The leftist media and blogs are in an early morning sheet soaking sweat over the imminent release of Ann Coulter's latest book Guilty.

Coulter's book has already generated the expected DefCon Five response from Media Matters and judging from the pre publication comments at The Huffingington Post (several hundred and counting) it is certain that Ann Coulter still knows what buttons to push on the Left to get the pavlovian response that continues to amuse us. The subjects of her books have been a veritable abattoir of liberal sacred cows ranging (pardon the pun) from a defense of Lucifer (Joseph McCarthy) to the intellectual emptiness of modern progressive ideology.

Coulter's iconoclastic approach reminds me of The Atlantic's description of the late H L Mencken's well known critique of media tactics in his day:

"(Their goal) was to please the crowd, to give a good show; and the way they sat about giving that good show was by first selecting a deserving victim, and then putting him magnificently to the torture. ....Always their first aim was to find a concrete target, to visualize their cause in some definite and defiant opponent. And always their second aim was to shell that opponent until he dropped his arms and took to ignominious flight."

This pretty much sums up Coulter's approach. She has utilized a well established legacy media tactic and turned it on its modern day practitioners and I enjoy it to no end. Does she occasionally get some facts wrong? Yes. Does she always irritate and irrigate the Left? Yes.

What is the measure of her effectiveness? Consider the netroots hue and cry every time she writes a new book.