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Ann Coulter

Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American author, columnist, and political commentator. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public and private events.

Known for her controversial style and unabashedly conservative views, she has been described by The Observer as "the Republican Michael Moore", and "Rush Limbaugh in a miniskirt". Coulter has described herself as a "polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" and makes no pretense at being "impartial or balanced".

Background

Ann Coulter was born to John Vincent and Nell Husbands Martin Coulter. After her birth in New York City, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers were raised. She has described her family as "upper middle class" and has termed her attorney father a "union buster".

As an undergraduate at Cornell, Coulter helped found The Cornell Review, and was a member of the Delta Gamma national women's fraternity. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984, and received her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of The Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.

After law school, Coulter served as a law clerk for Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Kansas City, and was an attorney in the Department of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates. After a short time working in a New York City private practice where she specialized in corporate law, the Republicans took control of Congress, and Coulter left to work for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. She handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, and helped craft legislation that made it easier to deport aliens convicted of felonies. She later became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights.

Personal life

Coulter is single, and has dated Spin magazine publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. and conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza She owns both a condominium in Manhattan and a house in Palm Beach, Florida, the latter of which she purchased in 2005. Although she claims that usually she lives in New York, she votes in Palm Beach and is not registered to do so in New York. She is a fan of the Grateful Dead, and some of her favorite books include The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, most true crime stories about serial killers, or anything by Dave Barry.

Media career

Television

Coulter's first national media appearance came after she was hired in 1996 by MSNBC as a legal correspondent. Time magazine said this about her tenure there:

The network dismissed her at least twice: first in February 1997, after she insulted the late Pamela Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to France, even as the network was covering her somber memorial service.... Even so, the network missed Coulter's jousting and quickly rehired her.

Eight months later, Coulter's relationship with MSNBC ended permanently after she tangled with a disabled Vietnam veteran on the air. Robert Muller, co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, asserted that "in 90% of the cases that U.S. soldiers got blown up —Ann, are you listening?—they were our own mines." (Muller was misquoting a 1969 Pentagon report that found that 90% of the components used in enemy mines came from U.S. duds and refuse.) Coulter, who found Muller's statement laughable, averted her eyes and responded sarcastically: "No wonder you guys lost." It became an infamous—and oft-misreported—Coulter moment.

But her troubles with MSNBC only freed her to appear on CNN and Fox News Channel, whose producers were often calling.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post made a point to respond to the Time article to explain that his widely quoted misreporting of Coulter's reply to the veteran in an article he wrote had its origin in Coulter's own later recollection of the incident. Describing his previous story, Kurtz added, "I did note that, according to Coulter, the vet was appearing by satellite, and she didn't know he was disabled."

She has made frequent guest appearances on television, including The Today Show, Hannity and Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, American Morning, Crossfire, Real Time, Politically Incorrect, and the fifth estate.

In 2005, Coulter appeared as one of a three-person judging panel in The Greatest American, a four-part interactive television event for the Discovery Channel hosted by Matt Lauer. Starting with 100 nominees, each week interactive viewer voting eliminated candidates.

Films

Coulter made her first movie appearance in 2004, when she appeared in three movies. The first movie was Feeding the Beast, which was a made-for-TV documentary on the "24-Hour News Revolution". The other two movies were FahrenHYPE 9/11, a direct to video documentary designed to rebut Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, and Is It True What They Say About Ann?, a documentary on Coulter containing clips of interviews and speeches.

In 2006, Coulter refused permission to include a scene featuring herself and Al Franken in a debate in Connecticut in Franken's film, Al Franken: God Spoke.

Radio

Ann Coulter has been a frequent guest on many talk radio shows, including Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher, and others.

Books

Coulter is the author of five books. All have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her first book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (ISBN 0-89526-113-8), was published by Regnery Publishing in 1998. The book details Coulter's case for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Her second book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (ISBN 1-4000-4661-0), published by Crown Forum in 2002, remained number one on The New York Times Best Seller list for seven weeks. In Slander, Coulter argues that President George W. Bush faced an unfair battle for positive media coverage.

Her third book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (ISBN 1-4000-5030-8), also published by Crown Forum, defends the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and claims Democratic politicians and the media have treasonously undermined United States foreign policy. She also claims that Annie Lee Moss was correctly identified by Joseph McCarthy as a Communist. Treason was published in 2003, and spent 13 weeks on the Best Seller list.

Crown Forum published a collection of Coulter's columns in 2004 as her fourth book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (ISBN 1-4000-5418-4).

