If Ann Coulter is a perfected Jew and the RNC is Heaven, then I’ll be happy to see you in Hell

60 thoughts on If Ann Coulter is a perfected Jew and the RNC is Heaven, then I’ll be happy to see you in Hell

1. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express.

   That’s just…incoherent. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

2. I’ve said for years that if Heaven is a place where I have to listen to fucking Jerry Falwell and Bill Donohue and their ilk for all eternity, I’ll be more than happy to head off to Hell instead. Whistling a happy tune, even.

3. Caveat: Ann Coulter is a cartoon, and has become a full-blown asshole over the years.

   What she’s saying here is pretty much what any devout Christian actually believes: that Jews are decent people, in that they believe in the same God, but that they should accept Christ in order to be truly saved. It’s goofy, but it’s not really out of line with regular christian dogma.

4. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you’re lying.

   Oh, an entire “Seinfeld” episode! Wow! Yes, that one episode of that one sitcom absolutely means that an educated adult is lying about his real-life experiences.

   Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I’m offended by that personally.

   Awesome.

5. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you’re lying.

   Whaaaa? She seriously bases her assessment of RL interracial couples on a Seinfeld episode? Never mind that the show is, like, what 15 years old now? And, you know, FICTIONAL?

6. Wait–are you telling me that in real life neurotic Jewish New Yorkers don’t hold masturbation contests? But–but–they did on Seinfeld!

7. I’ve said for years that if Heaven is a place where I have to listen to fucking Jerry Falwell and Bill Donohue and their ilk for all eternity, I’ll be more than happy to head off to Hell instead. Whistling a happy tune, even.

   You won’t be the only one…..

   However the hell they design for everyone else will be the Hell in which THEY rot.

8. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. That’s just…incoherent. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

   If you’re actually curious, the version of Christianity practiced by Coulter and the megachurches is an “express” path to heaven. In Judaism, you have to follow the 613 commandments laid out in the Bible. Christians (erroneously) believe Jews follow those commandments in order to get into heaven and that under Judaism if don’t follow them all, you don’t get into heaven. Christianity is the “express” path to heaven. Instead of devoting your life to obeying God’s will, you just accept Jesus into your heart and that’s it, you’re done. Your place in heaven is assured and you can go back to your day to day life of loudly berating women and homosexuals for having sex.

9. we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

   I think the “as they say” bit might be the most alarming part to me – that really sounds like the admission of a euphemism. Well, I’ve never been happier to not be as perfected as Ann Coulter.

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11. Christianity is the “express” path to heaven. Instead of devoting your life to obeying God’s will, you just accept Jesus into your heart and that’s it, you’re done. Your place in heaven is assured and you can go back to your day to day life of loudly berating women and homosexuals for having sex.

    If you’re one of those lazy Protestants, maybe, but we Catholics are supposed to work and slave and suffer for our salvation, dagnabit! No shortcuts for us.

    Though it was nice one time to have Catholic philosophy at my fingertips so I could point out to the weirdo who was evangelizing me at the bus stop that the Bible says, “Faith without works is dead,” for a reason, and maybe he should read his Bible once in a while instead of just believing that it says what his pastor claims it does.

    I got him to cross the street so he wouldn’t have to listen to me anymore. Score Team Catholicism!

12. Follow the money. You’re just seeing the tip of the batshit crazy iceberg: NewsMax, WorldNutDaily, the New York Sun, other Murdoch-owned newspapers, a couple of thousand Clear Channel radio stations, about 11 hours of Fox News editorial programming per day, a good portion of the Wall Street Journal. And then the non-Olbermann parts of MSNBC and CNN, like DLC centrist Democrats, worry about alienating the loudest, dumbest 25% of the populace and allow the lunacy to be presented as a form of “balance.”

    In other words, she can talk herself out of any respectable gig, and still have a free pipeline for her garbage. Even if she were eliminated from all non-crazy discourse, Media Matters has a rogue’s gallery of about a couple hundred that would take her place in an instant.

13. She never makes any sense to me. She just talks at and around things but it’s clear she’s not really thinking about what she’s saying.

14. If you’re one of those lazy Protestants, maybe, but we Catholics are supposed to work and slave and suffer for our salvation, dagnabit! No shortcuts for us.

    Haha! That’s why I specified the brand of Christianity practiced by Coulter and the megachurches. I know not all Protestants think that way either.

