She who must not be named

There are certain public figures whose ugliness is such that sunshine will not disinfect, who are so awful that we are better off never thinking of them. Not that these people should be silenced in some sort of awful totalitarian way, but that people like this, who seem to crave attention and conflict only, are best left where they belong, on the margins, rather than in the mainstream of cultural debate.

There is a certain of these who will remain unnamed, but who recently had published a book calling liberalism a religion and simultaneously tarring liberals as irreligious. Which is of course as vapid and pointless as it is wrong, but that's her beat. It's quite a bit weaker and less inflammatory than calling us traitors, which is a good sign of sorts.

Her indictment is weaker even as she's become more shrill, and her looks (which are central to her draw) become less credibly enticing as she reaches her middle forties. There's something particularly convincing about the argument that she should be ignored, would that it were quite as easy as that.

She is at the outside of her her marketing tour. Like a musician releasing a new album or an actor talking up a new film, she has to sell herself on the teevee. But now it seems that this is her sole purpose, to sell the idea of herself. As a bold "non-PC" truth teller unafraid of slaughtering any sacred cows she might encounter. As a sexy, smart conservative. What she is is a hollowed out mask, the endpoint of any media personality has embraced becoming totally commoditized, whose exchanges only exist to support her brand and to move units.

She's a wretched loose-limbed collection of tics and talking points, and I find myself in sympathy for how hollow her existence must be and how unfulfilling it must be to play such an ugly role. It must be lonely as the Andy Kaufman of "conservatism," ridiculing the 9/11 widows just as Kaufman wrestled women. But i think of what she and those like her have done to this country and I sympathize no more.

For some sad, unknowable reason, people buy her schtick. Not the way Kaufman fans dug his absurdity and daring, but like teenage girls buy bubblegum music hearthrobs. They are conned by her contrived and tailored sexuality, they find her contempt for straw man liberalism not merely trenchant but entertaining, they congratulate her for daring to say ugly things in front of friendly audiences. It's mystifying. It's like watching otherwise sane people champion the infallibility of astrology.

Anyone willing to step back sees a sad little hustler, a skinny aging broad. Anyone can see that her pretences to intellect begin with her contempt for the allegedly inferior and end with her Ivy League degree. Her verbal jousting ability, which is fairly impressive on screen, becomes the self-aware vituperation of a bright and angry teenager on the page. The constant invocation of religiosity from this empathy-devoid ice queen is shown as the flimsy and cynical rhetorical gambit it is.

If we cannot make her disappear, if Leno insists on lobbing this wannabe fascist softballs, then we might as well remind her admirers exactly what they're looking at.