Oh my gosh, run away, she's evil.' They say, 'Oh, we embrace her, we love her, she's our greatest fan?'
Ann Coulter: Well, I had a great time, they were all very friendly. The 'String Cheese Incident' band members were hilarious, and they agree, obviously, on many conservative principles, on capitalism, for example. 'String Cheese Incident' famously -- and I found out last night that it was my former fiancé who was the lawyer who brought the case -- 'String Cheese Incident' sued Ticket Master so they could sell tickets at different prices. Ticket Master had total control of it, and they now have control of it. So, they're totally with me on that, although, I must say, they said to me, 'You have to explain why you support George Bush.' And I said, 'Ok, I'll give you a thirty-second explanation,' because what they were talking about was Iraq and not tax cuts, for example. And I said, 'Ok, I'll give you a thirty-second explanation,' and I began with the attack on 9/11. And they did say something that cut me off at the knees and I could go no further. They think it was an inside job and then I just laughed and said, 'You know, if you think it's an inside job, the rest of my explanation falls apart.'
Bethanne Patrick: So there are some arguments that can stop Ann Coulter dead. What I really wanted to ask you, and seriously, where do your convictions come from? Tell us about what gives you the strength to go back into the ring again and again. What kind of early experience did you have as a child -- both with this book being about spirituality and religion, specifically -- but also in terms of political ideas and convictions, and morals and ethics.
Ann Coulter: Well, it is religion and spirituality, number one. Not only do Christians not mind being attacked, we think it's kind of macho because Christ predicted we would be attacked. And also, if you really believe Christ died for your sins, nothing else really matters. So 'Vanity Fair' doesn't like me, boo hoo. Christ died for my sins, so what do they have for me?
Bethanne Patrick: There's very little you can say about that because it trumps everything.
Ann Coulter: And it gives you freedom to act boldly. Christians are always operating -- at least this Christian is -- with a net. There's nothing anyone can do to us. As Paul said, 'If Christ had not risen, than eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.' Well, we think Christ is risen, so whatever gifts God has given you, you have to pursue them to your utmost expense and not be worried about people yelling at you. And also, I grew up with two older brothers, so I'm used to being bold.
Bethanne Patrick: Ah, now we get to the truth of the matter...
Bethanne Patrick: Also, with Christians, it's not just things we're given, but things we're called to do. And one of the things that Christians are called to do is to love one another. You are very vocal in the book and in the media about the transformative power of Christian love. So I want to know, is calling someone a harpy like you did during the 9-11...
Ann Coulter: You can see I haven't been transformed.
Bethanne Patrick: Is that part of Christian love?
Ann Coulter: Well, two things to that. One, like I said, whatever gifts you've been given. You can't imagine what people will say to me, 'Would Christ talk like this.' No, but Christ wouldn't be a stand-up comic, Christ wouldn't be a NASCAR driver, Christ wouldn't be Bobby Weir playing in the band. He had other fish to fry. So whatever gift God gives you -- and in my case I think that involves irony and sarcasm, that's what you use.
And the other thing I'd say is yes, we have the whole love part of Christianity, but there's also the sword part. Jesus was not ... I mean, ask the money-changers how nice Jesus was. There are many commands to go out and do battle against evil. And maybe I don't get it right. Maybe when I meet my maker he'll say I was too harsh. Maybe he'll say I wasn't harsh enough. Who knows? I'll apologize for not getting it right and thank him for dying for my sins.
Bethanne Patrick: And you do believe in ultimate mercy, so there you go. You've got this combative edge, and that's using your gifts as you said, but taking that combative edge away from your talents for a moment, does it detract from or enhance the intellectual merits of your arguments?
Ann Coulter: I think the jokes, the sarcasm, writing in an amusing style -- that gets more people to read it. I do have the number one book in the country now, so it appears to be working on that score, even though that is just the way I would write because it amuses me. I have to edit this stuff over and over again, and if it's not funny I don't want to read it.
Bethanne Patrick: The other thing I thought while I was reading 'Godless,' not all liberals have given up on God and the Bible. There are many liberals who are Christians. There are many of us out there.
Ann Coulter: Oh yes, I'm well aware.
Bethanne Patrick: And there are many conservatives who couldn't care less about Jesus Christ or about religion in any form. So what do you say to those conservatives? Are you saying to them, 'You better get into the fold now?' Or do you think just being conservative is enough?
