Ann Coulter, woman

The right's she-devil talks about why she loves the Grateful Dead, what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky taught her about life, and how she meets men.

By David Bowman

Jul 25, 2003 | Liberals see Ann Coulter as a Republican she-devil with skirts so short you can see her brains. Others view her as the blonde babe savior promised to the American right in the pages of fundamentalist scripture. Ann Coulter is defiantly the last woman in this country still carrying the torch for the long-dead Red baiter Joseph McCarthy. Look at the full moon above Washington, D.C., and see Ann wearing McCarthy's spurs as she rides her broomstick through the hot night.

But that's Coulter as a political creature. What about Coulter as a woman? For years this 40-something woman has worked so hard to become the she-god of the Republican zeitgeist that she's forsaken any personal life. She has no marriage or long-time partner -- her social life consists of sporadic dating. We should worry that she is dooming herself to spinsterhood, rather than assume Coulter practices free love or is still in the closet. Such speculations would be cruel.

And the truth is, Coulter seems sweetly frivolous when she isn't spouting off right wing clichés. Who would have guessed that she doesn't have a clue about American culture? She is under the impression that "Forrest Gump" is a recent flick. She only first saw Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" last year. Like a perpetual grad student, Coulter's favorite books are the pages of pre-Commie Russians. She also follows the Grateful Dead. I'm sure you heard the rumors that Strom Thurmond read Ralph Ellison and dug Miles Davis, so maybe it's true -- members of the right wing have soul.

I do know that after McCarthy died in 1957, doctors cut him open and were astonished that he had no heart beneath his ribs. If you scoop your hand beneath Ann Coulter's left breast, I believe you'll hear the beat of a tender but rather silly schoolgirl's heart.

Coulter spoke to Salon by phone from New York.

I'm looking at the gorgeous photo of you on the cover of your new book "Treason." Is there a difference between Republican beauty and Democratic beauty?

I don't know. I'm not really good at questions like that. I'm much better in the world of ideas. No. I'm sorry. [Pause.] This is something I do have expertise in: I give a lot of college speeches, and half the room is usually angry protesters with placards. Scattered throughout the audience are a few pretty girls here and there, and at the end of the speech it's always the pretty girls that come up to me. Always. In college, any woman is beautiful, and to see these women that don't bathe, don't take care of themselves, don't dress in a way that is vaguely flattering, is like walking into a mining camp. And that seems to be intentional.

Do you look back at yourself when you were that age and wince, or were you attractive?

I don't look back and wince at anything, except there were a few times I could have been tougher on the Democrats.

When I was 18, I had long hair and looked like a goofball. No one would sleep with me. Thankfully, I outgrew that by the time I hit 20.

I think long hair is kind of cute on boys.

I've heard you described as a fundamentalist Christian. Is that true?

I don't think I've described myself that way, but only because I'm from Connecticut. We just won't call ourselves that. I suppose if you broke it down, yeah, I'm a Christian. I'm not sure I particularly disagree with people who do call themselves fundamentalist Christians. It just seems odd, that phraseology.

It's kind of demeaning. It implies you are some sort of illiterate hillbilly.

It has come to be described that way. But even if it weren't, it just seems jarring to someone from Connecticut. The same way it often seems jarring to talk openly about a personal relationship with God.

There's also scripture that says, "You should go pray in your closet and never be public about worship."

I do agree with that. People who carry a five-pound Bible for a photo op in church on Sunday and then go back to the Oval Office to sodomize Monica Lewinsky -- I find public displays of religiosity in that sense really appalling.

Don't you think it is more evil for a Republican to have sex with his intern than a Democrat?

Oh no. No no no no no.

The hypocrisy of it --

I think liberals have turned hypocrisy into the only sin. Not lying. Not cheating on your wife. Not aborting small babies. The only sin out there is hypocrisy because they can always get Republicans on that.

We're all sinners, but Democrats go around saying, "Oh no. We embrace adultery and lying, thus we are not guilty of hypocrisy." And by the way, that is not true of Bill Clinton, a point I keep trying to make to Bill Maher, who seems to think that he and Clinton are soul mates. No. Maher goes around saying, "I'm never going to get married. I'm a horn dog. I hang out at the Playboy mansion." I tell him, "You'll burn in hell." But still he doesn't walk into church and sing with the choir, and talk about "my God."

In fact, I want to start a contest -- now that we can't get rid of the Clintons -- of our favorite Clinton lie. We can have various bonus structures. You get bonus points if you lied while biting your lip and crying. Bonus points lying at a church. A big bonus point lying at a black church. There are so many ways we could start this contest. I think I may start it on my Web page.

Your book is in the upper hemispheres of the bestseller list, sharing it with Hillary, Ben Franklin, the Kennedys and Katharine Hepburn.

Hepburn!

The day before Katharine Hepburn died, my wife asked me to define elegance and I just said out of the blue, "Katharine Hepburn."

Also what's her name, the one in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Audrey Hepburn.

Oh yeah. I'd even put her above Katie Hepburn.

Elegant women make me think about the statue in the Justice Department. The one with the bare breasts that drives Ashcroft so crazy. There is a tradition of single exposed breasts that goes back to ancient Greece, and it has nothing to do with sexuality.

It looks a little bit silly showing John Ashcroft's face next to one female breast. You know the New York Times savagely attacks George Bush for setting up photo ops with a beautiful shot of Mount Rushmore in the background. It seems to matter to the New York Times to run not one, but two photos of the former President Bush throwing up in Japan. [They then complain,] "Bush has his own photographer. Bush arranges press photos to look a particular way."

I have to say you're wrong about the New York Times, 2003. Every morning I read the New York Post, the New York Daily News and the New York Times. Both the Post and the Daily News printed the photograph of George Bush the younger and his wife watching the pair of elephants fornicate in Africa, but the New York Times did not.

I think because it's an action shot.

I don't think Republicans should be embarrassed by the elephants' passion.

Umm. No. It's funny. What's [Bush] going to do about it?

Can Republicans embrace such virility?

I won't go that far. It's not the Mount Rushmore shot! [Laughs.]

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