| Zandra's post about Doug Lambert's earlier condemnation of Ann Coulter's use of the exact word that has caused Lambert himself so much trouble the past week got me thinking.
His diagnosis of "Sudden Stupidity Syndrome" for Coulter was partially on target -- stupid, for instance, was about right -- but sudden her stupidity was not. Coulter's stock in trade is getting attention for saying outrageous things. Occasionally that means crossing the line even for other conservatives.
It seems to me that just as Coulter's use of that particular word was not sudden, neither was Lambert's. That's not to say it was calculated in the ways that Coulter calculates her outrageousness -- Doug Lambert is not as smart as Ann Coulter. But neither did it come out of nowhere.
So why would the same guy condemn a word in 2007 as not only stupid in itself, but conferring an unfortunate guilt by association, and then use it in 2009, following it up with a strongly implied wish for someone else's death? Because it didn't happen in a vacuum. Because in 2007, there weren't people bringing guns to town hall meetings and associating a Democratic president with Hitler and insisting that affordable health care would be a socialist killing machine and in ten thousand other ways putting their hysterical, bigoted victim mentality on display. When a group ratchets up its rhetoric as the Republican party and especially the teabaggers have done, it becomes infectious. More and more offensive things come to seem reasonable and acceptable, or least like you're going to get away with them.
It's to New Hampshire's credit that Lambert's statement represented such a miscalculation and that the fallout has been so extreme. |
