Ann Coulter Kills at Her Father's Funeral

Ann Coulter's father John died last week, and this week she honored his memory with a column containing not one, but two Ted Kennedy jokes. I know I'd be proud.

Hahaha! Ted Kennedy! Back me up, mourners! I know you're out there - I can hear you breathing! Unlike dad! That lady in the shroud... she knows what I'm talking about!

Such is a daughter's grief. Think of her, then, as Ophelia with her violetless garlands, crossed with a real fucking hack.

But where's the Hillary material? Come on. It's right in front of you, Ann -- dad's dead... Hillary cries... you do the math.

Clearly, Ann's not at the top of her game. So I've taken the liberty of going through the eulogy -- cutting the Kennedy material -- and punching up the rest.

--

The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.

And by "strapping" I mean, "he beat me with a strap."

As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54 years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.

Because he was dead.

John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them:

Assholes.

Men.

When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just gone back to college, he said, "Well, if you had cancer long enough, you'd miss it."

Unlike Lewy bodies dementia, apparently.

He'd indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying,

I can see your balls.

"You look nice, Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt."

Your parents are your whole world when you are a child.

Especially when other children avoid you out of instinct.

You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.

Or the cops come.

Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words.

If you call a five-decade joke about hating his wife, another about his son being like cancer, and another based on looking at his daughter's ass "funny."

Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake anything. Like Kitty's father in "Anna Karenina," he could detect a substanceless suitor in a heartbeat.

"War on the one hand is such a terrible, such an atrocious thing, that no man, especially no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it." - Tolstoy

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." - Some Fatherless Creep

He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement.

I know I'm forgetting some of the other things he hated, but you're starting to get the picture. Oh yeah, yogurt. Hated it. And mom.

But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I've ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.

John Edwards being alive.

Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.

Where Stalin had sent his legions to steal the secrets of Broadway's Golden Era.

He never talked much about his FBI days.

Or dressing like a woman.

Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies.

Reserving "hate" for unions, snobs, phonies, mom and us kids. Think of him as a kind of grown up Holden Caulfield, crossed with Hitler. Hitler Caulfield. The Catcher in the Rhine. This guy in the front row, he gets it!

In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company ... Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.

And his skirt.

By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as a "happy ending."

Not as happy as this funeral. But happy.

Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan.

"Hey, Ron, is it always this hot in here?"

Comments

[realpolitic]

Each day Ann Coulter wakes up and stares irrelevancy in the face. At least with Michelle Malkin around, Ann can point to someone less talented and even more dependent on ad hominem attacks than she. Misery deserves company!

[doitright]

I don't like Coulter. But really, this is not funny. If you disagree with her, debate on her ideas - there's plenty of material.

[mckinley]

We -- liberals, those who care about The Other -- do not have to stoop to Coulter's level, as you have here.

This kind of juvenile sniping can so easily be used against us by her side.

[RobertaInCT]

Her eulogy about her father just might be her way of announcing the topic of her new book. You must remember that when she's not fishing, she's mending her nets..........

Her fathers and Joe McCarthy's fight against the commies...­..........­.

[nopartygal]

Chris,

True, this is a funny post but, I have to say, not very cool - to my mind at least...

While, by no stretch of the imagination am I an Ann Coulter supporter, fan, whatever you want to call it - quite the contrary! I find her vile, repugnant and totally lacking in human decency or any other attributes that would make her the least bit likable to any reasoning and caring person. As such, you would think that I would go along with the majority of your posters and applaud your dexterous "punching up" of her father's eulogy. But I can't and I don't. All her abhorrent characteristics aside, not to mention the fact that she truly does not deserve anyone's sympathy, she still, in the end, is just someone who recently lost her father. A father who, it seems, she cared about a great deal. Whether she is deserving of our understanding or not, the truth remains that she is someone who is no doubt going through a lot of pain at this moment. And, regardless of my general feelings towards her and her smutty, ridiculous self-aggrandizing, relelntless shit-ass propaganda, I still feel that it is so not cool to kick her when she's down right now. After all, isn't this just the very way we would expect her to act? Do we really want to be competing on that particular field?...

[Cybesq]

Every Chris Kelly column is amazing but this one could be his best. I am still laughing about the "Fatherless Creep" quote.

[hardcorebrooklyn]

"I can see your balls." HA!!!

[wmbear]

WE WANT THE KENNEDY JOKES! WE WANT THE KENNEDY JOKES!...

Damnit. Otherwise, you're condemning poor Ms. Coulter without presenting the evidence....

[shedances]

Ann Coulter is bad news...

Many wish that she would exit the 'public spotlight' sooner rather than later ~ gracefully or otherwise.

K

[nutty4tahoe]

If Ann Coulter misses her dad so much, why then didn't she just get in the coffin with him and stay there? Mr. Coulter probably would have rolled over in his grave, both literally and figuratively.

Sorry to sink to the level of the Coulter demon spawn, but I just cannot feel sorry for her.

[WhitemoonG]

Congratulations Kelly, for writing one of the worst, nastiest, and worthless pieces I've ever run into here, regardless of spirited presentations of conflicting viewpoints on issues, etc, which is the American way.

Coulter obviously minces no words when frequently highlighting double standards and hauteur displayed by SOME in the political left.

It's more or less gospel here that Coulter is the source of arrogance and/or angry hatespeak that must be countered, but Chris Kelly's creepy little piece is just exhibit A of refined arrogance and smarmy assumptions shared by many, that actually are what invites responses, about which Coulter lets it rip.

Namely, most have it backwards: Coulter is just as much or more the responder as opposed to the respondee, regardless of ultimate viewpoints. In cautioning against "sinking to her level," one could just as easily view her as responding to many already operating from the lower (as opposed to higher) level.

[reno 77]

Chris,
You're a good writer, but trying to make an arguement out two unrelated events is a bit of a stretch here. You're giving Ann too much credit. Most of us see now Coulter as a weekly carnival freakshow act anyway - she can't grow a beard, so she writes a newspaper column instead. She's now the media spokesperson of the Republican party, which is fine with me.

Looking forward to your next column...
-Reno

[wordworker]

hey everybody, it's andy kaufman...

[23skidoo]

Really, the Coulter piece requires no parody as it's pretty much self-parody. That said, Kelly's got some funny lines ("I can see your balls" ha ha!) Besides, if what Ann says about Daddy Dearest is true, then the guy sounds like an evil bastard anyway, though in the man's defense (and by 'man,' I am referring to the father, not Ann), I wouldn't be surprised if all that bio material was just fantasy and bullshit and Coulter Sr. actually spent his life working in the post office.

In any case, I believe this quote applies:

"It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral."

-- Ann Coulter.

http://www.uexpress.com/anncoulter/index.html?uc_full_date=20050817

[TJS]

Joe McCarthy to Ronald Reagan upon John Coulter's admission to Hell: "There goes the neighborhood!"