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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

[Editor's Note: The following opinion piece is a response to a 6/28 editorial Andrew Dice Coulter written by fellow ExileStreet contributor Patrick Hurley.]

	FINEFROCK

Defending Andrew Dice Coulter
Combat-Cowardly Conservatives
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 7/3/07

How many remember the second-half of Goldwater’s famously-quoted nomination acceptance speech phrase?  How many times have you seen a ‘documentary’ or ‘news’ feature offering a piece of ‘history’ from that seminal event?
 
Those under 40 are blank-faced, no doubt, and some over 40 may also be unsure, but let me remind you that Goldwater was skewered for a single-portion of his carefully-crafted summary of his campaign philosophy.  Not JFK – no one quoted only the first part of his famed inaugural call-to-action [Ask not what your country can do for you…] for that would have been ‘unfair’ and ‘out of context’ to what was JFK’s full-thought.  He also added, for our consideration and contemplation, “Ask what you can do for your country” – all to raucous applause.

Ditto for Ann Coulter, as Patrick Hurley and others slam her for intemperate remarks given such cable-TV play by such as Chris Matthews.  Goldwater is the template for Coulter, for he said to a rowdy crowd – which character the commentariat of the time did not fail to note to the national audience – that Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice and after the applause calmed, said that he’d like to also remind us, Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.  

Only a dozen years ago did I get to hear the full phrase…. likely a mistaken oversight by the “news” person choosing the quote-soundbite.  Ditto for Ann Coulter, who’s taken out-of-context constantly by the media, dedicated to destroying any outspoken comments by any fervent conservative.  She is a hot-potato, that is true, and sometimes even I flinch, but I blanch and rail and rant against our kind who give any solace, the tiniest reinforcement, to the left’s scheme.
 
At least Howie Kurtz this weekend on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” commented that taking any quote out of context, in discussing the Matthews-Coulter affair, is unfair.  And unethical.  And Howie doesn’t often “get it” on behalf of our cause.  Too bad Hurley and others don’t also come to the defense of Coulter and aim barbs at the Goldwater-Coulter rigging of the ‘information’ that pollutes the real debate.
 
As 'twas long before Goldwater, and long after Coulter, there will be this rigging of the game, by lefties who infect the media.  CBS staff report a flood of calls after Mary Mapes’ rigging of the Air National Guard story for Dan Rather, and were dismayed that so many asked, How often before have you do the same dishonest rigging of the facts?   They were shocked to consider that anyone of any numbers would consider the CBS crew dishonest!  They’ve been at it a long time, and will never relent.  Their history is full of nasty rhetoric.
 
One book title over a decade ago quoted a president who asserted to a lathered up crowd, Remember: We’re Right.  They’re Wrong.  ALWAYS!  Sound like Reagan?  Goldwater?  Nixon?  Maybe the book was by a GOP operative, a snarling character like Lee Atwater?
 
Nope, the book was proudly published by James Carville, the title “We’re Right, They’re Wrong” with the cover photo of Harry Truman, who said the full phrase [with “Always!”] to a rabid crowd of lefties, back in the days which such lefties as E.J. Dionne and David Broder claim were so much more civil!
 
The job of combat soldiers in this cultural war – which will be our children’s children’s war, to borrow/steal from Koppel’s slanted documentary – is to be relentless in attacking our political enemies.  To deconstruct their lies.  To provide “context” to a comment by Ann Coulter, or others who’ve been ambushed – as Bill Bennett was a little over a year ago for single comment which was gleefully parlayed by the left, and got little support for his true meaning.  That he did get was quite slow in coming.
 
The outrageous language we should attack is the NY Times’ editorial against the latest affirmative-action decision by SCOTUS, and that by E.J. Dionne, & Co.  Them’s the enemy, and those who say we should be balanced and fair would also perhaps give the same amount of ammunition to our terror enemies, granting them the use of night-vision goggles and helicopters to offset their ‘assymetrical’ status.  Unfair to be so unfair, to use our weapons of classic war.  Maybe slam our nation for the supposed offenses at Abu Grahib.  Gitmo also a target of the Coulter condemnation company?
 
There will be no civil dialogue in this battle.  It never was – check the antics of Jefferson in the 1800 election, and his re-election, plus the post-reelection impeachment of court associate justice Samuel Chase.  This and more long preceded the lying lynching of Goldwater, and before the work “bork” entered the official lexicon of American politics.
 
Let them bork Ann, and others. Our job is to fight the tide of lies and misrepresentation.

Not that Ann is all that important in the fight – I’ll take one Bill Bennett, or Hugh Hewitt, or Dennis Prager, to a dozen or ten dozen Coulters – but abandoning her when she’s being lynched by a mendacious mob is tantamount to treason. Or cowardice.  Which is worse?
 
I’ve experienced a smaller version of that cowardice, and I cheer Ann to continue saying what many wish would be said, even if she’s a bit too bold, and to stand firm, even if alone, or nearly alone.  Like Die Hard's John McClain, she knows to "Live Free or Die Hard."  Like McClain, she is often a lone warrior, a political Dirty Harry who isn’t nice, nifty and polite.

As this weekend’s Diehard-4 proclaims, we depend on “that guy” to whom the job is given, and taken with bravado.
 
Ann has no screenwriter or editor or director to make her publicly-broadcast performance perfect – unlike McClain, et al, she’s winging it without a wingman/woman, has no ‘reset button’ to try it again.  Her mistakes are on the record, and played over and over and over and over by the lefties like Matthews.  As was the one phrase of Goldwater’s, whose second phrase could be the mantra of the left – Moderation in pursue of justice is no virtue.
 
They’ve not moderated their pursuit of justice, yet we feel we must unilaterally disarm.  That was denied by Bill Clinton when president, and asked by a reporter to set the example by limiting his fundraising – his reply: We are not in the business of unilateral disarmament in political combat.  Of course, his party was then and now very eager for unilateral disarmament by the USA.
 
We opposed unilateral disarmament, or arms reduction advocated by JFK [only after he’d won the ’60 election, not before!], so why do we engage in the same liberal mentality which they never practice on the political battlefield?
 
Defend Ann, Attack THEM.
THEY are the enemy, not Ann.  

Goldwater didn’t have the blogosphere, we do, and it should not be turned against one of our own.  Republicans again are forming their firing squad in a circle.  Get in a straight line, lock and load, take aim at the left, by deconstructing their lies.
 
So we can get to reconstruction of the America which Ann defends so passionately. ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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