Ann Coulter describes herself as a polemicist. For years, she’s used the sharpest pen in the business to provoke, enrage, delight, and enrapture her audiences with her own peculiar brand of political commentary. In this respect, she resembles Tom Paine, the revolutionary war pamphleteer who penned the most memorable call to arms of the war:

“”These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their county; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Yes, ‘ole Tom could turn a phrase; especially when he turned it on his enemies, the elites:

To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.

Paine’s effectiveness was in the way he used language as invective, imagery as a form of character assassination, and exaggeration as metaphor. He could slice and dice his political opponents and those he saw as an enemy with the best of them. His only rival as a propagandist was Sam Adams. And Adams couldn’t write half as well but had an uncanny sense of where the jugular was. Some of his broadsides are absolute treasures:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

OUCH!

Miss Coulter follows then a long line of literary patriots whose writings have changed our politics. Ace has some excellent thoughts on this and how the mainstream media has bitten off its own nose to spite its face for years, passing up Coulter’s obvious saleability because of their own myopic political views:

Ann Coulter has been a story—a big story, a compelling story, and important political story, and, yes, a sexy story that’s pretty damn easy on the eyes—for years. But it’s only after years of studiously ignoring her that someone in the media finally realizes, “Hey, maybe I don’t like this woman’s politics, but millions of Americans do; perhaps it’s time to actually, you know, acknowledge she in fact exists.”

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, anyone? Remember them? Our fair and balanced media is still trying to forget.

Spot on. And gracing the cover (and I do mean “grace” as in “to confer dignity or honor on”) of Time Magazine, one is reminded that like Paine and Adams who spent their own hellish time in the political wilderness, Coulter has now finally come in from the cold.

Will it affect her writing? Will she soften her approach? Will she become less confrontational?

Are you serious, Superhawk?