Why Ann Coulter s Writing Contributes to the Nation s Moral Decay (And How We Should Respond) Dear Everybody, I address you today concerning a large problem plaguing our society. You may think you already know what this problem is after all, my title is (almost) the first thing on this page and in bold but you d be very, very wrong. Yes, Ann Coulter s writing is problematic (and I could write a whole other article on that), but the even bigger problem, the problem I want to talk to you about right now, is us and the absurd amount of attention we pay to her and her writing. For a writer who isn t even attempting to take her subject seriously, we take her way too seriously give her too much of our serious attention. What do I mean by that, you ask? The reason we keep reading Ann is because we think she is being ridiculous and stupid, when in fact we are the ones being duped by her. Think about it this way: Ann who is, by now, an expert in this method produces flashy titles and controversial statements with basically no logical or statistical support to get normal people like you and me to read her writing, and then, the most important step in her plans, share it with others in our incredulousness. I get it; some of her assertions are so openly provoking, it s almost impossible not to show everybody there actually is someone like her in the world. But realistically, her articles probably don t even reflect her own thoughts,
because her real not-controversial-enough ideas would not be able to get her famous fast enough. And that critical attention and infamy is what she wants and that is what we are giving her. For those of you who are already on the defensive maybe Ann Coulter is being serious (so it makes sense to give her serious attention), you ever thought of that, Hannah yes, I indeed have. Let s go through one of her recent articles, Any Growing Interest in Soccer a Sign of the Nation s Moral Decay, written during the 2014 World Cup as American newspapers everywhere talked about America s growing fascination with soccer. If you ve read this article before, you are probably starting to chuckle. If you haven t, I will tell you this right now: it is absolutely fantastic for those days when you need a laugh or feel intelligently inadequate. The statement that Ann probably hoped would be the most controversial is near the end of the article and also part of an extracted blurb at the top. I promise you, she vows, no American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. She also suggests that Americans yes, she added quotes have only turned to soccer because of immigration and the demographic switch as a result of that. As an immigrant myself, I obviously had no inkling if her earlier guarantee was true, so I immediately set up camp outside my dorm room because my room is right by the stairs and hunkered down to find somebody who met the criteria that I was searching for.
Five minutes and two people later, I had found my (wo)man. Although Luna shook her head sadly, apologizing for not being American by Ann s standards, Sara was only too happy to oblige. I love watching soccer! she said, her face contorted in confusion. I assured her it was not my opinion that she would not like watching soccer because of her American -ness. Why would my great-grandparents being born here and me watching soccer be mutually exclusive? A lot of my friends would meet both criteria, too! Sorry, Ann, promise debunked. Maybe you should have spent five to ten minutes out of your busy writing schedule at Berkeley like I did to find out you could not keep your word on that one. Another statement I personally find insulting is her insinuation that after a soccer game, every player gets a juice box and a ribbon. Every player, Ann? I ve been playing soccer since I was six and I still play intramural (IM) soccer at Berkeley, and I haven t received a ribbon or a juice box since the age of ten or eleven. Where are the leagues that give out ribbons and juice boxes after every game, and how come my parents didn t love me enough to put me in those? Turns out, it s not only my parent s fault; all of my IM teammates could not remember the last time they got ribbons and juice boxes after a game, either. I could go on and on, because almost every single of her bullet points as to why soccer is contributing to the nation s moral decay (besides the statement that the French like
soccer, because they do) are false claims supported by nothing else than ramblings of the author. But that s what Ann wants me to do go on and on in criticizing her throwntogether article. However, I also have an agenda here, one that involves staying calm in the face of such absurd declarations. This article is so badly researched, it is almost impossible that she meant it seriously. Ann, like any famous person, has a staff that could have helped her research her promises and ideas. She is like Wikipedia s worst nightmare: mostly false information that cannot be backed up by any real people or sources. I m not trying to say we should stop paying attention to Ann altogether to address this problem, however. Frankly, I find her writing absolutely hilarious in its ridiculousness, and I think reading her for fun would help de-stress me. But that is how we should change our attitude towards her writing instead of taking her so seriously, we need to understand that Ann Coulter is just trying to get us pissed off, to get us to write angry letters to her and the editor and to anybody who will listen. Look at her ridiculous opinions, she wants us to say. But Ann s not even sharing her opinion with us. That s why we need to treat her articles differently than how we re treating them now, because they belong in the entertainment section, not the op-ed section. Of course, we will never stop becoming attracted to Ann Coulter and her controversial ideas. There is a human need to be smarter, to be superior, and having people like Ann willing to be that weaker role only makes us that much more disposed to notice her.
