ANN THE MAN

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but is Ann Coulter a man? You look at her and something doesn't seem quite right. Something doesn't add up. You're thinking, what must I do to make sense of this face?

I'm looking at a picture of Ann in Time magazine. Turning Ann Coulter's head sideways and upside down does nothing to change your uneasy feeling. Conversely, turning your own head sideways and upside down does nothing, especially if you've already inverted her photo. That nebulous hold on femininity, that sexual ambiguity--if indeed that's what it is--just won't go away.

What kind of filter must I apply--what bias must I relinquish in order to make sense of Ann's face? What is that face behind the face? You squint. You meditate. You know there's an answer, and you will wait 'til hell freezes over to learn her secret.

Then, suddenly, the true image emerges. Beneath the eye shadow, behind the makeup, the chin announces itself, followed by the cheek lines, the hook of the nose, the crows feet, the ever-so-slight midnight shadow. Then you pan down to the hands. Despite years of expensive lotions, the lines of the hands, the crook of the thumb, all point to one thing, and you say to yourself, OMG. She's a man.

Satisfied you've cracked the code, then you must ask yourself: Well, if he's not Ann Coulter, then who is he?

We're looking here for an ultra-Conservative man, on the thin side, with piercing, if not bulging eyes, blonde hair, and a nasty streak. Possibly someone who has a vendetta against John Edwards. And just to complicate things, he probably faked his own death in order to take on his new persona. After all, if he were still alive, someone would declare him missing.

So we're looking for a "deceased" man, with decent legs, who would look reasonably good in a tight cashmere sweater. He would have to tend towards the repugnant, crave attention, and slip through the cracks of the powerful. Literally.

I'm racking my brain, and I just can't come up with it. Ted Kaczynski, though anti-government like Bush, is in jail. D.B. Cooper, if he survived jumping from the airliner, would be too old. The Lindbergh baby? No, Ann is someone else. A younger neo-Nazi, Mary Matalin look-alike, perhaps -- manly for a woman, but faggy for a man.

I've got to go here. My mind is just swimming, but I must make a living. I need to turn this over to my readers. What blonde man, thought to have died in his 30's or 40's, is running around making fool of himself under the name of Ann Coulter?