15. I’d say that Ann Coulter is an elaborate Sacha Baron-Cohen bit, but that gets into all those nasty, transphobic comments. Is there a woman who does that style of character humor?

16. There needs to be a law against breeding anything that stupid. Please.

    I think she’s a troll for the money. If she expressed average opinions, she wouldn’t be getting paid for it.

17. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.

    Wow… this, specifically, makes no sense. I know what she later said about the old testament, but there’s nothing in the new testament (to my knowledge) about reforming Judaism because Jews weren’t conforming to God’s law. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention that day in the History of the Western World, but I do recall Jews of old actually being extremely obsessed with interpreting God’s law, ergo the Talmud; but by all means, correct me if I’m wrong.

18. Christians pretty much think that when the Jesus bus stopped for the Jews, all the Jews were supposed to get on. Instead, they’re still waiting for the Messiah, which thanks to 2000 years of revisionist study of the “Old Testament”, Christians think is Jesus. So Ann is just rooting for her home team.

19. Coulter also doesn’t strike me as particularly obedient/pious, what with all the judging and being a single woman instead of a subservient housewife who keeps her mouth shut.

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21. Bring on the Rapture! She’ll get sucked up to heaven in a giant vacuum and finally leave us in peace!

22. I’d say that Ann Coulter is an elaborate Sacha Baron-Cohen bit, but that gets into all those nasty, transphobic comments. Is there a woman who does that style of character humor?

    The closest is Sarah Silverman but she’s actually, y’know, funny, unlike Coulter.

23. Christians (erroneously) believe Jews follow those commandments in order to get into heaven and that under Judaism if don’t follow them all, you don’t get into heaven. Christianity is the “express” path to heaven. Instead of devoting your life to obeying God’s will, you just accept Jesus into your heart and that’s it, you’re done. Your place in heaven is assured and you can go back to your day to day life of loudly berating women and homosexuals for having sex.

    Excellent! Definitely the religious philosphy I want to follow. No wonder I feel so…imperfect. Still…Federal Express? So, the post office is cheaper and gets there anyway, am I right? Even knowing what she thinks she means, this is a very silly metaphor. Now I’m imagining not getting into heaven because there was no one home at the time able to sign for my soul, and I have languish forever in the purgatory of the FedEx depot before I’m shipped back to the sender. Hey–maybe that’s reincarnation!

24. Funny, I was always taught that although Jews don’t really talk much about life after this one, there’s basically universal salvation. Only really evil souls get destroyed as if they never existed, and everyone else gets to go live with God in an eternal sabbath. Anyone else learn this in religious school, or did I spend too much time with the guitar-playing, folk-singing Reconstructionist camp counselors?

    Hitler was always the example they gave as the “really evil soul” that would get destroyed. I’m thinking Coulter and Malkin might make the list too. I got a whole table full of people riled up at lunch today over Malkin stalking the Frost family. That was fun. But I also learned in religious school that people are not to judge, only God, so I’m just speculating over here. *whistles innocently*

25. I’d say that Ann Coulter is an elaborate Sacha Baron-Cohen bit, but that gets into all those nasty, transphobic comments. Is there a woman who does that style of character humor?

    The closest is Sarah Silverman but she’s actually, y’know, funny, unlike Coulter.

    But like, if people didn’t take her seriously, it WOULD be funny. “We think that Jews could be perfected, and become Christians” is ALMOST a Borat line.

26. Kidding aside for a moment – what alarms me most about religion is that you almost really have to believe this kind of thing if you think you really have the One True Faith. A lot of people have found ways around it, talking about how all religions are a path to God, and we shouldn’t be distracted by division, but that’s really not what the Bible says.

27. My friend and I have been talking about Ann Coulter a bit recently, and we’ve come to the conclusion that she’s not for real. She’s a character. No human being could be as wildly inconsistent as she is when she is obviously not that stupid. She’s, I think, just unethical, greedy and egomaniacal. She knows how to sell books (with a minimum amount of effort because she makes it all up as she goes) and she knows how to bring attention to herself. She has proven that there is no such thing as a lowest common denominator. Somebody can always go lower. Right now, she’s about the lowest. How anyone can take such an obvious caricature is a tribute to the gullibility of the right. They are just looking for someone to tell them that their basest instincts and worst prejudices are OK. She is laughing all the way to the bank. If you don’t like her, don’t stroke her ego by discussing her. (At least not in a public forum.)

