Unlike the one most of us inhabit, Ann Coulter's universe is a very small and simple place. Small because, fortunately, it is sparsely populated. Simple because it is binary in nature: black/white, on/off, good/evil, us/them. It is this simple universe whence she derives her positions on the issues of the day. She comes forth as a minion for the Bush administration's declaration that "either you're with us or you're with the terrorists." There is no room for discussion, understanding, reason or negotiation and certainly not disagreement. Knowing that Coulter inhabits such a bifurcated cosmos, one might develop an expectation of the evening's talk at the Johns Hopkins, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium on September 25 at Shriver Hall. Ultimately, such an audience member's expectations would not have gone unmet. Still, reading the abstract of the putative subject for the evening,

"...What is the "American" position on moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality? Does our Democracy allow people to hold different views of who and what Americans should be?"

one would have been suprised by what emminated.

Certainly, there was no such discussion. Instead, the audience was treated to an onslaught of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab rhetoric (a word which lends much more eloquence to her speaking than it deserves) that called for the ethnic profiling of any and all "swarthy, dark, Arab men." She proceeded to read off a list terrorist atrocities which have been commited by such men over the course of the last twenty years. This being, most obviously, the evidence which demanded such activity [as an aside, what struck about this rant was that a spammy kind of email whose subject was exactly this, was making the rounds over two years ago, just after the calamity of 9/11. Is she just now seeing this?].

The logical extension of this argument to Coulter is surely that profiling is good and necessary for any enthic/cultural group (i.e. people who likely don't look like her) based on the activities of a few of it's members. In Coulter's universe, Blacks are profiled for drugs, Italians for mob connections, and oh, let's see, how about middle-aged, CEO white guys? Well, probably not them.

Clearly, most of the audience in attendance that night were there either to pick a fight or just to rubberneck. Like a crowd at a car crash, everyone wants to have a look. Probably 30% of the full auditorium seemed to be there to cheer on the jingoist. And most those appeared to have grey hair.

Coulter's position in a democracy certainly allows her to say, well, anything like this she wants. The blessing of democracy is that no one need pay attention. But in Coulter's version of democracy, and by extension, that of the entire neo-con rat pack, this is most assuredly not the case. Disagreement with her view, the right view, is not only not permissable, it is treasonous.

Readers would well be aware a spate of books coming onto the market of late which speak to the half-truths, obfuscations, cronyism, and, well, down-right lies which have been eminating from the radical neo-con faction. Franken's, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Conason's Big Lies and Ivins/Dubose's Bushwhacked, which has some damning indictments of Bush's cronyism and apparent near criminal activity while CEO of Harkin Energy, are flying off the bookstore shelves lately -- much to the chagrin of Coulter, et al. She has tried to respond but one can't help but get the idea that the chambers are empty.

Indeed, here is another of the lies for the record; at the end of the talk, one audience member approached the microphone and said that he was disappointed after reading the synopsis of the symposium. Coulter had not spoken about the advertised subject at all. With a flourish and a huff, she replied, "No one told me about it." Uh, hold on there Ann. The latest Hopkins News-Letter, Vol CVIII, Issue 4, September 25, 2003, contains an interview with her, conducted before the talk:

News-Letter: Your speech on Thursday will deal with "What Makes an American?" Have we lost a sense of what Americans should believe?

Ann Coulter: Some of us have.

Forget her curt, content-free response, what is demonstrated is

a) She clearly knew what the subject of the talk was to be
b) She lied to the entire audience that she didn't know.

Why would you do that, Ann? There were no lives at stake. Of course, asking the question is a purely rhetorical exercise. She has no more an understanding of why she said that than we do. But what is apparent is a pathology we all should find disconcerting.