Because she’s funny. If you like any comedian who bitches about conservative beliefs, say Bill Maher or that Daily Show guy, you have an inkling already of what I see in Coulter. Here’s an article in Intellectual Conservative that expresses my sentiment in 5,000 words. When she makes me laugh so hard that I wonder if her story can possibly be true, she’s thoughtfully provided a citation at which I can laugh in outrage all over again.
Except today.
To my conservative friends: I’ve said for a long, long time that if we hear the same memes often enough we’ll being to believe them in spite of our better judgement. Supposedly that’s a known phenomenon called cultural para-stimuli discovered by Victor Ransome Starling, a Nobel Laureate by virtue of discovering the syndrom in cats. Read all about it in the forward to Tom Wolfe’s novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Wait, what? This seems wrong doesn’t it? I checked the Nobel Prize Nomination Database for the names Starling, Victor Starling, Ransome Starling, Ransome. The guy doesn’t exist, or at least he was never nominated for a Nobel Prize. You can verify that he wasn’t awarded a Nobel Prize even more easily at Wikipedia.org. In fact, the only authoritative-ish place I found informaiton about him was in a book review in the Washington Post. Why have I even heard of this guy? Because Rush Limbaugh made a big deal about him a couple of days ago and now the meme has spread around the blogosphere. The idea rings true to people because we do observe the effects of a similar process. The spread of theVictor Starling meme is a limited example. The spread of the Bush Air National Guard meme is a similarly trivial example perpetrated with considerably more pomp and bluster.
I discovered the meme via a link on AnnCoulter.com. The link is to an article on the BigHollywood blog. While I agree with the grist of the article, the reliance upon this fictional scientific result discomforts me. The spread of memes is a better model on which to base the author’s conclusions. To be sure, I can’t cite scientific studies of the meme phenomenon, but I’ll assert that no citation is better than citing bogus science. My dear, conservative brethren: please stop spreading the cultural para-stimuli meme.
Shelly smells like griddle-browned sausage and flapjacks smothered in maple syrup. Ciaran smells like deep woods soil just before the first frost.
[...] to the moods and explain why you put it there. I’ve actually only used my metal directory Why I like Ann Coulter – quasijo.com 01/17/2009 Because she’s funny. If you like any comedian who bitches about [...]