Ann Coulter: No, no, no. I think, as a general matter, I would encourage everyone to become a Christian and win eternal life and also peace in this life. I was raised Christian, but I've become more Christian in the past five or ten years, and one most transforming effect in my own life is that I'm constantly at peace. You don't get upset about anything because, like I said, the big issue has been taken care of. Nothing else really matters.
Bethanne Patrick: I don't know if you don't get upset about anything, because one of the things in 'Godless' that you do get upset about is Muslims and Islam.
Ann Coulter: Well, ok, I'm a little testy with them since they flew planes into our buildings and killed three thousand Americans, yes that's true.
Bethanne Patrick: And you do take a lot of license in your language in talking about them. Do you think that you'll ever come to the point where you accept that Muslims are also believers just as you are?
Ann Coulter: I have a footnote to it in Chapter One because it got kind of tedious saying, 'Christians, and others who believe in the God of Abraham.' Because what I'm talking about in the book isn't just New Testament stuff. It's Old Testament stuff. It's very heavily Genesis stuff, and that is that we're in our creator's image and that he gave us the plants and the animals and the earth to be shepherds of, but we are above them, they're not above us.
So, for example, our government's policy for many years -- a perfect example of a tendency of the church of Liberalism -- was to punish African countries that used DDT to kill malaria. There are millions of Africans, African human beings, dying of malaria every year. DDT is a perfectly safe substance for human beings, in fact the guy who used to debate this in the seventies, I forget his name, he would stand on the stage with a glass of DDT in front of him and drink it during the lectures to show that it was safe for human beings. He just died about a year ago at age 84 while hiking, but DDT might kill a bird. And it's a trade-off between birds and human beings. No! That is very anti-Genesis. No, no, no.
Bethanne Patrick: So that is something that also gets you fired up. And with the liberal lifestyle that you do discuss in 'Godless' and in your other books, which are, as you noted, bestselling books-- one of the things that you say in the book is that liberals promote this idealized beauty and that it's very unrealistic for women. Yet there you are on the cover of your book in a revealing tank top looking very svelte and very idealized, Ann.
Ann Coulter: That happens to be a very tasteful, Narcisco Rodriguez dress. So do not refer to it as a tank top.
Bethanne Patrick: It's a very flattering and very expensive, I am sure, Narcisco Rodriguez dress. So you're looking pretty idealized there, so what do you say to that? Have you been inculcated?
Ann Coulter: No, and thank you for describing that as a pretty picture, no I like to appear on the cover of my books in cocktail dresses, smiling because it appears to enrage liberals when I do that, I don't know why. My point about the cult of idealized beauty is the extremes of the superficiality of it. We must listen to George Clooney and Julia Roberts because they're beautiful. The vast measures that will be taken... it's all a little bit creepy.
Bethanne Patrick: It's very creepy to read an entire book that has so much anger in it, but at the same time is written by a smart woman. What has no one asked you that you would like to answer? All this last week there's been this swirl about plagiarism and then not plagiarism, and on and on. What would you like to say?
Ann Coulter: Yes, and now they're going after me for a split infinitive.
Bethanne Patrick: I think we have to let the split infinitives go.
Ann Coulter: Let's just back up slightly on the anger point. I don't think I'm angry at all. I make points, I make a few jokes. I think I write it in a way that amuses me and my friends. I don't think there's any anger there, and in fact, one of my comedy-writing friends has an idea for a sketch where you'd have a calm, happy conservative being interviewed by a liberal, brow-beating and yelling at the conservative, and continuing to say, 'She's so angry! There's so much anger here!' And that basically happens to me on the Donny Doilt Show. I was just sitting, smiling, I'd get in two or three words here or there, and he was totally and admittedly and in an amusing way, but totally haranguing me for the entire half hour, and I noticed this on the net and then watched the re-play, other people noticed this, but the whole time he's flaring his arms and yelling at me. The title under the camera shot was, 'Ann on the Attack.' If you took that off and just watched it you'd see that I was on the receiving end of that one.
Bethanne Patrick: So Ann Coulter is someone who considers herself at peace.
Ann Coulter: Yes.
Bethanne Patrick: And that is the Ann Coulter that we are going to say thank you so much to right now. 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism' is out from Crown Forum. Thanks for being with AOL Books today.
Ann Coulter: Thank you it was great to talk to you.
Bethanne Patrick: This is AOL's Book Maven, Bethanne Patrick.
You made it to the end with out going into convulsions! Even if you cheated, bravo!
Dontchu just wanna throttle any "Book Maven" that goes by the name of Bethanne?