And who is listening to them? What I am talking about, is those people that, for whatever reason, have been given the ability to spread their views and opinions to the public, via books, speeches, etc; and regardless of free speech, are people that I believe really shouldn’t be heard at all. Alright, while I know that I can ignore them, and that I know that we all can, I can’t help but wonder why they are even given the mic in the first place? I wonder this, mainly, because I know that I am not the only one that goes “WTF?” at pretty much everything they say, because if that were the case, people would stop listening to them, and take the mic away from them.
What pisses me off about people like Ann Coulter (who is pretty much the focus of who I am talking about when I say “those people”), is that they really have nothing to add, other than their bitchy, and often hate-driven, rants and raves about stuff they do or don’t agree with. While I am all for someone stating their opinions on something, I just don’t think people that always have something completely off the wall, totally negative, completely untrue, and often batshit crazy to say, should continually be given any of the public’s attention. These people are often not very intelligent, they often make claims that are untrue, they usually base things on their own personal beliefs rather than the truth, and they often speak about things in the past that didn’t happen, or in cases where they state that they did, they tend to add or subtract facts as necessary to “prove their points”. Ann Coulter is an easy one to call out for this, because she does all of the above effortlessly; yet, she continues to remain popular among conservatives, regardless of the fact that she is just an ignorant loud mouth. What I wonder, is how people like her have managed to place themselves firmly in the media, and continually pop up with their opinions; whether they are wanted or not. I ask, because if it is so easy for people like her to go out and spread their stupidity, why can’t other people, like me, go out and do the same thing (except, I wouldn’t spread stupidity… she’s already got that covered)? Why can’t I just go around calling Bush a fucking idiot all of the time, and have ABC news eat it up? Why can’t I get on c-span, giving a speech all about how Cheney is actually Satan, and say that he is causing global warming so that the earth will be warmer and more comfortable for him and his other demons? Because that is pretty much what Ann Coulter, and others like her do over and over again.
Now, I do understand, and fully agree, that when Ann Coulter, Jerry Falwell, Zell Miller, and the other people I am referring to in this post, open their mouths, they almost always say something completely daft and void of any fact or relevance to anyone other than themselves, and most of what they say can be completely laughed at or ignored; I wonder why so many others still listen to them long enough, to give them more and more forum to spread around their nonsense. There are very few people that I can think of that are at the polar opposite side of these types of people and continue to garner significant attention from the media; and I for one, would like to at least see the playing field levelled, if we can’t get rid of the Coulters of the world.
If Ann Coulter can go around using the F word, while in the same breath exclaiming that she is not anti-gay, and then in her next breath, reinforce stereotypes about gays in her reasoning, while still pointing out gay marriage is an abomination; why can’t there be public figures that bash her and those that are like her, in the way she bashes everyone she doesn’t agree with? I am all for free speech, but just about anything that comes out of her, and her fellow crazies mouth’s, shouldn’t be making its way to c-span, the front page of any paper, and certainly not a book shelf. I guess I just see an inequity when it comes to loud mouthed conservatives, whose messages seem to reach a wider audience, and liberal minded people that don’t slander people to get their views across being represented similarly. I know that many of you will think, “well, the media focuses on scandal, and those people provide it”, but shouldn’t we stop listening to those people if most of what they are doing is spreading hate and ignorance?
I know that there will be at least two people that disagree with me on this, but I don’t care, because this is how I see it. Frankly, I think that if people can really love those like Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell so much, and think that they deserve the right to spread their hateful nonsense all over the front page, then they should have no problem realizing that those people, in many ways, represents the “conservative” views of the party they belong to. By allowing them to continue on their rampages in the name of the conservative Republican party, it solidifies my belief, and the belief of many others, that many conservatives really are hateful crazies. Getting them to shut the fuck up might actually work to the conservative advantage, in my opinion.