Coulter's fifth book, published by Crown Forum in 2006, is Godless: The Church of Liberalism (ISBN 1-4000-5420-6). Coulter argues, first, that liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, and second, that it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. Godless debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Columns

File:Ann coulter time magazine.jpg
Portrait of Ann Coulter on the cover of Time Magazine (April 25, 2005). Coulter felt the photo chosen was unflattering and believed it was deliberately chosen for that reason because she is a conservative.

In the late 1990s, Coulter's weekly (biweekly from 1999-2000) syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate began appearing and today is printed in more than 100 newspapers nationwide. Her column is featured as well on two well-known conservative websites, WorldNetDaily and Townhall.com and the lesser known Human Events Online, FrontPageMag and Jewish World Review and her own website. Her syndicator says, "Ann's client newspapers stick with her because she has a loyal fan base of conservative readers who look forward to reading her columns in their local newspapers." Her column on her personal website, anncoulter.com, is also permanently linked to by the Drudge Report web page, a site with 10 million hits a day, and has been for many years.

In 1999, Coulter worked for a time as a regular columnist for George magazine. Coulter also wrote exclusive weekly columns between 1998 and 2003 for the conservative magazine Human Events and continues to write an occasional legal column for it, in which she discusses judicial rulings, constitutional issues, and legal matters affecting Congress and the executive branch.

Her columns are invariably highly critical of liberals and Democrats. In one she wrote:

This year's Democratic plan for the future is another inane sound bite designed to trick American voters into trusting them with national security.
To wit, they're claiming there is no connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and while they're all for the war against terror — absolutely in favor of that war — they are adamantly opposed to the Iraq war. You know, the war where the U.S. military is killing thousands upon thousands of terrorists (described in the media as "Iraqi civilians", even if they are from Jordan, like the now-dead leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). That war.Cite error: The <ref> tag name cannot be a simple integer (see the help page).

Negative reactions from publishers

In 2001, as a contributing editor and syndicated columnist for National Review Online (NRO), Coulter was asked by editors to make changes to a piece written after the September 11 attacks. On the national television show Politically Incorrect, Coulter accused NRO of censorship and claimed she was paid $5 per article. NRO dropped her column and terminated her editorship. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of NRO, said, "We did not 'fire' Ann for what she wrote ... we ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty ."

Coulter contracted with USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She wrote one article that began, "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston..." and referred to some unspecified female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons." The newspaper declined to print the article citing an editing dispute over "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable." An explanatory article by the paper went on to say "Coulter told the online edition of Editor & Publisher magazine that 'USA Today doesn't like my "tone," humor, sarcasm, etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them.'" USA Today replaced Coulter with Jonah Goldberg, and Coulter published it instead on her website.

In August 2005, the Arizona Daily Star dropped Coulter's syndicated column citing reader complaints that "Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."

Following the publication of her fourth best-selling book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, in July 2006, some newspapers replaced her column with those of other conservative columnists:

  • The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced that it was replacing Coulter's column with that of David Limbaugh, stating that, "the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers."
  • The Augusta Chronicle of Augusta, Georgia explained that they felt that her "stridency" had crossed the line.
  • The Shreveport Times announced that they were considering dropping Ann Coulter in favor of another conservative columnist because "She is more about entertainment and self-promotion," and that they had "come close" before.
  • Yes! Weekly of Greensboro, North Carolina replaced her column with that of William F. Buckley due to plagiarism allegations as well as her comments on 9/11 widows, with readers' responses to the question running two to one for replacing her. The editor wrote, "Sure, there will be some who bemoan her absence from our pages and others who will question my decision to pull from our ranks a writer whose book currently sits atop the New York Times bestseller list. And they may have a point — she's sold a lot of books. But I'm not gonna be helping her do it anymore. So goodbye, Ann. It's been a wild ride."

Religious views

Coulter proclaims Christian religious beliefs. At one public lecture she proclaimed her faith in Jesus Christ, saying: "I don't care about anything else: Christ died for my sins and nothing else matters." She contrasts her belief that "Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it," with "according to liberals, the message of Jesus ... is something along the lines of 'be nice to people.'" what she describes as "one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed')" Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian, she has stated that "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it." She has also said, "... Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy—you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism."

Time magazine's John Cloud, who attended a service with Coulter at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a church which boasts a typical weekly attendance of 4,400, reported that she worships and often brings guests there, although when asked by a journalist about the article, the Redeemer communications and media director spoke of having heard of Coulter's attendance there only by hearsay and said that Coulter was not a member of the church nor known to the leadership.

