Tyler Horning/Collegian
Coulter, who has written four New York Times bestsellers, entertained a packed house in the sports complex.
Tyler Horning/Collegian
L to R: Bridget Karl, Dean Simmer, Kristin Karl and Adrienne Darrell spend a moment with Coulter.
Roars of applause and peals of laughter echoed through Philips Arena last Friday as renowned syndicated columnist Ann Coulter delivered a speech that encapsulated the hallmark rhetoric and wit of her scathing publications.
This speech marked her first public address since the release of her fourth book, now her fourth New York Times best seller, called, "How To Talk To A Liberal, If You Must: The World According To Ann Coulter."
The book's title reflects the aggressive humor and the central political theme that has garnered her national attention and some derision from mainstream media.
Of her books she said, "There's a lot of history in them-and there are a lot of jokes in them."
Coulter, characterized by some as merely a 'right wing bomb-thrower,' and criticized by journalists like Fox News' Bill O'Reilly for her supposedly immoderate style, said she considers her authorial voice simply a straightforward extension of her own personality.
"I really just say what I want to say, the way I want to say it-the way I talk to my friends," she said. "You have all these young conservatives in Washington who talk like William F. Buckley, and sit like William F. Buckley and look like William F. Buckley," she said. "But the next William F. Buckley is nothing like William F. Buckley; the next William F. Buckley is a Rush Limbaugh, or a Matt Drudge."
She said that the reason her liberal detractors attack her so vehemently is that they recognize her as part of a rising conservative cultural influence.
"You are attacked in America by the mainstream liberal media in proportion to how much you are changing people's minds."
In her speech, she presented a satirical run-down of what Democrats have thus far "contributed" to the liberation of Iraq and to present domestic security. Though the majority in attendance expressed positive reactions to her speech, some were offended, including sophomore Neil Block, who walked out in the middle of it.
"It was just a typical sort of 'rally the troops' conservative dogma," he said. "It didn't speak to me politically."
Mocking a litany of negative predictions made by liberals throughout the course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, she said, "The Democrats have no actual policy proposals of their own, unless of course, constant carping counts as a policy."
She poked fun at the common assertion that the invasion of Iraq would "destabilize the region" and increase hostility toward the U.S.:
"Yes, that region was working out just fine before the war.we wouldn't want to upset fanatics who hate us and seek our destruction, they might get mad, and seek our destruction."
She also railed on U.S. policy that disallows airport security checks on possible terrorist passengers based on profiling that includes ethnic appearance, which, she pointed out, is the way common law enforcement in this country looks for a criminal suspect.
"In some goofy-minded attempt to prove they're not profiling, airport security makes a big point of harassing precisely those passengers they should be ignoring-like granny," she said. "About a year ago at Los Angeles International Airport, airport security seized the tiny little gun being carried by a G.I. Joe doll."
Coulter recited a long list of terrorist attacks on the United States: from September 11, 2001 and stretching back to 1979, all of which, she pointed out, were perpetrated by "Muslim extremists."
She said that these terrorists have all been men, had identical hair color, eye color, and skin color. They were all speaking Arabic to one another, and, half of them have the name 'Mohammed."
"But," she chided, "we have no idea who to look for.!"
"100 percent of the terrorist attacks on U.S. airlines have been committed by Muslims," she said. "When there's a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile-it is called a description of the suspect."
Vitalie Stelea, a junior from Moldova, said, "In general it was very entertaining and audience-driven. I've never seen anything like it in Eastern Europe."