Love her or hate her, there's a thing about Ann that taunts you to ask yourself, "Is what this woman saying actually true?" Part of you wants to simply dismiss her rants as marketing ploys, but there's another part that wants to hear her back it up. What surprises you about Ann in the beginning is that she does back it up - and her bite is much worse than her bark. Coulter makes sure that if you're going to have any chance of winning a battle with her on the issues at all, you'd better have some pretty strong facts in order to do it.
I'll be the first to admit that Coulter's shockjock-esque bantering, while being part of her schtick, is annoying at best. It runs a high risk of failure of simply turning people off and negating her point as she often comes across as an over-emotional, egocentric, bitter primadonna when she speaks.
When she writes, however, I believe she's brilliant and hits the nail right on the head with an intelligent, thorough, well-researched, argument.
So back to her point. When I first heard that she was attacking single mothers, I thought, "Here she goes again..." Blaming single mothers? How could she? I saw the Kathy Lee Gifford interview, the Hannity & Colmes interview, and others where Ann was challenged on her points and time and time again the same question came up from the interviewer: are you seriously blaming single mothers?
I thought the answer from her would be "no", and was waiting for her witty 1-2 counterpunch in return, but unfortunately, Ann never delivered it. She had barely little time to respond to their question in the first place and even when she did have time, most of it was used to talk about how wrong/stupid people were on another point, and how many books she's sold in the meantime.
At times she seems to try and make the point that because her books are bestsellers, people must agree with her or she's simply right. However, the reason she's sold so many books could be simply because they're entertaining. The success of Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" was not due to the book's facts, but instead that it held an intriguing opinion wrapped in entertainment value in quite the same way. Much like we are with Ann, in Brown's book we kept asking ourselves, "Could what this person be saying really be true?"
Perhaps her intention in straying off her point and leaving things vague is the hope that people will buy the book and go to the chapter to read what she's really saying. If so, it's a risky one. To help out, then, I'm going to offer my opinion here:
Coulter's statistics, assuming they are not misprints, speak for themselves. In 1996, 70% of juvenile inmates had been raised in a single mother or single parent environment. The courts have increasingly over the years handed down decisions which go against a two-parent or nuclear family. By stating these facts and statistics, is Coulter really attacking or blaming single mothers?
Not the way I see it. Ann's attack appears to be on the liberal thinking and governmental policies which not only support single parenthood, but praise and even worship it while seemingly condemning the institution of marriage and a two-parent family.
Raising a child on one's own is an extremely difficult task and by itself deserves to be praised, but only if done successfully. We should not be blatantly handing out money and pats on the back to those who became single parents through nothing other than their own ignorance or irresponsibility. We also shouldn't, however, be forcing single parents to stay in a bad relationship or attach to some loser just for the sake of having another parental figure in the household.
I'm all for women celebrating their independence, but only to the point that it keeps them from becoming financially and/or emotionally dependent on some loser or abuser. What I'm not for is going so far as to encourage such a degree of independence and be teaching single teenage mothers that they in fact don't need a man in their life, or more importantly their child's life because as Ann shows, over 30 years of research and facts show the opposite.
Using Hollywood award acceptance speeches as just one example, I believe Coulter is arguing that we as a society are too quick to "celebrate" single motherhood and that we also take it much too far - consequently encouraging single motherhood as a healthy form of independence, when in fact it isn't. Coulter appears to consider this view extremely selfish, ignorant, and harmful. I agree. As for her approach to discussing the issue, I couldn't disagree more.
Her January 14, 2009 article can be found on her website at http://www.anncoulter.com/. I have also included it below.
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From Ann Coulter's Website (http://www.anncoulter.com/) January 14, 2009:
... As I describe in my new book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault
on America," 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 parent. (The second strongest factor is owning a Dennis
Kucinich bumper sticker.)
By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving
long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage
births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers
involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more
sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced.
A 1990 study by the left-wing Progressive Policy Institute showed that,
after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime
disappeared.
Various studies come up with slightly different numbers, but all the
figures are grim. A study cited in the far left-wing Village Voice found that
children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit
suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely
to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the
boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run
away from home."
With new children being born, running away, dropping out of high school and
committing murder every year, it's not a static problem to analyze. But however
the numbers are run, single motherhood is a societal nuclear bomb.
Many of these studies, for example, are from the '90s, when the percentage
of teenagers raised by single parents was lower than it is today. In 1990, 28
percent of children under 18 were being raised in one-parent homes -- mother or
father, divorced or never-married. By 2005, more than one-third of all babies
born in the U.S. were illegitimate.
That's a lot of social problems in the pipeline.
Think I'm being cruel? Imagine an America with 60 to 70 percent fewer
juvenile delinquents, teenage births, teenage suicides and runaways, and you
will appreciate what the sainted "single mothers" have accomplished. Even in
liberals' fevered nightmares, predatory mortgage dealers, oil speculators and
Ken Lay could never do as much harm to their fellow human beings as single
mothers do to their own children, to say nothing of society at large.
But the Times won't run that series because liberals adore single
motherhood and the dissolution of traditional marriage in America. They detest
the military, so they cite a few anecdotal examples of veterans who have
committed murder and hope that no one asks for details.
COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE 1130
Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106
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