Headcase: Seething Beauty

One can deduce merely from the titles of Ann Coulter's books (If Democrats Had Any Brains..., etc.) that diplomacy and shaded opinion are not her strong suits. Why is she so mad? Maybe because she's a tall, leggy blonde.

It's not the trod-upon who are easily-angered, according to recent research from UC Santa Barbara; it's the entitled. Aaron Sell and collaborators make a case for anger as an evolved bargaining tactic. Huffiness promises either the infliction of harm or the withholding of goods. When you don't get a "fair" shake, you flare your nostrils and your adversary recalculates. And the more bargaining power you have—the size of your stick or your carrot—the better treatment you feel you deserve.

In Sell's new studies, men's strength (big stick) and women's self-rated beauty (tasty carrot) both correlate with sense of entitlement, proneness to anger, belief in the effectiveness of personal aggression, and a history of getting one's way. The theory stands up.

If Coulter feels entitled, it could also animate her jingoism; jocks and beauty queens in the studies also supported political aggression. Sell suspects these alphas' pro-war stances are an evolutionary echo of strong men expecting to go to battle themselves (and win), and fair maidens expecting to claim an unfair lot of the spoils. "Political attitudes," he points out, "don't stem from reason."

October 11 1997 Insults a disabled Vietnam vet on air, loses job at MSNBC.

August 24 2006 Removes mic and walks off Hannity & Colmes when she feels ignored.

January 12 2009 Accuses Barbara Walters on The View of reading her book aloud "like you're reading Mein Kampf."