CHAPTER 149

The Cellar hosts a debate. Is American Conservativism Hostile to Women? The debate is filmed for C-SPAN. The moderator is Kathleen Parker. The panellists are Carol M. Swain, Janus Adams, Sally Kohn and Ann Coulter.

Author: Leslie Jones was quoted in a New Yorker piece, when the reporter was with her in the Cellar and Ann Coulter was there, and Leslie said something like, ‘What’s that frightening bitch doing here?’ I don’t know if you ever read that?

Noam: I never read that, but you know, they’re so much the opposite of me. Like, if I saw someone like Chomsky, or somebody who really stood for everything I disagreed with or really bugged me I’d think, ‘Awesome, let me go talk to them. I want to have it out with them.’ I would never be upset that they were there, but it’s the common reaction now. They don’t relish the idea of talking to them or trying to set them straight or listening to them, whatever it is. I mean, Ann Coulter, she has some views which I certainly won’t try to defend. That’s not even what it is actually. Her views, I don’t think she has any particular view that she can’t defend. She’s expressed them with a certain flippancy and lack of apparent empathy from time to time in a way that, I understand why people are offended, some of them have offended me, but Ann Coulter is no joke. You read an Ann Coulter book, you are not reading the ramblings of an idiot. And this is what people on both sides of the spectrum do all the time, because it’s always easier to dismiss somebody. It’s way easier than having to grapple with their arguments.