John Roberts, Samuel Alito and US fatalities in Iraq head the list of what might have been avoided if America's crusader had stayed off the ballot in 2000 and not provided George W. Bush with the margins he needed to win the White House.
Now here he is again, on Meet the Press, puffing away at the importance of third-party candidates in pushing Democrats and Republicans toward ideological purity, pooh-poohing the complaint that he gave us a President who has tilted the Supreme Court away from what Nader's admirers believe and into a war that he and they deplore.
In declaring his candidacy yet again, Nader, who will be 74 this week, is in a dead heat with Ann Coulter for becoming this year's foremost example of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, the compulsive need to preen for TV cameras at any cost.
What they have in common is Hillary Clinton. Coulter claims she would support her rather than John McCain, and Nader would do anything to keep another Clinton out of the White House.
Of the two, Coulter is a more benign case, providing only passing amusement in her quest for attention. Nader is a self-deluded disgrace who might pose an actual danger of electing Bush's anointed successor if it were not for the comforting fact that he drew less than half of one percent of the vote in 2004.
Showing posts with label Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Friday, October 12, 2007
Ann Coulter's Glossolalia
She has been speaking in tongues again. This time Ann Coulter tells a cable TV host of Hebrew origin that it would be better for America if Jews “perfected” themselves and became Christians.
The woman is clearly in the grip of “glossolalia,” defined as “the vocalizing of fluent speech-like but unintelligible utterances, often as part of religious practice.”
Until recently, such behavior was a mystery. But now neuroscientists have taken brain images of women speaking in tongues and found that their frontal lobes--the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do--were relatively quiet. (Spoiler alert: Several of the researchers had Jewish-sounding names.)
In the grip of such religious ecstasy, Coulter can’t be held responsible for what she says, as would a normal person who was just plugging a book on cable TV.
Previously, she had seemed to be a victim of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, a pathological need to be noticed that afflicts politicians and show business people. But Coulter’s self-destructive streak of disinhibited pronouncements suggests something deeper.
Politicians and performers set limits to what they say by the need to be liked. Not Coulter. After calling John Edwards a “faggot” and then being publicly rebuked by his wife, she replied, “If I say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The Edwards campaign turned Coulter’s attacks into a fund-raising tool, so yet another conspiratorial possibility arises: Is Coulter secretly acting as a Zionist agent to arouse sympathy for American Jews?
In any case, medical attention is needed. Is there an exorcist in the house?
The woman is clearly in the grip of “glossolalia,” defined as “the vocalizing of fluent speech-like but unintelligible utterances, often as part of religious practice.”
Until recently, such behavior was a mystery. But now neuroscientists have taken brain images of women speaking in tongues and found that their frontal lobes--the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do--were relatively quiet. (Spoiler alert: Several of the researchers had Jewish-sounding names.)
In the grip of such religious ecstasy, Coulter can’t be held responsible for what she says, as would a normal person who was just plugging a book on cable TV.
Previously, she had seemed to be a victim of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, a pathological need to be noticed that afflicts politicians and show business people. But Coulter’s self-destructive streak of disinhibited pronouncements suggests something deeper.
Politicians and performers set limits to what they say by the need to be liked. Not Coulter. After calling John Edwards a “faggot” and then being publicly rebuked by his wife, she replied, “If I say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The Edwards campaign turned Coulter’s attacks into a fund-raising tool, so yet another conspiratorial possibility arises: Is Coulter secretly acting as a Zionist agent to arouse sympathy for American Jews?
In any case, medical attention is needed. Is there an exorcist in the house?
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