28. Yuri K is right: part and parcel of most religions is believing that others are wrong. Most faiths (UUs excepted) have an exclusivity clause. Coulter probably is anti-semitic, but not because of this.

29. jpe: I don’t know. If you believe all Jews are going to hell, even if it’s your authentic religious belief based on a solid reading of the Bible, I think that’s anti-semitic. Mainstream religions have a lot of ugly beliefs.

30. My friend and I have been talking about Ann Coulter a bit recently, and we’ve come to the conclusion that she’s not for real. She’s a character. No human being could be as wildly inconsistent as she is when she is obviously not that stupid. She’s, I think, just unethical, greedy and egomaniacal.

    I know someone who went to law school with her, and that’s pretty much his assessment. She was a Federalist Society conservative, and acerbic, but not, you know, batshit.

    Anyone care to head over to Darleen Click’s place to see if she’s denouncing this particular slam against “the Jooooos?”

31. Zuzu: The last time you pulled that trick on me you conveniently uninstalled my chemical eyewash station. Fool me once…

    BTW, if the concept of the exclusivity of a made-up place like heaven or hell is anti-Semitic, it’s also anti-most of the Asian continent, anti-Arab, anti-Native American… well, you get the picture. Just like the elitism of my belief system, where everyone but me and my true believers (to which I’m hoping to add Penelope Cruz) will spend eternity in bliss under the guardianship of the Pink Unicorn of Triton in an atmospherically controlled palace constructed out of Acapulco Gold.

32. Wait… if we follow Coulter’s logic, aren’t Muslims actually perfected Christians? I mean, Mohammed said the same thing about the New Testament and the Old Testament — it’s just that he’s the Seal of the Prophets, the last book in the trilogy.

    So c’mon, Ann, get perfected already, join Islam.

33. I think the “as they say” bit might be the most alarming part to me – that really sounds like the admission of a euphemism.

    I believe the more usual phrase is “completed Jew,” which is only marginally more offensive.

    (I’m entirely on board with all the outrage, but this whole concept isn’t new or surprising to anyone, is it?)

34. Yuri K is right: part and parcel of most religions is believing that others are wrong. Most faiths (UUs excepted) have an exclusivity clause. Coulter probably is anti-semitic, but not because of this.

    jpe: No, that’s a severe misunderstanding of the theology. Coulter isn’t treating Jews here like every other unwashed heathen. She is not saying, or not just saying, that Christianity is the only true path to salvation. She is saying that Christianity is the perfection of Judaism. Not the perfection of Hinduism, or Buddhism, happy as she might be to see them all convert, too. Christianity has a very particular and proprietary view of Jews and Judaism. Google up “the conversion of the Jews,” if you doubt me.

    “Every religion has built-in exclusivity” does not negate “Christianity has a nasty tradition of anti-Semitism that hasn’t wholly died yet.” Both are true.

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36. Wow… this, specifically, makes no sense. I know what she later said about the old testament, but there’s nothing in the new testament (to my knowledge) about reforming Judaism because Jews weren’t conforming to God’s law. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention that day in the History of the Western World, but I do recall Jews of old actually being extremely obsessed with interpreting God’s law, ergo the Talmud; but by all means, correct me if I’m wrong.

    You’re not wrong. When she says: “You have to obey laws” she means: “You Jews have to obey laws. All we Christians have to do is accept Jesus”.

    But as a few people have said already… yes, this is anti-semitic. But it is also the teaching of many Christian churches. She’s not pulling this stuff out of her ass like so much of what she says, there are thousands of people who believe the same.

37. As my admittedly imperfect understanding of Judaism goes, at least most of the mainstream movements basically interpret the 613 Mitzvot as being rules for living by. They’re not exactly rules that score you Afterlife Brownie Points™. One of the things I like about Judaism as a religion is that it’s quite focused on ha’olam hazeh (this world now) rather than ha’olam ha’ba (the world to come, the afterlife). From my experience, there’s even a great deal of debate about what happens to people after they die, and certain fringe elements in Judaism don’t find beliefs like reincarnation to be incompatible with Judaism. However, the deal with being a Jew seems to be that since you’re a member of the Covenant, you have to obey God’s laws while you live, and what happens to you after that is basically up to God. (On the other hand, they tell me the perqs are good.)

    Full Disclosure: I’m not actually Jewish (I just play one on tv the internet), but I have been studying Judaism for several years, speak Hebrew, was engaged to a Jewish man (Conservative), and had one of my close friends convert Reform.

