Sea Street

Coulter by the commode

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ann Coulter is all over the boob tube again, this time for anti-Semitic remarks, or as this report puts it, "Bigot Ann Coulter rips Jews again" - Loudmouthed Republican author/bigot/clown Ann Coulter appeared on Donny Deutsch's CNBC show, "The Big Idea," on Monday night and attacked Jews saying they needed to 'perfect' themselves. Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren't any Jewish people and that they needed to "perfect" themselves into - Christians ..." The Editor & Publisher report is here.  Here's David Rojay's  report on Ms. Coulter, which we ran earlier this year.
Up close & personal with Coulter in my brother's bathroom   

I penned those lyrics after getting a speeding ticket in Manalapan for doing three to five miles an hour above the limit. It was all so ridiculous I thought, it deserved a song. But my half brother, Derrick, was not amused.

"You exceed the speed limit, you get a ticket," he said.

Derrick is a Republican; and being a Republican is what this story is all about. Derrick's dad, my stepfather-one Glenn Reeves, was a Republican in spades. He was so much a Republican that at a reception in Charleston, West Virginia he refused to shake Governor Jay Rockefeller's hand.

He came by all this honestly out of a solidly Republican family and a solidly Republican place-southern Illinois. In his favor, it can be said, he was an extremely hard-working oilman with more than his share of native smarts. He had no patience for slackers, the lazy, the unemployed or for that matter, liberals, poets, writers and musicians. The last four categories describe me. But in his later years we did become friends. I came to realize that his millions did not protect him from envy and jealousy and it was me who he was envious and jealous of. I had a beautiful wife and an audience of loyal fans. Night after night, in his later years, he sat in nightclubs where I sang listening and watching.

Sometimes in after-hour breakfasts he would say to me, "You can get all the cock you want can't you."

In southern Illinois "cock" is a feminine term and it can be translated as another word for "cat".

Ironically, I wasn't looking for girls all the time the way my stepfather did but my mother was a Southern Baptist church lady so Glenn was always on the prowl. Perhaps because he envied me he was very generous, buying me new Cadillacs and on another occasion a Lincoln Town Car. There were checks from a family trust and when he passed away in 2001 he left me a considerable sum. So in spite of our war-like relationship when I was younger, I have no hard feelings for my stepfather now. On the contrary I rather miss him.

It was during a conversation about him in February of 2005 that my brother, Derrick, suggested that I write a book about his life and call it GLENN REEVES, A RED STATE HERO.

Of course Glenn's life was more complex than that. His principal business partner during the many years in which he got very rich, was an art dealer from New York City named Louis Thaler*.  Louis was as blue state as Glenn was red state. A man of many interests, a combat photographer in World War II, an orientalist who imported art from China and Japan, and most of all an astute investor who funnelled money from European mutual funds into the oil business. The relationship of the two men was complex and ambiguous. Glenn Reeves was not above making an anti-Semitic remark while Louis Thaler was in every way a Jew.

And so I set about writing; and the more I wrote, mostly in the late evening after my working day was through, the more I realized the complexity of the subject matter. When I talked to Derrick about this he said, "Forget about Louis, this book should be about dad and it should be about how in the end an honest, hard-working man got screwed by the corporations." Derrick's take on things was simplistic.

When Louis died of cancer in the 1990's, Glenn lost his mentor and his protector in the corporation they had put together; and as a consequence he was ousted in a hostile takeover. I interviewed several people about these events and then I set down my imagined scenario. This was months before I drove from my home on Cape Cod to my brother's home in Boca Raton with a three hundred-page manuscript.

How I ended up peeing all over Ann Coulter's face 

The first thing I did upon arriving at my brother's stucco mansion was to use the guest bathroom near the entranceway. It was there that I noticed a shelf beside the commode and on that shelf a book by Ann Coulter with her horse face staring from the cover. I was in no mood for nutso ravings so I let it lay.

