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(Today's book salon guest is Joe Maguire, who is a) author of Brainless and b) a former Reuters employee.  His activities in "a" seem to have played a role in liberating him from "b."  Please stop by in the comments section and welcome him — JH.  Update:  C&L now has an interview with Joe up here.)

Greetings, firedogs!  Today for the FDL book salon, we welcome Joe Maguire, author of Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter.  I have been reading Maguire's book this week and several revelations hit me at once.

I had a friend who was a stripper for a while.  One Sunday afternoon, I went with her to Revco or CVS so she could stock up on some work-related supplies.  She breezed right by all the things that I thought she would buy, Paul Sebastian hair products, perfumes and eux de toilette, and all the nice makeup.  She went straight to the bargain stuff.  Giant cans of Aqua Net, two-for-five-dollars lipsticks and nail polish, candy-smelling body sprays.

"Why are you getting the cheap stuff?" I asked her, "You hate this kind of stuff."

"I would never wear any of this stuff in real life," she said, "but for stripping, the cheaper the better.  You go through it all so fast.  See, TRex, men who go to strip clubs are not very smart.  In fact, most men aren't very smart or observant when it comes to women.  If your hair is long and blond, they think it's fabulous.  If you put on makeup with a putty knife, to them, you look preeeeeeetty.  If you smell like candy and flowers, you smell good.  Why spend the money for the good stuff?"

Then she quoted Flannery O'Connor, "When teaching the blind, you must draw huge bubble pictures.  When teaching the deaf, you must scream."

And yes, Flannery O'Connor-quoting strippers are not as uncommon as you would think.  Especially in today's economy.

Ann Coulter is like a right-wing stripper.  She's an empty black dress.  When you read Maguire's book (and you should) and see a compendium of Coulter's statements piled up together in all their contradiction and unintentional irony, you realize that really, there's nothing there except a jumble of fiercely stupid assertions, a lot of hair-dye, a plunging neckline, and skirt slit up to her upper thigh.

"Why?!" any sensible person wonders, "Why is this brownshirt cheerleader even allowed out of the psych ward, much less ceaselessly paraded before the public?  Why, why, WHYYYYY?!  She's not smart, she's not funny, and (in spite of what men like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity say) she's not sexy.  She's got a face like a horse and a figure like a ten-speed bicycle.  Why the hell do people love her so much?"

Well, first of all, it's not "people" who love her.  It's one very specific flavor of angry, frightened, bigoted Reich Wing asshole.  They love her because she says all the heinous, hateful things that they think but aren't supposed to say.  She articulates their paranoid, paternalistic world-view and they just lap it up like poisoned honey.  That's her base, and everything she says and does is aimed at them.  And that's why she's so completely alien to anyone with a functioning brain.  We can't comprehend, for example, why she always wears the same dress because she's not wearing it for us.  She's wearing it for the men who go to strip clubs.  All they see is the naked skin on her thighs and chest.  All they hear is their own pinheaded world view streaming out of her mouth.  

So, when Coulter says things like, "(N)ot only should women lose the right to vote, but women's liberation has led to exhibitionism, promiscuity, sex toys, and adultery" and you feel like your head is going to explode because, obviously, women's liberation is the only reason Ann Coulter isn't barefoot and pregnant and permanently chained to a stove, you have to bear in mind that she's not speaking for women. She's not even speaking for herself.  She's atriculating the secret, toxic misogyny that the men who read her feel.  She's trying to sell books, nothing more.  It's a purely commercial exercise.

And that's why she has been allowed to proliferate and spread through the media like a runaway case of genital warts.  Large swaths of the media are entirely controlled by the very species of racist, classist, misogynistic old fucktard who reads her.  Which is undoubtedly why Mr. Maguire lost his job for publishing his excellent book.  Ann's people heard about it, made some phone calls, called in some favors, and hey, presto, Maguire was terminated. 

I personally hope that Joe's book goes all the way to the top of the bestseller list and parks there for a good long time.  Not only would it be a blow against the Reich Wing media juggernaut, but it would be the perfect vindication for him as an author.  I want him to someday be able to say, "Fuck Reuters.  Who needs those bitchez?  I'm rich, rich, RICH!!"  Hooray!  Please, buy a copy today.  We may not be able to do the massive coordinated buy-outs that conservative book clubs do to push Coulter's illegible, hysterical, fact-free screeds up the charts, but we sure can get the ball rolling.

Please welcome Mr. Maguire to firedoglake.  He's here in the comments section today to answer your questions and discuss the book and I personally couldn't be happier to have him.  He is a hero for free speech, a rational voice standing up to Coulter and her people's mindless hysteria, and a damned fine writer.  Brainless is sharp and funny, a great read, and balm for the part of your brain that has been roughed up and insulted by years of Coulter's bullshit.  You're NOT crazy after all.  It's Coulter who's insane.  She may sell a lot of books, but then again, so did Adolf Hitler.  It didn't mean he was right.  It just meant that he figured out which lies would win him the most admirers, and he worked that angle for all it was worth.  Coulter is precisely the same species of evil totalitarian midget.  She has hit upon a successful formula and she's going push the envelope until the culture finally rediscovers its collective gag reflex and pukes her up on the carpet with the other hairballs.  Brainless, hopefully, is the beginning of that process.

Thank you, Joe, for coming!  And thank you, readers, as always.

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