Ann Coulter:Why would anyone value this woman's drivel?

In her recent column regarding the notion that the GOP is losing voters who don't like the party's campaign to eliminate government employees, Ann Coulter chides Sen. Dick Durbin for thinking that raising the normal retirement age another year or two for Social Security benefits might be a problem for workers whose jobs are physically demanding, like those working for the U.S. Postal Service. Coulter found it laughable that Durbin used this group as an example.

Well, FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith anticipated the effect prolonged physical labor would have on couriers. One of the main reasons he chose 60 as the normal retirement age when implementing his company's pension plan was because he didn't want couriers working into their 60s due to the physical demands of the job.

Durbin's concern for postal workers, whose work is much like the work done at FedEx, is really no different than Smith's concern for FedEx's couriers. Because they are public-sector employees, however, this apparently makes them fair game for Coulter's belittlement.

"In Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right," Coulter wrote, "Democrats actually hate working-class people," and "That's the whole point of being a liberal: to feel superior to people with less money." Based on her disdain for and arrogance toward postal workers, Coulter comes across, by her own characterizations, as a bona fide liberal Democrat.

Why would anyone value this woman's drivel?

Keith Chancey

Memphis