The very definition of crazy

There’s a new definition over on Urban Dictionary.com, “Katherine Harris crazy.” It roughly translates to “batshit crazy.” Why is there no entry for “Ann Coulter crazy,” which can be used whenever, “psychotic to the nth power,” is too awkward?

Over on Crooks and Liars, you can see a video of Ann Coulter saying that “Osama is irrelevant. Things are going swimmingly in Afghanistan,” on Hannity & Colmes. When confronted with reality, she freaks out and nearly walks off the set.

You may recall the kid-glove treatment she got on Jay Leno. The audience was clearly not your typical west coast lefty audience that one would expect in Studio City. They cheered wildly for some of her more bizarre blathering. Then, her book shot to the head of the Amazon list, which also strikes me as strange. Could it be that purchases on Amazon were manipulated to give her screed the buzz?

Something is crazy here. I mean, besides Ms. Coulter. Normally people that crazy are placed in straight-jackets. Why is she on the cover of Time Magazine?

Start with asking, ‘Who benefits?’ Well, obviously it is the right wing of the Republican party. But how? After all, nobody with the brains that God gave animal crackers believes that Osama is irrelevant or that things are going well in Afghanistan.

Think back, if you are old enough, to the time when they showed a cartoon before the movies. Sure, Betty Boop had some creative horsepower behind it, but it was not what brought people into the theaters week after week. What the cartoons did was this: they shifted the boundaries of reality. Theater, including cinema, requires that the folks in the audience willingly suspend disbelief. For something like a cartoon, it is an easy sell, because they are comedic. Then, when the main feature comes on, the shift is toward a more real representation, and so, the movie is more emotionally engaging.

Ms. Coulter is the Daffy Duck of political discourse. When she speaks, you shake your head and wonder if you really heard what you thought you heard. Then when someone on Faux News comes on and says, “we must fight the terrorists in Iraq, so we don’t fight them here,” it sounds like the voice of sweet reason. Compared to daffy Ann Coulter, it is so much easier to accept the talking head, who in this analogy might be compared to, say, Orson Wells, War of the Worlds.

Why the War of the Worlds? Because some people believe it and do batshit crazy stuff.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”