Wednesday, October 09, 2002

ANN COULTER'S LOOKS
There was a recent debate among bloggers regarding Ann Coutler's looks. Start here at Jesse Walker's blog and scroll up for many of the relevant links. Walker writes for Reason magazine.

I do find Ann Coulter's abrasive style to be entertaining, but I don't find her attractive. I think commenting on Coulter's appearance is fair game, because she certainly uses her looks and blond hair to garner attention for herself. If you visit Coulter's website, you'll notice she has three pages of images--not really the best way to get people to focus on the content of one's arguments.

I was listening to Ann Coulter on the Larry Elder's radio program a few months ago. Coulter argued in her book, Slander, that corporations are now liberal. Her evidence was that the Big Three automakers filed superficial briefs in support of the University of Michigan's affirmative action admission policy. As is typically of media people you don't understand business, Coulter didn't understand the automakers made a business decision to file the brief in support of affirmative action. The marginal cost of writing and filing the briefs was negligible because the automakers were already paying the salaries of their corporate lawyers. Once one automaker filed a brief, the other two had to, or face media scrutiny. The automakers know damn well that affirmation action and racial preference laws cost them money in lower productivity, lawsuits, and bureaucracy, but they rightly assumed their opinions would not change the court opinion. Most importantly, the automakers guessed correctly that they would receive positive media coverage for filing their briefs. The automakers determined they would sell more vehicles by filing a brief in favor of affirmative action, instead of filing a brief opposed to affirmative action or simply doing nothing. It's just business.

Another pundit playing right-wing babe is Laura Ingraham. Ingraham is pretty good looking and she's even blond now. Ingraham's website has some photographs, but not in the blatant look-at-me style of Ann Coulter's site.