Now I must tell you that I am not a Republican because my natural father was the opposite of Glenn Reeves. He was a man about town in his youth, a natty dresser and a fan of Frank Sinatra who put down Glenn's taste for country music. In his latter years he became a car dealer and managed to squirrel away enough money to retire in Orlando at age fifty-seven where he died thirty-six years later. He was also father to my brother, Jamie, who became a union lawyer and a lobbyist in Washington. To the degree that Derrick was a Hide-Bound Republican my brother was a Democratic crusader. Indeed, the very night that I used the commode with Ann Coulter they had a terrific argument around the dinner table about politics. Living on Cape Cod as I did and seldom getting to Florida I didn't see either brother often and frankly I didn't know them that well so the ferocity of their remarks sort of shocked me. They argued the entire evening, Jamie calling Bush an idiot and Derrick waving the flag and referring to "my president." They even argued about the Bruins hockey strike. Derrick's main point was 'the team let down the fans for a few miserable dollars' while Jamie's pointed out that 'the team members had only a few years to make enough money to live on an entire life.' They couldn't agree upon anything. In the end, it got very personal with Jamie remarking that he had worked hard all his life and put himself through college while Derrick had inherited 'daddy's money and daddy's oil wells.'

"You could have had the same thing," Derrick replied, "if you had been willing to work out in the cold for thirty-six hours at a time."

Of course I knew that Derrick had done precious little work in the cold and never for thirty-six hours. In reality, he was the spoiled son who had earned his fortune the old fashioned way by 'inheriting it' while Jamie had struggled his entire life in order to end up with a pension of $71,000 a year (not Bad). But ironically, Derrick was the more likable of the two-funny and easy-going he had never worried about much while Jamie was combative and bitter. It was to this audience that I read an excerpt from GLENN REEVES, A RED STATE HERO.

"You know, Glenn, when I was a boy back in Dallas my mother used to shop at Nieman Marcus. She said that doing so drew a line, a line that existed between our family and our relatives in Lubbock that were a bunch of down at the heels Texas Dutch. A lot of Germans in Texas; did you know that Glenn? Some of those little towns have Bavarian Festivals and Alpine Festivals that have yodelling contests. There's a lot of accordions and a lot of beer, lots of beer; but as my mother said, we were on the other side of the line. That's what my daddy told me when he took me to my first tennis lesson. You know, Glenn, tennis is a real divider. If you have never been on a tennis court and you don't know how to play you got to realize right away that you're in strange territory. Now I hear that you have taken up golf and that's a move in the right direction but I can know from what I see that you're not gonna be playing tennis, Glenn. And tennis in this case is a metaphor, a metaphor for Allegheny Western because from this desk upwards, Allegheny Western is a game that you don't know how to play and that's got you pissed off."

Cashman waited for Glenn to speak but Glenn said nothing. He sat like a stone. "The sad thing, Glenn, is that you thought you knew how to play. You're one of those flagpole Republicans that believe in Jesus and the American way and mom and apple pie and all of that emotional bullshit that Republicans like me feed to people like you to keep you quiet and docile; but Glenn, I'm a Republican and the Goodwyns are Republicans in the manner of the Vanderbilt's, Carnegies and the Morgan's and the Gould's and yes, the Rockefeller's. Every one of the Rockefellers-except our governor-are Republicans. Those kind of Republicans, Glenn, have a different set of appetites. Sex to them is power and power is sex. They love to fuck just like you do, Glenn, but they love to fuck in a different way, buddy. They love to fuck the way they fucked you. You don't think they get their jollies with women do you. Women are lined up a mile deep for these guys; they get their jollies power fucking. The bigger and stronger, the better because every big strong man they bring down makes them feel stronger and more superior. You get hurt playing with those guys. Their fortunes are built on hurt; but in all fairness it's got to be said that most flagpolers never get far enough up the ladder to run into these guys. They never get far enough up the ladder to get their heads cracked and that's what I mean when I say you don't understand the game. Because the way the game works is-you're supposed to climb up the ladder and crack their heads. That's what every one of them did at some point in their lives. Guys like you think that if you work hard and you're loyal and true and salute the flag there's a reward at the end. If you buy the whole line, hook and sinker you'll actually believe you're gonna go to heaven. Glenn, there's no heaven and there's no hell. There's just head crackin'. That's the way it's always been."

