Pulitzer Prize Winner Jane Smiley Says Ann Coulter’s Parents Should Be Ashamed

Has Ann Coulter become the left’s public enemy number one? After all, it’s been quite a feeding frenzy this week following the release of her new book. It’s almost like the title was “Mein Kampf” instead of “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.”

The most recent member of the left to take shots at Coulter was Pulitzer Prize winning author Jane Smiley in a blog post at HuffnPuff. Smiley took a different tact than most by never actually naming the target of her attack. Maybe most despicably, Smiley also went after Coulter's parents for doing a poor job of child rearing.

The animus in this piece began early:  “American history is filled with people who have used hateful words to enrich themselves and to destroy others who were quite often weaker or more vulnerable than themselves."

Smiley mercilessly continued (emphasis mine): 

"On every middle school playground in America, right now, some bully is tormenting some other, weaker child out of the sight of the adults, and some of the other children are egging him on, and still other children are watching from the sidelines. It's as American as apple pie. As she demonstrates with the filth she spews out of her mouth and her pen, Americans aren't nice or decent people, and conservative, overtly patriotic Americans are even less decent and less nice.”

Anybody notice a tremendously delicious hypocrisy here? Isn’t it somewhat absurd to speak ill of someone for speaking ill of someone? What’s that old saying about the pot and the kettle?

Yet, Smiley’s piece is full of vitriol for Coulter, a point that seems lost on her and all the other seething media members that never learned what folks in glass houses aren’t supposed to do.

Here’s some more vitriolic complaints about seemingly vitriolic complaints, this time actually directed at Coulter’s parents: “Or maybe she was just not reared properly. If I were to laugh at her ‘jokes’ or buy her book, I would be ashamed of myself, but if I were her parent, I would really be ashamed of myself.”

Are you kidding, Jane? You’re now attacking the woman’s parents? It gets better:

“I would say, is it nurture? Did I just not teach her how to be a good person? Or is it nature? Is there just some inherited flaw of temperament that she got from my family or her father's family that shows that we shouldn't have had children in the first place? Because clearly, she is bringing world-class embarrassment to me as a mother, and I would want to hide the fact that she is my daughter. If I were, for some reason, to take any pride in her ‘success’ as a purveyor of hate, well, then there it would be--prima facie evidence that I, too, am an indecent and hateful person. “

Can you imagine this level of vitriol? Ann Coulter’s parents should be ashamed of themselves?

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, a proud member of the left-wing in our nation telling others to behave differently than she herself is willing to.