Ann Coulter, woman

So where do gay rights fit in America?

I've never really thought about it and I've never really cared. I resent having this elevated to a national issue.

So it should be a local issue?

Yes!

Where do you live?

Miami Beach.

That's a pretty gay community.

I say again, there are a lot of things that may be very fine, even good -- eating kumquats, lots of vitamin C. There is nothing in the Constitution about it. What is this--

Ah! Nebraska might legislate a No Queer Zone, but I'm sure your neighbors in Miami Beach would support gay rights.

I hate having this argument foisted on me by the Supreme Court. Part of what democracy allows you to do is to not give a damn about some issues. What protects homosexual behavior is the Fourth Amendment, which prevents police from going into your home without a search warrant or court order. The idea that the Supreme Court will save us from cops knocking down doors and busting through the walls is absurd, is just preposterous. It was an odd fluke. It happened twice in 20 years that cops had a reason to go into someone's home protected by the Fourth Amendment and happened to catch people in the act of committing sodomic acts.

There are a lot of outdated moral laws in each community.

Who says they're outdated? You do.

OK, so it's up to the community to decide whether or not to burn queers in the public square...

Right. That preserved the maximum freedom.

What percentage of the interviews that you do are hostile or lukewarm?

It's funny you say that. It's hard to tell. It's always an exciting surprise. I usually quickly check what city I'm speaking in. When you're doing 17 interviews a day from very small radio stations ... I won't be having any covers on Time magazine, but I can talk to 300 people in Poughkeepsie. And in retrospect it's hard for me to say. I don't know -- 60-40 conservative.

So I'll just be frank and ask this -- you're so beautiful, do reporters hit on you?

I don't think so. If they do, I haven't noticed.

I guess a form of hitting would be ideological. To get you to admit something liberal.

Wow. That would be the wrong way to go about it. If they want to hit on me, they have to start talking like right-wing loonies.

One of the great cultural battles in America is between the elites and the riffraff. There's Jerry Springer and there's PBS.

I would not draw that distinction. I think PBS is about the same. I think the key to liberalism is elitism and snobbery and excluding people. This is Tina Brown and Hillary Clinton and Vanity Fair. And the reason they don't really care about fighting the war on terrorism is like some of their insane public policy decisions -- they think it will be limited to the outer boroughs. It really is not that much fun to have your starched white shirt and feeling above other people if other people are an emerging wealthy middle class.

What middle class? The middle class is shrinking...

That's because the liberals want the middle class to be in squalor and mayhem, and their [the liberals'] children will live in gated communities and go to private schools. Liberals just cannot grasp that nuclear annihilation cannot be confined to the outer boroughs.

Where has our fear of nukes gone?

That's a good question. I wish liberals were as cavalier with the danger of nukes as they are about the danger of Saddam Hussein acquiring them. "No, we've got to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And every single intelligence agency in the universe has got to agree that he has been seeking yellowcake uranium up until five minutes before we attack." If liberals would apply half that much skepticism to the danger of nuclear power in America, then we wouldn't have to worry about greenhouse gases.

So I've spoken to you for an hour and I haven't mention Tony Blair. [He met with Bush that morning.]

Isn't he magnificent?

What's your take on him?

I think he is a model for liberals in this country. Why don't we have any liberals like that? This is what the Democratic Party should be. Why can't they be for all their other little issues -- gay marriage, abortion, confiscatory taxes -- but agree to defend America? Blair is the one patriotic liberal in the world.

Don't you think he's kinda sexy too?

Oh no!

No?

No no no.

I'm a guy, so what do I know?

He has been a magnificent leader and the British are lucky to have him.

Just to be mischievous -- who is the most handsome conservative you can think of?

Matt Drudge.

Seriously? Have you met him?

We've fast friends.

You two get it on?

Oh no no. I'll be as honest about my dating life as Clinton was about his.

How does someone start dating you? You're a public figure now.

Despite my claims to secrecy, the last three or four boyfriends I have had are people that I met because I bumped into them on the street. Or they came up to me on an airplane. I don't meet people in normal ways anymore. That isn't so much because I'm a public figure -- it's because I'm constantly sitting at my computer working. So you really have to catch me as I'm dashing out to buy a diet Coke.

I'll ask you again: You want a political career?

No, they have no fun. They have to be diplomatic. One of the things that drove me crazy about America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan, was he was constantly had to make references to FDR. You have to do that if you're a politician, that same way that George Bush has to describe Islam as a "nation of peace." I don't have to do that.

Who do you admire who is dead?

Joe McCarthy.

Oh, I meant a writer.

Who's dead?

We'll start with dead guys. Or dead chicks.

Nonfiction?

Whatever.

I'm having trouble thinking of dead versus alive. I admire Clare Booth Luce. Paul Johnson, he's alive. I love P.J. O'Rourke. My liberal friends point out I like Emerson and Thoreau. Right now I avoid reading other political writers because I don't want their take to influence me, so I just read the straight news.

That's like, all my life I've lived for cultural... when I was 20 I'd spend five nights a week going to double features of old movies. I lived for books and music. But now that I'm older, art can no longer change my life. Every movie or new rock 'n' roll group seems derivative of what I've already experienced...

Right. That's why I love the Grateful Dead. You could listen to the same songs at a hundred different Dead shows and it would sound different.

You're a Deadhead!

Oh yes.

You've been to different shows?

Lots.

At some point music was very important to you. But movies never were--

I'm catching up on my Hollywood history. I tape movies off TV. I'm way behind. I was just telling some of my friends a couple of years ago, "You got to see this movie 'It's a Wonderful Life.' It's so great." But I'm catching up.

What about novels?

I hesitate to say this because it sound pretentious and stupid, and I'm trying to think of something more normal and American, but I really like "Anna Karenina." The reason I like it is, it really is just a brilliant take on human nature, being able to get into different people's perspectives. One of the scenes I like the most -- I don't even remember their names -- there is the pretty boy and the farmer both seeking the attentions of the young girl. The pretty boy is flashy, and all the women think he is so dashing, and he's slick. The farmer is good solid stock, with a good living and a good heart, but not really flashy and smooth, and, you know, the sort of unsophisticated type. And of course the mother is all for the first guy and is encouraging the daughter to go for the flashy guy with no substance. The father realizes what's going on and is exasperated that his wife is encouraging the daughter to go for flash, not substance. Of course in the end, the father is right. And every aspect of that -- although my mother is not that frivolous -- seems to bear out your personal experience. [Pause.] And you don't want your male friends to meet anyone youre dating because they can see through the flimflam in a heartbeat.

From "The Brothers Karamazov" -- one of the greatest lines, the drunken old angry father says of someone who hates him, "He did me a bad turn and I can forgive him, but he will always hate me because he did me a bad turn." That is completely true. People can forgive you, but they can never forgive themselves. And they hate to be reminded if they've screwed you.

At what age did these things hit you?

Just through life. That's the thing about good literature. It strikes you when you read it -- that someone has actually put into words something you had a vague sensation of.

My two greatest American writers are F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler.

One of my best friends is a huge aficionado of Raymond Chandler. I have never read Raymond Chandler. I should break down and do it.

What about "The Great Gatsby"?

You know, I started that and thought it was kind of a bore, myself.

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