How We Lost the Right to Censure Ann Coulter
by Paul Adam
October 23, 2007
For those of you keeping score at home, Ann Coulter thinks that American Muslims should use "flying carpets" instead of planes; that John Edwards is a "faggot"- but the term isn't offensive to gays; and that America would be a better (read: more Republican) country if women could not vote. So now she thinks "Jews need to be perfected," as she said on October 8 of this year on CNBC's The Big Idea. Unfortunately, we've already forfeited our right to complain.
The public response of the major Jewish agencies was swift, predictable and aggravating. The Anti-Defamation League's statement "strongly condemn[ed] Ann Coulter for her anti-Semitic comment" and pointed out that her views no longer represented mainstream Christian beliefs- and only the most naive among us wouldn't contend the last point after watching The 700 Hundred Club. The president of the American Jewish Congress expressed shock that Ms. Coulter, a supposedly intellingent woman, should have known better than to say something so inflammatory.
Franky, this sort of blustering moral outrage is a little embarrassing. Of course Jews should be defending themselves in public media. But why did both organizations fail to refer to Ms. Coulter's other despicable beliefs, many of which are much worse? After all, Ms. Coulter may think we're "imperfect", but at least she doesn't yet want to strip us of our constitutional rights, as she does Muslims, gays, and women. Why did the press statement ignore rip Coulter's evangelistic hate so far out of context?
The answer is the same crass exceptionalism that plagues Jewish views of anti-Semitism as "the greatest evil". Muslim Americans face discrimination every day that is far greater than most Americans have the will, or interest, to admit. They are racially profiled at airports. Their moderate schools are picketed and their moderate leaders grilled by the ignorant low- and middlebrow press. Where was the ADL when Michael Savage asked Keith Ellison, America's first Muslim Congressman, on national television, to prove that he wasn't confused about his loyalties? Where were they when Barack Hussein Obama was smeared in public for his kindergarden years spent in a school that may have been a madrassah (but wasn't)?
Donny Deutsch, Jewish host of The Big Idea, got the idea right away. He noted that after he accused Ann of being anti-Semitic, "she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions."
She did, in fact, cross a very thick and obvious line. Yes, it was foolish of Ms. Coulter to brown off anti-Semitism watchdogs. But it there must be a certain lack of imagination afoot if the ADL was, until now, unable or unwilling to perceive the latent prejudice in everything Ann Coulter says. It's sad that in America, baiting gays, Muslims and the French- or denying the Armenian Genocide- will only draw criticism from Keith Olbermann, The Huffington Post and some other neutral voices of modest consequence; that it is only when you cross the line into actual hatred of actual Jews, that the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Congress will get on your case. Don't mistake me, other cultural and racial advocacy groups are self-absorbed, too. All we can do as American Jews is expect out own tolerance societies to set a high universal standard of sensitivity and kinship.
But apparently we don't. And so, the entire incident plays right into the hand of those who accuse "the Jews" of trying to control the media and being self-centered in their quest to stamp out public hatred. Jewish organizations were right to point out how Mearsheimer and Walt's disgusting The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy was an abuse of historical memory; they were quick to bear out teeth at Ann Coulter. So why the hell don't the same groups use some of that historical memory to recognize hatred when it's levelled against Latino immigrants, Arab-Americans and LGBT? Does the ADL lack the funding to pursue all bigotry with equal rigour, or do they really believe that there is something exceptional about hating Jews?
Either way, bigotry has a way of becoming habitual. If Americans come to believe that hating Jews in public is the only real taboo, they'll become so accustomed to breaking the other ones with impunity that they'll hardly hear themselves complaining that the Jewish Lobby controls Congress, or that the Jews run Hollywood, or that the Jews are imperfect, or that the Jews eat babies.
Paul Adam (YC '08) is Senior Editor for The Commentator
(All rights belong to the Commentator)
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