    Having read the Qu’ran, I’m fully down with the idea that Muslims could be construed as “perfected Christians.” Suck a shayla, Ann Coulter.

38. As nuts as she is, Coulter is embraced by mainstream conservatives. She is regularly invited to speak at conservative conferences, and she goes on TV representing her movement. It’s easy to write her off as a fringe wacko — and she is a wacko — but she’s saying what a whole lot of Republicans and Libertarians are thinking.

    Did you have any particular libertarian in mind when you wrote this?

    Most libertarians that I know don’t often find themselves nodding along with anti-choice, anti-immigration, war-mongering, police statist demagogues.

39. Did you have any particular libertarian in mind when you wrote this?

    Most libertarians that I know don’t often find themselves nodding along with anti-choice, anti-immigration, war-mongering, police statist demagogues.

    Read the “Libertarians” at Pajamas Media. They’re nodding along.

    And yes, we can quibble over the definition of Libertarian, but these are people who self-identify and are embraced by other conservatives, so that’s good enough.

40. I don’t think people who nod along with squarely anti-libertarian positions usually count as libertarian. They may call themselves that; hell, Glenn Reynolds thinks he’s a libertarian. But calling yourself a libertarian is not the same thing as being one. And those who, like Coulter, rabidly endorse imperial wars, a domestic police state, Berlin border-crossing policies, and the rest, are pretty far outside the mainstream of libertarianism.

    Similarly, when Phyllis Chesler blogs at Pajamas Media or publishes tracts with endorsements from David Horowitz, I don’t take this as a reason to make blanket claims that Coulter or Horowitz or the rest of the bomb-the-world crowd are saying what a lot of feminists think, deep down.

    I also don’t think that libertarianism is a branch of conservatism. If one actually tries espousing libertarian positions at a conservative event (e.g. decriminalizing drugs, completely open immigration, abortion on demand), one will find out pretty quickly how much libertarians get embraced by conservatives.

41. Well, Rad Geek, that’s fine if you don’t think that they’re Libertarians, but they sure seem to think so, and a lot of other people seem to agree. I don’t think their views follow the basic principles of Libertarianism either, but when they’re identifying as such and being embraced as such by hundreds (thousands?) of other self-identified Libertarians, well, I think it’s fair to call them Libertarians.

42. She is saying that Christianity is the perfection of Judaism.

    That’s pretty standard, mainstream Christianity.

43. Having read the Qu’ran, I’m fully down with the idea that Muslims could be construed as “perfected Christians.”

    This is as it should be. That’s how religions operate: they make exclusive claims to truth, and contain the moral proposition that everyone ought to be that religion. This is neither surprising nor offensive. Coulter is ridiculous, but not everything she says has to be offensive. (pace: “everything he says is a lie, including ‘the'”).

44. Jill: A dangerous way of classifying people, especially when there is a certain group called “Feminists for Life.” I’ve got no especial love for libertarians, but I sure as hell wouldn’t wish authoritarians like Glenn Reynolds and the post-9/11 hooray torture and perpetual war crowd upon them.

45. Wow. She just keeps hittin’ ’em outta the park, eh? Good gravy. “Perfected Jews.” Hmmm…wasn’t that Goebbels campaign slogan? Yikes. Be afraid of the Coultergeist. Be very afraid.

46. That’s how religions operate: they make exclusive claims to truth, and contain the moral proposition that everyone ought to be that religion.

    You sure you’re not on the Jesus Bus with Miss Coulter, there? Judaism actually prohibits proselytizing and makes no claim that everyone should be a Jew. (In fact, we’re a little bit exclusionary about it. Our God, we saw him first.)

    I’m deeply pleased imagining the panic reaction among the few right-wing allies Coulter has left.

    roses – not quite correct. Christianity holds that the laws of the Old Testament do not apply to them; Jesus said so. So to claim “we believe the Old Testament” really means “I don’t know a fucking thing about the Bible, but I like the parts that I think tell me to kill homos.”

47. I know someone who went to law school with her, and that’s pretty much his assessment. She was a Federalist Society conservative, and acerbic, but not, you know, batshit.

    zuzu, she wasn’t, back in the day. She was also able to put together a coherent argument when she was a young’un. Of course, that was also when she was one of a number of “new conservative women” who marketed themselves as able to write Law Review articles AND look good in tight T-shirts. Now that the latter is gone, and after a whole lot of tobacco and Chardonnay’s gone under the bridge, she’s slowly turned batshit.

