Friday, October 07, 2005
This Just In: Ann Coulter Is a Self-Important Ignoramus
Language Log catches Ann Coulter making up rules of grammar just so she can say somebody with whom she disagrees is wrong. In a column objecting to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Coulter observes:
One Web site defending Bush's choice of a graduate from an undistinguished law school complains that Miers' critics "are playing the Democrats' game," claiming that the "GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness."She then proceeds to discredit this opinion on the grounds that the grammar is incorrect:
(In the sort of error that results from trying to sound "Ivy League" rather than being clear, that sentence uses the grammatically incorrect "which" instead of "that." Web sites defending the academically mediocre would be a lot more convincing without all the grammatical errors.)Except that usage of "which" isn't incorrect. It's entirely proper to use "which" as [what we call in the editing biz] a restrictive pronoun, exactly the way it's used in the phrase "the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability". Language Log offers several examples of people with respectable oratorical credentials who used "which" as a nonrestrictive pronoun:
- Ronald Reagan
- George Washington
- Alexander Hamilton
- Lord Acton
[Justice Sandra Day O'Connor] co-authored the opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe v. Wade....That author being [you guessed it] Ann Coulter. Coulter's not just an ignoramous, she's a hypocrite. But we knew that already.
Comments:
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To be so full of hate and to spout invective so regularly is no way to live well. And as I have seen in my profession as a health-care provider, people who live this way do not die well, either.
There is a strange kind of karma that comes around when such people finally realize that their days are near an end and they have wasted their lives on being so mean.
They die miserably. They suffer greatly, and there is no way on earth to relieve that sort of existential pain. It consumes them.
Usually they also try to spread this misery amongst those friends, family, and professionals who would care for them at the end. It's as if they would summon hell to come forth on this earth, so all could suffer as they do.
There is not enough morphine in the entire world to relieve Coulter from the pain her own disgusting ways will cause her before finally, death comes.
If she's lucky she will get hit by a bus and it will all pass quickly.
Strangely, I find this fascinating.
To wish deadly trauma to come to the likes of Ann Coulter is to wish her good luck, in a way.
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There is a strange kind of karma that comes around when such people finally realize that their days are near an end and they have wasted their lives on being so mean.
They die miserably. They suffer greatly, and there is no way on earth to relieve that sort of existential pain. It consumes them.
Usually they also try to spread this misery amongst those friends, family, and professionals who would care for them at the end. It's as if they would summon hell to come forth on this earth, so all could suffer as they do.
There is not enough morphine in the entire world to relieve Coulter from the pain her own disgusting ways will cause her before finally, death comes.
If she's lucky she will get hit by a bus and it will all pass quickly.
Strangely, I find this fascinating.
To wish deadly trauma to come to the likes of Ann Coulter is to wish her good luck, in a way.
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