Soulless S O U L L E S S Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate Susan Estrich SU S A N ES T R I CH To Isabel and James With all my love, always CONTENTS Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Godlessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Who Is Ann Coulter? . . . . . 21 3. The Coulter Culture . . . . . 37 4. The Interview . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5. The Aftermath: The Making of a Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 6. The Willie Horton Story and Race Politics . . . . . . . . 91 7. The Moral Majority Is Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 8. Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 9. Public Schools: The Next Battleground . . . . . . . . . . 165 iv Contents 10. If It Were That Easy to Destroy Her, Why Would I Have Written a Whole Book? Or Fun with Footnotes and Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 11. The Next Ann . . . . . . . . . . . 191 12. Soulless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by Susan Estrich Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher INTRODUCTION ★ You’re writing a book about WHO? WHY GIVE HER ANY MORE ATTENTION? Because she’s already gotten the attention. The question is no longer attention. It’s time to take her on. And take on those who give her a forum. We can have fun with it. We don’t have to be mean. Meanness is what people hate. Parody, humor, wit...ita ll works. But to an end. It’s important to take her on. She is not just a harmless entertainer, just another blowhard on the scene. She’s been around for ten years. She is part of something larger. She provides the ideological muscle and the intellectual cover for a movement that is aiming for your local ballot box, and even your child’s school. I know what you’re thinking. Why stoop so low? You’ll pre- tend she isn’t there. Well, then you can be certain of one thing: You’ll lose. We’ll lose. Not just our shirts, but our souls. Been there, done that. I worked for that candidate. If you’re my age, you can re- member . . . 2 Soulless I don’t believe in ignoring the Ann Coulters. Not when they get powerful enough to command the best time spot on Today and the top spot on the New York Times bestseller lists; not when my hero Jay Leno not only invites her on, but plays softball with her. No, when someone who trades on hate for the fun of it is doing that well you don’t put your head in the sand and wait for her to go away. There are no problems, only opportunities, we always say in politics. Ann Coulter is a giant opportunity. She is an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about how we do politics, how we address is- sues, how we communicate in this culture. The only choice in dealing with an Ann Coulter is to figure out what she’s selling, and then engage and win. I have nothing against Ann Coulter personally. Quite the contrary, we get along just fine. I respect her intelligence and ambition, which is part of the reason I am writing this book. But I believe she and others who share her tactics are doing tremendous damage to our public dis- course and our way of doing politics. It’s an overused expression but it’s true: We’re fighting for our political soul. I used to have this idea for a television show where a bunch of peo- ple start all over the political spectrum and the challenge is to see if they can agree on something; seeing people actually try to agree might ulti- mately be more interesting than the cheap thrills of televised food fights, or so I thought, apparently wrongly. But one thing is clear: The person in the group who would not want the consensus, who would see it as her job to stop it, is Ann. That is her role in the discourse. You look at every poll and what you find is a decent, moderate, tol- erant nation, being torn apart by the divisive, polarizing, mean-spirited politics of a selfish few. You find that on the fundamental issues that are supposed to be tearing us apart, we’re far more united than you think, and we’re being divided for sport. Introduction 3 Ann Coulter and those who mimic her are part of that divisiveness. She doesn’t just pull the whole curve to the right, as if that weren’t bad enough; she pulls us down, into the sewer, into the dark side. She feeds on the worst in people, and then nurtures it. Her specialty these days is Muslim jokes. That takes courage. Time portrays her as the laughable, lovable Ms. Right. Wrong. But it’s not just about her. She’s not just building a personal following. She’s trying to inspire a political movement. It’s only the next generation. That’s all. Where are you headed? The worst thing is not to be engaged at all. Godless, she says.. . . How dare she? Let it be an inspiration to us.