Ann is back, and she’s as bad as ever. And when I say “bad,” I really mean “good.”

Which, of course, makes what I’m going to write all the more controversial. But hear me out — perhaps you’ll understand why I admire Ann both for her political genius as well as her business and marketing saavy.

Yes, Ann is a woman who says incredibly controversial things. From her description of Katie Couric as the “affable Eva Braun of morning TV,” to her more recent attack on the liberal and politically active 9/11 widows widely knows as the “Jersey Girls,” in which Ann labels them the “Witches of East Brunswick,” it’s quite obvious that Ann enjoys ”stirring the pot,” so to speak.

Which is why I’m amazed she does not get more support from feminist organizations. After all, Ann lives the life that women’s rights groups fought hard to secure for themselves, to the betterment of all.

What makes Ann a feminist’s ideal? Let me count the ways:

• Ann is willing to say whatever it is she thinks needs to be said, even when others will not
• Ann is a highly educated, highly intelligent business-person
• Ann is devoted to her career, a phenomenally successful author, columnist, and pundit
• Ann challenges the status quo on a regular basis
• Ann loves a good fight and will take anyone on anywhere
• Ann is a self-made woman

I could go one but, I think I’ve made my point.

So, if Ann is all of these things, why in the world would feminist organizations such as the Feminist Majority Foundation basically label Ann a right-wing radical?

NOW President, Kim Gandy, expressed this sentiment in a recent column entitled Where is The Love?:

How sad that Ann Coulter’s latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, in which she spews bigoted spittle at 9/11 widows, is climbing the bestseller lists as we speak.

Where is the love indeed!

Perhaps our liberal feminist friends have some unrecognized biases of their own? I guess you are a “true” feminist only if you do as you are told. So, when Kim Gandy or Linda Hershman tell you to do something, like, “shut up” or “get back to work,” you’d better be a good feminist and go do it?

Of course, Ann is being caricatured by media liberals of both genders. In a NY Times article published recently, columnist David Carr offers and interesting yet contradictory analysis both of Ann’s strategy and her style:

Ms. Coulter, who seems afflicted by a kind of rhetorical compulsion, most recently labeled the widows of 9/11 “harpies.” It is just one in a series from a spoken-word hit parade that seems to fly out of her mouth uninterrupted by conscience, rectitude or logic.

But Ann Coulter knows precisely what she is saying. Her current book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” is heading to the best-seller lists in part because she has a significant constituency and in part because no other author in American publishing is better at weaponizing words. With five books and more than a million copies in hardcover sales, she plays to win and is happy to take hostages along the way… [emphasis mine]

I’m not sure, based on Carr’s quote, if he thinks Ann is “compulsive” or “precise” in what she writes and says in public. One thing is sure, Carr does not seem to like either of the two possibilities.

It sounds to me like Carr is making Ann out to be a terrorist. He uses highly emotional language, such as “deadly intent,” and accuses Ann of “weaponizing words,” then using those words to “take hostages.”

Personally, I believe that Ann Coulter knows exactly what she is doing. Ann has made the deliberate choice, not simply to take a stand, but to take a firm stand on the issues and to be the one who says what most others are thinking, but are unwilling, unable, or too afraid to say.

And Ann Coulter’s fans love her for it!

Lets take the situation with the Jersey Girls as a case in point.

If you read through enough articles and conservative blogs, you’ll have no doubts regarding the fact that conservatives were highly annoyed with the partisan accusations leveled by these women and their active role in campaigning for John Kerry during the 2004 campaign cycle. Honest people know that 9/11 was perpetrated by a group of evil thugs, not a sitting President, and that governmental failures, starting as far back as the Carter Administration, ran both broad and deep, as numerous investigations have shown.

But the Jersey Girls seemed oblivious to all of that. In their anger, they seemed intent upon singling out someone, anyone, to put the blame upon. And they became media darlings in 2004 for two reasons; 1) they were harsh critics of the Bush Administration and Republicans in general, 2) they actively endorsed John Kerry and Democrats in particular.