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49. Her statement about the Seinfeld episode encapsulates the GOP mentality through and through: they view life through the prism of fantasy. Because they see something play out on a television show, it must reflect reality.

    How many generations of Rambo fans must we endure before such drivel is relegated to the trash heap of popular culture? Can we not address as a society the ill that it is inflicted with that so many cannot discern the difference between fact and fiction?

50. Jill,

    It’s not just me, personally. I may be an ultra who enjoys quibbling about definitions and calling out other libertarians on questions of doctrinal purity, but the views that Coulter spends her time endorsing are outside of, indeed directly contrary to, the views espoused by anything that could plausibly count as a mainstream of American libertarianism. I can’t find much love for Ann Coulter at Reason, or from Radley Balko, or from the Libertarian Party. (Fun fact: back in 2000, Coulter briefly tried to use the Connecticut LP as a platform from which to run as a spoiler candidate against liberal Republican Chris Shays. The state party rejected her candidacy, on the grounds that, well, she wasn’t a libertarian, and refused to endorse either libertarian positions or LP candidates. Coulter responded by writing a nasty little screed against libertarianism. This was back when she was mainly just grousing about the Clinton impeachment and the Evil Liberal Media, before she had even launched into doing the bomb-the-world/Ihre Papiere Bitte shtick full-time.) Based on my experience with quite a few libertarians, I think it would be pretty accurate to say that the typical American libertarian finds Coulter to be perfectly despicable.

    There may very well be some people calling themselves “libertarians” who like Ann Coulter, or who endorse the views that she expresses in her columns. There may even be “hundreds” or “thousands” of them, what with 300,000,000 people in the country. (Although, again, it would help to name names and point to specific views.) But in any case there are also probably hundreds or thousands of people who call themselves “feminists” and embrace Christina Hoff Sommers. But we know something about what “feminism” actually means, and about what the feminist movement has historically stood for, and what the mainstream of people in the feminist movement actually think. It would be grossly unfair to make blanket claims about feminism simpliciter on the basis of what Christina Hoff Sommers-embracing, self-declared “equity feminists” go around saying and doing.

51. But calling yourself a libertarian is not the same thing as being one.

    We’ve been saying this about “Christians” like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for years, but no one listens. Kinda sucks when someone hijacks your philosophy and gets to make public statements about what it “really” is while you’re stuck screaming at the TV, doesn’t it?

52. I love this bit:

    No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this.

    So long as she orders you not to be offended, it’s not offensive. Perfected Coulter logic.

53. Didn’t Dean say something about Repubs being “wealthy Christian white men” and then get harrassed to no end because the then current RNC Chair was Jewish?

54. STOP TRYING TO SMEAR ANN AS ANTI-SEMITIC, YOU TERRORIST-CODDLING, AMERICA-HATING, PIAPS-LOVING DEMLIBS!!!

    THE BEAUTIFUL COULTER PLAN FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE IS PRO-ISRAEL AND THE GREATEST HOPE FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE TODAY!!!!!

55. Ann’s a neo-nazi bulmenic performance artist & closet leather-dyke who hates lesbians and gays and….well, the list’s too long. So she tried to drum up sales for her new POS book by going on the air and saying that our country would be a better place to live in if all the Jews converted, so they’d be “perfected Jews”….the host gives her an out to “explain and she’s thinking “Explain what, Wimp-Boy? I just sold 10,000 more copies!” then on Tucker Carlson she dropped the wowie zowie blockbuster that John Edwards had an 18 month affair. She’s sure it’s the truth, her source is (no kidding) the National Enquirer HAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAA

    It’s way too easy to mock Ann, like shooting tuna in a barrel

56. I blogged on this, too, but I love your take, especially the title!

57. Actually my theory on Ann is that she is in fact a radical feminist performance artist who decided to say the most offensive things possible until she got dismissed from the public discourse.

    When she got her first book deal she went completely, irretrivably insane.

58. PIAPS-LOVING

    Congratulations; I had to look up that one.

    Does “pants suit” sound idiotic and redundant to anyone else? It’s a suit. An ordinary suit. It’s the same set of clothing, on anyone.

59. By that logic, you could argue Islam is a perfected form of Christianity and that Christians need to accept Muhammad as their prophet.

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