Similar to many reality TV stars, which we gobble up hungrily and critique widely, Ann is becoming infamous through our attentiveness to her faults. Ann is an illustration of the fact that we want to be able to look at people and their opinions and think, Wow, that person is not as intelligent or as capable as I am. This human need makes us more receptive to people like Ann and their writings. However, we have to realize there are many negative consequences to our obsession with melodramatic writing. Giving attention to sensationalist writers like Ann is helping her to create and draw barriers that shouldn t be there. For example, Ann s false superiority my greatgrandfather was born here guys contributes to the divide that shouldn t be present between real Americans and not-real Americans. Although Ann s great-grandfather might have been born here, some ancestor of hers must have immigrated to the United States, as she is not Native American. Her drawn line benefits her perception of herself. Throughout history, anthropologists used skull size to prove the superiority of white males, when they really just took different skulls from incomparable groups (such as white female children s skulls as compared to those of older white males). This biological divide Ann is trying to create is as bad as those scientific experiments people did so long ago they are based off of false premises and draw lines which benefit the writer or experimenter. Ann s writing only contributes to our idea that we can establish ourselves scientifically as superior to others.
Blatantly offensive writing such as hers also helps spread false information and foster misconceptions in people s heads. Her hastily self-drawn lines are like the rifts that racism produces. Racism is taught by environment, and in an environment where writers like Ann thrive, racism remains an issue when it really should not be anymore. Another huge problem with allowing Ann Coulter s writing to become the norm is that she becomes an example of how to get famous quickly for others who seek ways to become recognized. It is not good to set her as an example her writing is completely full of holes and of substance, and not as effective as anything else than an attention tactic. In addition, having more writers trying to imitate Ann in the grand scheme of things just helps spread more false information and ideas to more people. Instead of becoming an example of how to write to become famous quickly, she should be an example of how not to write when trying to convince others of your opinion or of how not to write in general. This should be an adjustment that we should make but how do we do this exactly? Since Ann desires controversy, it is important to respond to her and her writing with the knowledge that she wants us to oppose her angrily. Instead of giving Ann the serious attention that she craves, we should read her writing with the angle that she writes to entertain, not to persuade or educate. The change in approaching writers such as Ann is not going to happen overnight, but the change does
need to happen. It is our responsibility, in fact, to take into account how she wants us to react while reading her articles, and then not to react that way. It is our responsibility to make sure Ann Coulter and her writing style become anomalies and not the model. Is there anything else you would like to add, Mrs. Coulter? We should say, with a barely-acknowledging smile, and as she shakes her head in disbelief at our quiet control that is when she has lost the ability to get the fame that s she s been reaching for all this time, and that is when we re finally starting to do it right. That is when we can turn around this issue s contribution to the moral decay of our nation. Works Cited Coulter, Ann. "Coulter: Any Growing Interest in Soccer a Sign of Nation's Moral Decay." N.p., 2 July 2014. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.
Critical Information Sheet 1. Paying attention to what Ann Coulter says is bad, because paying attention to what Ann Coulter says is helping the spread of false information and providing an example to people of how famous they could become by just writing out ridiculous statements. We should not take her seriously because we should not feed her attentive needs. Instead, we should treat her as an entertainment means because we should treat her trivially. 2. My audience is left leaning, although they would not necessarily classify themselves as liberals or conservatives. If they read Ann Coulter, they would find her stupid, but they would not think of her as representative of the average Republican. They probably enjoy sarcasm, and would share the articles or books she writes with their friends for a laugh, and although they disagree with her, they do not so strongly disagree with her that they will do something about it or write about her at length. However, they do contribute to Ann Coulter s fame because they are the mass, and they are the ones who will share it with other people in the mass. 3. I try to appeal to logic in my paper by showing people that the reason they read Ann Coulter and share her is the need for superiority innate in all humans. I also want to show them that there are negative consequences to what they want to do, no matter how much they don t believe me. 4. There is so much that I should have changed while I still had the time. This article doesn t address exactly what I want it to and it s more social commentary than I would like. I understand though that if I wrote this like an English analysis, nobody would really want to read it. Ann is a problem because people pay attention to her, and she is our problem. I just want people to see that paying so much serious attention to her only exacerbates the problem. Also, I feel this would be more of a spoken word speech than an article, because I like using sarcasm, which might not be as translatable through written word. I also feel like I could make this work of writing so much better; I just don t know how.