An Exception

Hey, remember what I wrote in this effusion of bile? Thank God and whoever's the patron saint of indigestion that I included the word "most."

There is a most notable exception...other than your beloved Offender, that is. As a specimen of the sort of brilliance said exception cranks out routinely, I give you her latest column:

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, "Honestly, Mom ... chances are he won't stay with you. What happens to me?" and "I'm twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen."...

Planned Parenthood's Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating "stigma" and "negative public opinions about teen pregnancy." (I'm pretty sure that's the basic idea.) Instead, Morales suggested "helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education." Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?...

It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.

-- Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single mother.

-- At least 70 percent of juvenile murderers, pregnant teenagers, high school dropouts, teen suicides, runaways and juvenile delinquents were raised by single mothers.

-- A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

So liberals don't try to make that case. They just say they're against "shaming" and then go back to shaming gun owners, non-recyclers, smokers and "Big Gulp" aficionados -- while subsidizing illegitimacy.

Some of Ann Coulter's critics dislike her flamboyant, unashamedly sarcastic style, particularly her penchant for armor-piercing one-liners. But then, they're likely to be her political opponents, wounded in the most sensitive of places by her gift for pointed ridicule. (St. Thomas More: "The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked.") I'd venture to bet that what her detractors dislike most is that she's always in command of the facts.

You can disagree with Coulter, but you can't defeat her without defeating the evidence she marshals to her points and the logic she applies to them. That's not possible very often.

I disagree with Coulter on a few things, precisely because we place divergent emphases on the facts surrounding those topics. But I'll never denigrate her. In a world of opinion-editorial idiocy, she presents a standard to which other writers on politics and government should aspire, though few do. (It's so much easier simply to gush one's tastes as if God had engraved them on tablets of stone.)

If you yearn to make a a difference in the world through your words -- to change men's views on this or that, political or otherwise -- study Ann Coulter's work. Week after week, column after column, she shows the world of opinion-editorial how it's done.