The Enemies List - I

I suppose that if I were to be perfectly honest about it, this list would start with names like:

GEORGE W. BUSH
DONALD RUMSFELD
CONDOLEEZA RICE
COLIN POWELL - although I often find that I have as much respect for him as I could ever imagine having for anyone in the current regime.

But, I think that ideologically, the enemies list should more be directed at the opinion-mongers of the world. (As would an Allies list.) Certainly my nominal opinion is but a drop in the bucket compared to anyone I will list here - and most of their opinions will be more focussed than my shatter-shot of rants on various subjects. But that is exactly why I'm starting my list - to identify the a patchwork of opinion that exemplifies my own.

There has never been a doubt in my mind since I originally came up with the idea of an Enemies and Allies list, that the first name on the enemies list was going to be...

ANNE COULTER!

Her opinions are generally so outrageous that I can't possibly take them seriously. What really irks me about her is that really, she's made a business of it. I don't think she even believes everything she says - I have no doubt that she is in the deepest parts of her blackened soul a devout right-wing daughter of Mammon - but it's really often just too far to take with anything but a laugh.
Really what I see, is an attractive woman, who has discovered that there is a market for a babe to say outrageously, willfully blind, right-wing things. And that she pushes that as far as she possibly can. What is offensive is not so much the things she says, but that she is saying them with the disingenuous purpose of capitalizing on them, not that she believes they are true. Of course she would deny that if accused of it. She has to, right? If she admitted the game, there would be no game.
I can just imagine her lying in bed at night thinking "What's the most twisted thing I can get away with saying about... Senator McCarthy? I know! I'll say that he was a patriot and that he was right! And that he has been unfairly vilified by traitorous with an agenda of hatred towards their own country and freedom! Hey! That's so fucked up that I could write a book about it!"

I really cannot believe she believes so much of what she claims to take to be the truth. Her twisting of reality is mind boggling at times. And the weirdest thing is, it's often accompanied by her claims of the same thing on the part of the people she is attacking.
I read her column regularly. Often I can hardly even find, let alone see, her point - I guess it's THAT hard to make a point when it's so tenuously grounded in reality. But I can't help it. It's a bit like watching a train-wreck. "How can you possibly think that!?" But also, it's the idea of keeping in touch with what the enemy is doing/thinking. This is the epitome of the enemy's insanity - it MUST be monitored.