At the end of the reading, Jamie grinned ear to ear but Derrick looked down at the table with a sullen expression, then he pushed his chair back, stood up and walked into the living room. I could see him crossing back and forth in front of the huge fireplace, the one that was never lit. He disappeared out of view and when he came back he was charging into the dining room.

"You can't write that," he shouted, "that's wrong, wrong, wrong."

As he sat again he seemed to calm down and he looked across the table at me and said, "What's this thing with Republicans? The Democrats run companies too. What you've written isn't fair."

"Whoa," I said, "you wanted me to write about what happened to your dad and something just like that happened to your dad."

"But you don't have to drag Republicans into it," Derrick countered.

For a change Jamie had nothing to say. I looked over at him then looked back at Derrick and said, "Derrick, the guys that did you dad in, the very guys that did him in were Republicans to the last man."

After I said that there was a long silence all around and Derrick slowly got up without saying a word and walked to his bedroom.

Lying awake I wondered where all the crazy Republicans had come from. My brother, Jamie, had tried to explain it as we took a walk before bedtime. "They're all Dixiecrats," he said, "they used to be southern Democrats until Nixon worked out his southern strategy. It was a good example of Real Polotik, a' la Henry Kissinger. It's a simple equation-divide the country along racial and ethnic lines and you have more whites than anyone else and of course Reagan took it a step further-started his campaign in Meridian, Mississippi where Cheney and Goodman and Schwerner were murdered. Reagan used his communication skills to disguise what he was really doing.

I interjected to say, "We also have that schmuck, Jimmy Carter, to thank for putting Reagan in the White House."

"I know it," said Jamie," the same thing is true of Clinton who wanted a BJ so bad that he ended up undercutting Al Gore and opening the door to George Bush."

I had mixed feelings about Bill Clinton. I liked him and I rooted for him during the impeachment proceedings but he was a royal asshole-so incredibly selfish that he never thought about his wife or daughter or more importantly, the American people.

"It's all a cultural thing," said Jamie, "these southern Scots-Irish are still fighting a thousand year old war with the Anglo Saxons, the people up north. The Baptists prove it with all their religious war metaphors, constantly using words like 'crusade, victory' and 'onward Christian soldiers' and all the rest of that."

"Yeah," I said, "James Webb, who got elected to the senate from Virginia, wrote a book about them called BORN FIGHTING. The things of Jesus are not what they're about, fighting is what they're about. They can't stop themselves, they can't help it. Rev. Doright, a character on my TV show, had a skit after Communism collapsed. He called out in a mighty voice, 'Dear Lord, we're lost, help us, help us, Lord, send us someone to hate.'"

Jamie laughed and said, "Yeah, hatred is their stock in trade. You never hear that fat glutton Falwell saying anything positive. Every time he opens his mouth his mouth is filled with hatred.'

We walked along in silence after that and finally Jamie said, "Did you see that Ann Coulter book by the commode. Now there's a woman that takes the pulse of American idiots and cashes in." He hastened to add, "She's not an idiot, she just does an excellent imitation of an idiot."

I was remembering all of this as I tried to go to sleep. Easing down into slumber I remembered real Republicans like my grandparents on my mother's side, people whose families had been Republican since the time of Lincoln, people who stood for something, people who spoke in temperate tones, dignified, civilized, cultured tones. What had happened to them, where were they hiding? I could not answer the question before sleep took me.

The next morning I wanted to get underway before harsh words were spoken so I passed on the breakfast from McDonalds that Lauren had laid out; but as I stood in the bathroom taking a long piss, my sister-in-law unexpectedly opened the door and in a reflex motion I turned to the right and caught Ann Coulter right between the eyes. Of course, I wiped the book off and placed Coulter back where she belonged-by the commode.

*Some names have been changed.  Copyright 2007