Meaning What We Say

Sean Penn is in the news and not because of his acting skills. It seems the star of Dead Man Walking, I Am Sam and The Thin Red Line has a cherished possession that the average movie-goer does not yet retain. Normally, the various singular acquisitions of the Hollywood crowd tend to be something we mortals can only dream of due to the exorbitant wealth needed to purchase them. Penn's case is different, as I see no reason we can't all own our very own plastic Ann Coulter doll. It seems Penn is doing less accessorizing and more cigarette-burning as he uses the doll, not to cuddle with, but to torture.

For those who may not know, Ann Coulter is an outspoken conservative columnist, lawyer, and television pundit who is also a best-selling author, and of whom Penn evidently disagrees with, most likely on an idealogical level. “She's a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn't believe a word she says,” Penn says of Coulter. This seems to be a curious criticism. For although she often makes sarcastic points, I would bet that Miss Coulter usually means what she says. It would be extraordinarily odd—as well as out of character—if Coulter responded to Penn's comments with a careless shrug that, “He doesn't really mean it.” Penn means it, and although he believes Coulter is essentially pulling things out of the sky, he is most emphatically wrong. Unless you're James Frey, lucky enough to have your book picked up by Oprah—and aided by her adoring audience of automatons—you don't become a best-selling author of non-fiction by making up lies.

I must confess, I like Ann. What she lacks in tact she more than makes up for in devastating wit. There isn't a liberal who can match her on a consistent basis, much less a woman. I think that's what I like best about her. Arguably the most successful woman in political punditry is a conservative. Who would the left offer as their Ann? Maureen Dowd? Unlike the highly esteemed columnist from the New York Times, the fiery vixen darling of the right has room for more than two thoughts. If you haven't read a Dowd column, I'll save you the trouble: “Bushie is an idiot, liberal women are the best thing since sliced bread and the only reason men don't want to marry us is because we're too smart.”

Ann's one flaw is that she may not be, strictly speaking, helping matters. Her points are scathing, and usually quite funny, but she's simply too clear and forthright to change liberal minds. She does make progressives awful mad though, and that alone may be a contribution to the betterment of humanity, if only because it's so wonderfully amusing.

My respect and esteem for Miss Coulter is not the issue; Penn's inability to take her at her word is. The idea that the red/blue divide is vast, if not insurmountable, is over-exaggerated—if the alignment of governmental policies by the two parties is to serve as a telling point. However, Penn and Coulter are emblematic of two schools of thought that are widely different, dubbed conservatism and liberalism out of convenience, but typically manifested to various degrees and encapsulating multiple forms.

Yet we are never going to get anywhere if we can't take the other side at face value. I have no doubt that Penn means what he says. My only complaint is that he couldn't think his way through the most poorly written of Coulter columns.

The reality is conservatives, like liberals, often mean exactly what we say. The tendency to shrug aside as trivial remarks of those with whom they disagree makes most liberals embarrassingly shallow intellectuals.

Said and meant.