Steamd

I’m a bit gobsmacked by Ann’s latest post entitled Murder Spree by People Who Refuse to Ask For Directions. I mean, I’m always perplexed by what Ann writes most of the time but this one…well…it just makes me wonder if this woman will ever stop.  As such, I akin Ms. Annie No-Hart Coulter to an Everlasting Gobstopper: ”You can suck ‘em and suck ‘em and suck ‘em, and they’ll never get any smaller”, as Wonka himself said. Plus, if you bite too hard you’re liable to break your teeth.

In her post, Ann talks about how the New York Times (or The Treason Times as she like to call them) wrote a series about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans accused of murder. It would help if she told us exactly what article she’s talking about. If I had to guess, I think she’s talking about the Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles article. According to Ann, the New York Times doggedly refused to provide any statistics comparing veteran murders with murders in any other group:

What, for example, is the percentage of murderers among veterans compared to the percentage of murderers in the population at large — or, more germane, in the general population of young males, inasmuch as violent crime is committed almost exclusively by young men?

Why does it matter, Ann? That’s not even the point of the article. The point was to shed light on the fact that we have veterans committing homicide due largely in part to untreated combat trauma and post-tramatic stress. What part of that do you not get? Who cares about the percentage of murderers among veterans compared to the percentage of murderers in the population at large. That’s not even the issue here. You complete missed the point. Here’s the point (in case you missed it):

Why do we have so many veterans committing homicide? 

Forget the fact that they represent a small number compared to the many other people who have committed homicide in this country. I’m talking about veterans that, for the most part, were fairly normal before they went to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and probably would never have committed homicide had they not have joined the military.  As illustrated in the NYT article, the main reason for this is due to veterans not receiving a proper psychological evaluation when they return from a tour.

Have you ever been to war, Ann? Do you know what it’s like? You don’t, and neither do I. But I do know one thing: war can have a very dramatic effect on one’s mind. It can cause the mind to snap and enable folks to do things they normally wouldn’t do up to and including homicide. Many of the people profiled in the NYT series showed signs of post-traumatic stress after evaluation and even had signs prior to committing homicide. All this New York Times article tells me is that these veterans were not given the proper care prior to their release from tour. Given the proper evaluation and help, many of these homicides could have been prevented. 

Instead, Ann, you decided to beat a dead horse and talk on and on and on about something else:

Consider the harmless fantasy game, Dungeons and Dragons — which happens to be played almost exclusively by young males. When murders were committed in the ’80s by (1) young men, who were (2) Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts, some people concluded that factor (2), rather than factor (1), led to murderous tendencies.

Seriously, what the hell does Dungeons and Dragons have to do with anything? So what? So a bunch of idiots in the 80’s claimed that Dungeons and Dragons was causing young men to commit crimes. Just because a few screwed up kids took their D&D too seriously doesn’t mean that everyone else who play it will to. My wife likes to play Manhunt, a highly violent video game, on our Nintendo Wii. Does that mean she’s likely to want to go out and chop someone’s head off? No, it doesn’t. It’s a baseless argument, so why even mention it?

From there, Ann continues to go on and on and on in a diatribe of statements to support her argument: that single mothers are the cause of social decline in our country:

But as long as the Times has such a burning interest in the root causes of murder, how about considering the one factor more likely to create a murderer than any other? That is the topic we’re not allowed to discuss: single motherhood.

I could go deeply into this and debunk all of this with statistics that show how homicide rates are close to half of what they were in the 80’s. I could also go on about the number of single mothers who have kids in prison compared to the total number of single mothers. To be honest, that would be pointless and a waste of time because that’s not even the issue with Ann’s blog post. 

Look, Ann Coulter is a writer. That is her job. Commentary, blog posts, interviews, and everything else she does are just ways to further promote and sell more books. The problem I have is the topics she writes about and the methods she use to sell more books. 

Take her current blog post for instance. She takes an article by the New York Times about veterans who have committed homicide, makes a connection with it to the total number of homicides in the country, and then links that to single motherhood as to one of the reasons why we have homicides in our country. It’s sick because she twists the context of the story around just to validate her argument. I find it quite disgusting because it means she’s completely ignoring the fact that these veterans needed help and our government wasn’t there to provide them with that help. It’s completely irresponsible. There’s just no logic or common sense to connecting this story with her argument at all. In the end all it does is further discredit her due to the total lack of regard for veterans of this country by making a connection with this story.

It would seem that Ann cares little about context or facts unless they help to support her argument. She cherry pick the parts she wants in an effort to support her argument just so she can sell more books. That’s what Ann Coulter does. She twists, distorts, and lies all just to rile up controversy in an effort to sell more books. Common sense, logic, proper research, Ann Coulter doesn’t care about any of these things. Instead, she just plays a game of randomly connecting dots between seemingly disparate things to drive an argument.

Frankly, I think anyone with Conservative viewpoints who actually believes what Ann Coulter says is an idiot. Hell, I’m not even sure if you could call Ann a real Conservative. To me, Ann Coulter is just a character, someone who treats life as if it were her stage. The part she plays is a caricature of a far right-wing neo-con woman. I don’t know if Ann Coulter really believes in the crap she says. If she does then she must be mental. If she doesn’t then it’s a hell of a good act.