Ann Coulter is used to making controversial statements, and it is obvious when watching her speak that she relishes her role as a conservative instigator. Although it’s nothing new to see outraged responses to her inflammatory comments, this past week has seen a new source for that outrage: Conservatives, who usually make up her devoted following.
In a world where so many things are uncertain, there is something to be said for putting one’s faith in the underdog. People identify and feel comforted by supporting something that, much like them, isn’t going to take the world by storm. Look at the phenomenal show of empathic support to the Boston Red Sox in decades of almost, but not quite, winning the World Series.
Although we would all like to think that America is ready to turn over a new political leaf and elect either a woman or a black president, it may still not be the right time. This is not to say that the country as a whole hasn’t made dramatic strides forward as far as equality in politics is concerned, because one only has to look at the numbers.
Much like the classic “chicken or the egg” conundrum that has puzzled people for centuries, the order of medications and the diseases that are conveniently there to be cured has to be questioned. Each year, it seems as though there is a brand new “It” drug showing up in the crowded marketplace, usually heralded as a miracle for whatever the malady du jour happens to be.
In the living of life, everyone on the planet changes their mind. Sometimes it’s about mundane actions and decisions that don’t have very much bearing on those around them, and sometimes they are important and life-changing decisions. That being said, why is it so unacceptable for politicians and public figures to make the absolutely human action of making up their mind and then thinking twice about it? The classic example of this from recent memory was during the 2004 presidential elections when Senator John Kerry was accused on several occasions of being a “flip-flopper” by his opponent, President George W.
Portland woke up on Tuesday to everything covered in white, and promptly fell apart. TriMet made the amazing decision early in the morning to not chain up the buses, and by 8 a.m. nobody could accuse them of overreacting to inclement weather. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Oregon Considered,” Portland Public School District, along with most of the surrounding districts, announced first that they were going to remain open, and then decided to close.
When future cultural anthropologists are sifting through the artifacts of the 21st century, they may very well find the record of our downfall in the breakdown of our language. No doubt they will focus not on the noble prose of an advanced people, but on the textual vomit that was “2 L8 2 B OF N E GOOD.
As someone who pays maybe more attention than necessary to public art, I sometimes feel like I’m the dragon portrayed in the new sculpture outside the House of Louie in Chinatown, bound at the neck by a spiked collar and held upside-down over what appears to be a pile of cultural refuse.