A WSJ columnist, Dorothy Rabinowitz, said this of the Jersey Girls back in April of 2004:

The core group of widows led by the foursome known as “The Jersey Girls,” credited with bringing the 9/11 Commission into being, are by now world famous. Their already established status in the media, as a small but heroically determined band of sisters speaking truth to power, reached ever greater heights last week, when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made her appearance at a commission session–an event that would not have taken place, it was understood, without the pressure from the widows.

The night of Ms. Rice’s appearance, the Jersey Girls appeared on “Hardball,” to charge that the national security adviser had failed to do her job, that the government failed to provide a timely military response, that the president had spent time reading to schoolchildren after learning of the attack, that intelligence agencies had failed to connect the dots. Others who had lost family to the terrorists’ assault commanded little to no interest from TV interviewers.

But these were not the 9/11 voices TV and newspaper editors were interested in. They had chosen to tell a different story–that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration “to its knees”–and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story… 

The Jersey Girls were relentless partisans. And now Ann is criticizing them for their partisanship. But, Of course, the MSM loved the Jersey Girls for their partisanship, while it hates Ann Coulter for hers.  I believe we call that a “double standard.”

But, again, I ask the question, is this not what feminists worked long and hard to achieve? Ann is a brilliant, fearless, highly educated, highly successful woman who says what she thinks and is willing to take on any person who challenges her. Why then, is she belittled by organizations like NOW who claim to believe in a woman’s right to do just what Ann has done over the course of her career?

From what I’ve read, every book Ann has published has attained best seller status. Ann is a sought-after guest speaker and commentator. And, finally, Ann is her own person.

So, welcome to the early 21st century! Today, women can be every bit as opinionated, ornery, and controversial as men. And if you don’t like it, then too bad!

So, if you are a spokesperson for NOW or the Feminist Majority Foundation, why not, at the very least, say something like, “we disagree with Ann’s positions on certain issues, but respect her fearless devotion to what she believes.”

The fact that these groups do not say such a thing tells me that they should be watching Ann more closely and following her example, rather than distancing themselves from her controversial statements.

And I think, additionally, comments made by David Carr in his Times article – some of which are quite sexist in my opinion — must be addressed. Here is a relevant example:

When I profiled Ms. Coulter a few years ago, I never figured out the line between her art and her artifice. She picked at her plate of lobster ravioli before serving up Fred Flintstone-size slabs of red meat. For the duration of the media opportunity, she was playful and on point, other than fibbing about her age, because she cares deeply about the franchise.

Her sincerity is beside the point as long as people keep taking the bait. Mrs. Clinton, who is the perfect foil for Ms. Coulter — ambitious, allergic to irony, loathed by the people who will line up for “Godless” — simply added fuel to a fire that she was presumably trying to douse. All manner of televised talkfests, including “Today,” welcome Ms. Coulter’s pirate sensibilities back aboard whenever she has something to peddle, in part because seeing hate-speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress makes for compelling viewing.

Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom’s basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us.

Can you believe this?  Mr. Carr is alleging that Ann is successful only because of her looks!

Even here, though, Carr seems almost schizophrenic. While intimating in his article that being a blonde who “knows her way around in a black cocktail dress” is the difference between being a best-selling author, columnist, and commentator and a “nut living in Mom’s basement,” he also goes on in the next sentence to call Coulter “one of the leading political writers of our age.”

And Carr has the temerity to accuse Ann of hate speech? Where’s the outrage?

More to the point, where is NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation? Will they not defend a fellow woman against sexist hate-speech from a male columnist? Or do they expect that Ann must first toe their line before they are willing to speak out against such clear bias.

Perhaps, here in the early 21st century, we are not quite as equal as we would like to believe?  Or, perhaps, what some liberal feminist organizations want is not true equality but what I would call “conditional equality.” 

You are equal as long as you say what we think you should say, do what we think you should do, and vote the way we tell you.  And, oh yes, you must only do the kind of work we want you to do.

Sounds strangely as if we’ve move right back to the 1950’s, doesn’t it?