She also quotes Christian scripture in her work. Godless begins with: "They exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creation rather than the creator.... Therefore, God gave them up to passions of dishonor, for their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature." — Romans 1:25–26


Political activities

In addition to her frequent media appearances and popular writings about politics and political beliefs, Coulter's political activities have included advising a plaintiff suing the president and considering a run for Congress.

The Paula Jones – Bill Clinton case

Coulter debuted as a public figure shortly before becoming an unpaid legal advisor for the attorneys representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Coulter's friend George Conway had been asked to assist Jones' attorneys, and shortly afterward Coulter, who wrote a column about the Paula Jones case for Human Events, was also asked to help; she began writing legal briefs for the case.

Coulter later stated that she would come to mistrust the motives of Jones' head lawyer, Joseph Cammaratta, who by August or September 1997 was advising Jones that her case was weak and to settle the case, if a favorable settlement could be negotiated. From the onset, Jones had sought an apology from Clinton at least as eagerly as she sought a settlement. However, in a later interview Coulter recounted that she herself had believed that the case was strong, that Jones was telling the truth, that Clinton should be held publicly accountable for his misconduct, and that a settlement would give the impression that Jones was merely interested in extorting money from the President.

David Daley, who wrote the interview piece for the Hartford Courant recounted what followed:

Coulter played one particularly key role in keeping the Jones case alive. In Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff's new book Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, Coulter is unmasked as the one who leaked word of Clinton's "distinguishing characteristic" — his reportedly bent penis that Jones said she could recognize and describe — to the news media. Her hope was to foster mistrust between the Clinton and Jones camps and forestall a settlement...

"I thought if I leaked the distinguishing characteristic it would show bad faith in negotiations. Bob Bennett would think Jones had leaked it. Cammaratta would know he himself hadn't leaked it and would get mad at Bennett. It might stall negotiations enough for me to get through to Susan Carpenter-McMillan to tell her that I thought settling would hurt Paula, that this would ruin her reputation, and that there were other lawyers working for her. Then 36 hours later, she returned my phone call.

"I just wanted to help Paula. I really think Paula Jones is a hero. I don't think I could have taken the abuse she came under. She's this poor little country girl and she has the most powerful man she's ever met hitting on her sexually, then denying it and smearing her as president. And she never did anything tacky. It's not like she was going on TV or trying to make a buck out of it."

Coulter also told Isikoff, "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the President."

The case went to court after Jones broke with Coulter and her original legal team, and it was summarily dismissed. The judge ruled that even if her allegations proved true, Jones did not show that she had suffered any damages, stating "...plaintiff has not demonstrated any tangible job detriment or adverse employment action for her refusal to submit to the governor's alleged advances. The president is therefore entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's claim of quid pro quo sexual harassment," and dismissed the case. Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000 ($151,000 after legal fees) in November 1998, in exchange for Jones' not appealing the decision. By then, the Jones lawsuit had led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Coulter wrote a book critical of Clinton called High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.

In October 2000, Jones revealed that she would pose for nude pictures in an adult magazine, saying she wanted to use the money to pay taxes and support her grade-school-aged children and in particular saying "I'm wanting to put them through college and maybe set up a college fund." Coulter publicly denounced Jones, calling her "the trailer-park trash they said she was," (Coulter had earlier chastened Clinton supporters for calling Jones this name after Clinton's former campaign strategist James Carville had made the widely-reported remark, "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, and you'll never know what you'll find") and a "fraud, at least to the extent of pretending to be an honorable and moral person." Coulter wrote: "Paula surely was given more than a million dollars in free legal assistance from an array of legal talent she will never again encounter in her life, much less have busily working on her behalf. Some of those lawyers never asked for or received a dime for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work performed at great professional, financial and personal cost to themselves. Others got partial payments out of the settlement. But at least they got her reputation back. And now she's thrown it away." Jones claimed not to have been offered any help with a book deal of her own or any other additional financial help after the lawsuit.

Past congressional candidacy

In 1999 and 2000, Coulter considered running for Congress from Connecticut on the Libertarian Party ticket to serve as a spoiler in order to throw the seat to the Democratic candidate and see that Republican Congressman Christopher Shays failed to gain re-election, as a punishment for Shays's voting against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The leadership of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut, after meeting with Coulter, declined to endorse her. As a result, her self-described "total sham, media-intensive, third-party Jesse Ventura campaign" did not take place.

