ANN TIPATHY

On the one hand, I'm thinking that I would dearly enjoy seeing Ann Coulter's head on a pike.
On the other hand, I'm thinking hey, why spoil a perfectly good pike?

Actually, I was reading an item about all the delightful and highly-deserved negative blowback that Trannie Ann (a popular San Francisco reference) is getting for that shit-flinging rant in her latest book that vilified a group of authority-questioning women whose husbands were killed in the World Trade Center attack, and I got to wondering. Has the rightwing harridan finally overdosed on her own vitriol? Will this be the high-water mark of her influence, followed by long and inexorable decline in visibility? Much as prescription drug addiction was to Limbaugh?

I feverishly hope so. I hope it cripples her so thoroughly that it becomes part of the popular lexicon. Like "jump the shark," based on a "Happy Days" episode, became shorthand for pitiful overreach by the mass entertainment media, after which "jump the couch," based on Tom Cruise's chimp impersonation on Oprah, became shorthand for overreach by audience-cultivating celebrities. I'd like to see "jump the widows" become shorthand for overreach by unprincipled, vulgarian culture warriors.

Then again, it occurs to me that that "jump the widows" may already be well-established shorthand--among those middle-aged professional dance partners who work in the cruise ship industry.