Friday, Jul 25, 2008
Columnist Ann Coulter may try to get Connecticut voters to take her home, while broadcaster Pat Buchanan and editor Steve Forbes are running again. But is a media perch really a political asset?
Jun 6, 1999 | Think you're man enough for Ann Coulter? Dream on, pretty boy, dream on. Since President Clinton's acquittal, the lawyer and pro-impeachment pundit has sought to establish herself as a serious political commentator for all seasons, a cause she advanced in her George column this month by posing in a miniskirt on a barstool and complaining about how hard it is to get a date in the capital: "Boys in Washington," she says, "don't know how to ask." (Curiously, they seem to find acid-spewing ideologues intimidating.)
Her love life notwithstanding, Coulter has been busily flirting with political office, giving substance to long-flying rumors that she would challenge Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays in the Republican primary. She declared May 24 on C-Span's "Washington Journal" that "someone will run (against Shays), and it might be me," and her July column, George editor Richard Blow said, will be "about the temptations of running."
Would Coulter run as a lawyer-politico or as a columnist? Earlier in Salon, Blow had said Coulter's running -- then a rumor -- would be a clear conflict that would necessitate dropping her column, a position he reiterated after her comments, although he said Coulter's posturing did not disqualify her yet. "Ann is a dramatic person," Blow said, "and it genuinely is hard to tell whether she is serious or just needling a congressman she doesn't respect." He added that he's discussed the no-run-and-write rule with Coulter: "I think that one of the reasons she's not bothered by that is that she knows if she ran and continued to be a columnist, then we would have to give Chris Shays equal time. Nothing would infuriate her more."
|
James Poniewozik's column appears in Media every Monday and Thursday |
The unexamined question is why one would ban a columnist from running at all. The rule obviously assumes a conflict of interest, although one could argue that's a moot point for a political columnist, whose job is by definition to advocate her own agenda: Do we assume that a noncandidate Coulter would otherwise write columns opposing her own political beliefs? More important, it ascribes a power to the media that journalists' laughable history as candidates hardly bears out.
Everyone knows how omnipotent the media are, right? We make kids kill kids, promote cheap sex and expensive products, brainwash the public into liberal or conservative mind-sets, undermine religion and murder celebrities, all before lunch. Seeing as how we can remote-control the electorate from our keyboards, then, why don't we have one of our own in the White House? Mightn't it amuse us?
It's not for lack of trying. We've lately seen the attempted campaigns, notably, of former CNN host Pat Buchanan, magazine publisher Steve Forbes and former journalist Al Gore. Yet it's arguable how much, if at all, their press training helped any of them. Buchanan probably benefited most, since -- although he was a Nixon speechwriter and a columnist -- it was hosting CNN's "Crossfire" that gave him prominence. One would think that a veteran of pancake makeup would know enough to wipe the flecks of froth from his lips before public appearances; but after he won the 1996 New Hampshire GOP primary, his apprenticeship didn't keep him from hefting a rifle over his head in Arizona, assassinating his campaign in the process.
Get Salon in your mailbox!