Legal and professional disputes

Irregularities in public registration

In 2002, a column in the Washington Post stated that in 1980, Ann Coulter registered to vote in New Canaan, Connecticut, where the legal voting age is 18. A Connecticut driver's license listed her birth date in December 1961, but a driver's license issued to her years later in Washington, D.C., said she was born in December 1963. Coulter's Time magazine cover article reported, "Coulter says she won't confirm the date 'for privacy reasons'—she's had several stalkers. 'And I'm a girl,' she adds."

In June 2006, Coulter was reportedly under investigation by election officials in Florida for filing an inaccurate voter registration form in June 2005. Coulter's voter registration form lists her real estate agent's address instead of her own home address. In March, 2006, elections officials had given Coulter 30 days to explain the inaccuracy.

According to poll worker Jim Whited, Coulter tried to vote in the February 7, 2006, town council election at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, where she should vote based on her actual address. Although Coulter initially tried to vote in the proper location, Coulter left the precinct as soon as Whited inquired about the discrepancy in her address and voting precinct. She then cast her ballot in the precinct down the road, St. Edward's, that matched the address on her registration, which was actually the incorrect location for someone with her actual street address. Coulter denied knowingly voting in the wrong precinct.

On November 1, 2006, the Palm Beach Post, Sun-Sentinel, and Associated Press reported that Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson, a Democrat, had in fact begun an investigation into whether Coulter had voted in the wrong precinct, in which he sought confirmation of Coulter's address. Coulter's attorney, Marcos D'Clouet, complained that Anderson had given information concerning the investigation to the media, and D'Clouet said he would only discuss the matter over the phone or in person. According to the Associated Press, "Anderson said the matter had to be discussed in writing," and according to the Palm Beach Post he accused Coulter of "efforts to distract and divert focus on the process regarding this complaint." Anderson added, "I did express my frustration to the state attorney in a recent meeting and warned him I may need his services."

Allegations of factual inaccuracy

Comedian, author, and political commentator Al Franken, known for his liberal views, has questioned the factual accuracy of her books, and is also critical of her use of endnotes by taking the cited passages out of context. Others have investigated these charges, with equivocal results. Coulter responded to these and similar criticisms in a column called "Answering My Critics", where she claims "the most devastating examples of my alleged 'lies' keep changing" and that some accusations of her factual inaccuracy are either outright wrong or really just "trivial" factual errors (e.g. calling "endnotes", "footnotes", or incorrectly identifying Evan Thomas's grandfather, Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, as his father).

In Slander, Coulter alleges The New York Times did not cover NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt's death until two days after he died:

The day after seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt died in a race at the Daytona 500, almost every newspaper in America carried the story on the front page. Stock-car racing had been the nation's fastest-growing sport for a decade, and NASCAR the second-most-watched sport behind the NFL. More Americans recognize the name Dale Earnhardt than, say, Maureen Dowd. (Manhattan liberals are dumbly blinking at that last sentence.) It took The New York Times two days to deem Earnhardt's death sufficiently important to mention it on the first page. Demonstrating the left's renowned populist touch, the article began, 'His death brought a silence to the Wal-Mart.' The Times went on to report that in vast swaths of the country people watch stock-car racing. Tacky people were mourning Dale Earnhardt all over the South!

The New York Times did, in fact, cover Earnhardt's death the same day that he died: sportswriter Robert Lipsyte authored an article for the front page that was published on February 18, 2001. Another front page article appeared in the Times on the following day. Coulter cites an article indeed written two days after Earnhardt's death - Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winner who grew up in the South, wrote a personal piece on Earnhardt and his passing - bringing the total to three times in which the Times covered Earnhardt, three days in a row.

Coulter responded to this widely-publicized error by saying, "In my three best-selling books — making the case for a president's impeachment, accusing liberals of systematic lying and propagandizing, arguing that Joe McCarthy was a great American patriot, and detailing 50 years of treachery by the Democratic Party — this is the only vaguely substantive error the Ann Coulter hysterics have been able to produce, corrected soon after publication. CONGRATULATIONS, LIBERALS!!!" She added, "At least I didn't miss the Ukrainian famine (cf., Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Walter Duranty)."

