Steal from me, Annie. Steal from me, Annie.And so on. You may go take a shower now. I'll wait.
OO-wee, steal from me, Annie. Steal from me, Annie.
Steal from me, Annie. Come take it while the takin's good.
Annie, please come cheat. That'd be real, real sweet.
Oo-hoo, wee-ee. So good to me.
Welcome back.
I have begun to notice that I may be the only writer alive from whom my gal Annie Coulter, Queen Of The Ultravixens, has stolen nothing. (I know, I know, the folks at Universal Press Syndicate are standing by their girl, but look for yourself: goods are goods.) The list of her (alleged!) victims now includes not only her former staffers, and not only writers from major newspapers, and not only established authors, but also the writers of pamphlets, handbills, political tracts and, as far as I know, matchbooks and billboards. A meandering cross-country drive with her must be a fascinating exercise in intellectual discovery. I'd hate to be her editor, knowing that the next brilliant work of modern satire is even-money to contain chapters entitled: “You May Already Be A Winner!”
And, “I Got Mine At Bubba's Confederate Reptile Farm, County Road 9.”
And “Downtown Louisville, Next Four Exits.”
It cannot be easy being an editor these days.
(I restrain from pointing out that a meandering cross-country drive with her likely is also even-money to end up with someone chained to a bed frame, covered in spittle and bloody fingerprints, somewhere on a back road in Ohio, which I don't mention because this is a literary exegesis and not a brilliant work of modern satire.)
So, watching this from afar, I once again feel rising to my lips the essential question that guides all my politics.
Where the hell's mine?
It's become quite plain that having Ann Coulter steal your stuff is now the primary bona fides for any journalist pretending to have influence on the national dialogue. (It used to be that having Ann Coulter at your party served that function, but that was before the wine cellar was looted and the airedale turned up pregnant.) People who never were concerned about her brilliant modern satire concerning crippled Vietnam veterans or bereaved women suddenly were all over the place scratching around in the old Chardonnay scum that encrusts her words, trying to find out which of them were lifted and from what source. You're not anyone anymore if she hasn't burgled your oeuvre.
Have I written nothing that the woman can steal? I mean, really, I think I have a fairly honest notion of my place on the media food chain, and I have to believe that my little contributions here and there are at least as lift-able as a Planned Parenthood flier. Here, let me make another try at it:
Will nothing rid us of this venomous harridan, this walking, spavined simulcrum of modern politica dentata? Why is this woman not screaming at passersby from a soapbox in Tompkins Square Park? Why was she ever allowed to tunnel her way out of her original career as a pornographer's arm candy?See, now here's the deal, Annie. You can lift almost that whole passage and apply it to Hillary Clinton. You can even change “spavined” to “chunky” so that it passes muster with that eagle-eyed editor of yours at Crown, who apparently wouldn't have noticed if your latest tome had begun with the words, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”This country can do so much better than a bubbling, goat-footed, venom-saturated sub-primate with less essential worth to the species than the fungal residue in roadside rest area in Bugtickler, Alabama. This country's national discourse is better off without someone who is a disgrace to every major step in the evolution of the human intellect that has occurred since we were throwing rocks at each other across Olduvai Gorge. This country has serious problems that require serious solutions and we're all busying ourselves with parsing the public utterances that emit from a brain long since pockmarked from cerebellum to medulla by the passage of tiny worms of self-contempt. When did we give license in our politics to the ravings of wine-soaked crazy women? When did the movement of William F. Buckley hand itself over to a pustulating Id in a cocktail dress? When, oh Lord? When?
You can substitute JFK for WFB later on, too. You'll notice that I've left on the prayerful ending so as to remain consistent with the marketing campaign of your latest book, and to keep faith with the cover design, in which you personally (and admirably) re-create Caravaggio's famous “Christ In The Valley Of The Considerable Enhancements.” I'm doing all I can here. I haven't wished fiery death on anyone yet, but I'm just learning to write brilliant modern satire. Throw me a bone here, OK? Work with me, Annie.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer at The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also is heard regularly on National Public Radio.
