Or maybe she was just not reared properly. If I were to laugh at her "jokes" or buy her book, I would be ashamed of myself, but if I were her parent, I would really be ashamed of myself. I would say, is it nurture? Did I just not teach her how to be a good person? Or is it nature? Is there just some inherited flaw of temperament that she got from my family or her father's family that shows that we shouldn't have had children in the first place? Because clearly, she is bringing world-class embarrassment to me as a mother, and I would want to hide the fact that she is my daughter. If I were, for some reason, to take any pride in her "success" as a purveyor of hate, well, then there it would be--prima facie evidence that I, too, am an indecent and hateful person.
She looks crazy and frantic, even in the few pictures I've seen of her online. She's losing weight, as if there's some kind of underlying pathology going on, as if she's eating herself up from inside. Fear and hatred and paranoia do take their toll, and if this is her problem, I would normally be sympathetic, and see her utterances as a cry for help, but then we are faced with the enabling problem--members of the mainstream culture must be enabling her for some reason of their own, and so we get back to the first principle--Americans, true patriotic red, white, and blue Americans like hate. They feel comfortable with it and always have. Over the years, they've hated the Irish, the Italians, black people, foreigners of all kinds, Catholics, Chinese workers on the railroad, Jews, Hispanics, gays, fans of the White Sox--the list is as long as your arm. And, of course, it makes any decent American uncomfortable, but "real" Americans are beyond shame--they are so ignorant and poorly brought up and fearful and pandered to by haters in the media that they don't even hear themselves disgorging sewage from their mouths, they don't see the ignorant, vicious looks on their faces, they don't hear the stupidity of their own laughter.
Every time she opens her mouth, she poses a test, and every customer who buys her book fails that test. Every show that puts her on the airwaves fails, too. She's not the only one--there are others on radio and TV who pose the same test, but she's the craziest one. The test is a test of humanity. How low can you go? What sort of vileness it is that you enjoy? How base are your motives? How little shame do you have? And what does that say about America?