In 2005, Coulter appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's the fifth estate and incorrectly asserted that Canada had sent troops to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Coulter had argued that Canada's non-participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that Canada's "loyal friendship" with the United States was weaker than in the past. As part of her broader attempt to contrast the Canadian response to the Iraq war with that of Vietnam, Coulter asserted that "Canada sent troops to Vietnam." Interviewer Bob McKeown replied, "No, actually, Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam." Canada was neutral in the conflict.

Notable controversies regarding opinions and remarks

While she is in constant demand on the US lecture circuit, Coulter's polemics sometimes start firestorms of controversy, ranging from rowdy uprisings at many of the colleges where she speaks to protracted discussions in the media.

Speeches at college campuses

Coulter has been the subject of several protests when speaking on college campuses.

On one occasion, during an appearance at University of Arizona, a pie was thrown at her, causing $1,830 worth of damage to a stage backdrop. The two perpetrators were charged with criminal damage, and one of them later said, "We were throwing pies at her ideas, not at her." Ann claims that she was not hit by the pies, which were thrown by liberals who "throw like girls", and that the College Republican women in attendance "gave them a beating they won't forget."

In another instance, Coulter was heckled while speaking at a crowd of 2,600 at the University of Connecticut to the point that she ended her speech early and began to take questions from the audience, remarking that "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am."

Speaking at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 26, 2006, Coulter said of United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' crème brûlée. That's just a joke, for you in the media."

In a speech entitled, "Liberals Are Wrong About Everything", given at Indiana University, Bloomington on February 23, 2006, Coulter claimed that "Liberals hate God and hate America," and that there was no hope for the Democratic party. Her speech was frequently interrupted while protestors were removed. The school's newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, reported that during the Q&A session, a young man asked her if she didn't like Democrats, wouldn't it just be better to have a dictatorship; Coulter replied: "You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?" Shane Kennedy, then president of the IU College Republicans student group, defended her comments, saying, "I think the guy could have been more respectful to her."

During her speech at the University of South Florida attended by over 2000 students on October 19, 2006, a "walk out" was staged by some students, most of whom were members of Feminist Student Alliance, the Alliance of Concerned Students, Pride Alliance and Queer Liberation Front, wearing red shirts and giving her the peace sign when she spoke out against attempts by liberals to equate gay rights with the civil rights movement After the speech, during a question-and-answer period, many audience members, including the wife of a soldier stationed in Iraq, voiced their support for Coulter and apologized on behalf of the unruly students.

The 9/11 "Jersey Girls"

In her book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter criticizes the four 9/11 widows known as the "Jersey Girls", writing that they abused their status as widows by acting as partisans to push for the 9/11 Commission to harshly criticize the G.W. Bush administration and its security policies, and to campaign for presidential candidate John Kerry. The purportedly partisan activities of the "Jersey Girls" have also been commented upon by other observers.

The reaction to Coulter's more recent comments from her book Godless invoked heated responses; in it Coulter wrote:

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. ... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much ... the Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president ... cutting campaign commercials... how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."

These statements were described by U.S. Congressman Rush Holt as "hateful, divisive and ignorant" and reportedly disturbed families of 9/11 attack victims.

In a long chapter titled "Liberal Doctrine of Infallibility: Sobbing Hysterical Women", Coulter argues that one of liberalism's proselytizing techniques is to choose "people with 'absolute moral authority' - Democrats with a dead husband, a dead child, a wife who works at the CIA, a war record, a terminal illness..." as spokespersons to advance political goals. Doing so stifles a rational debate of the policy being advanced, according to Coulter, since "you can't respond to them because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering."

She lists a catalogue of such persons as Cindy Sheehan, gun-control activist Carolyn McCarthy, disabled Vietnam veteran and anti-Iraq-war activist Max Cleland, and the four Jersey Girls.

Coulter's description of these women has garnered criticism, some of it invoking the memory of the women's deceased husbands. The book was released on June 6, 2006, and that morning, Matt Lauer of NBC's The Today Show interviewed Coulter. He questioned the propriety of several of its statements about the Jersey Girls, including "They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process." She defended the challenged statements and remarked that Lauer was "getting testy" with her.

The next day, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called Coulter's charge a "vicious, mean-spirited attack", suggesting that Coulter's book should have been titled Heartless.

Coulter later responded to Senator Clinton: "Before criticizing others for being 'mean' to women, perhaps Hillary should talk to her husband who was accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick and was groping Kathleen Willey at the very moment Willey's husband was committing suicide."

On the same day, Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) called Coulter a "hatemonger" on the floor of the House and urged his Republican colleagues to denounce her as well. Later, Tim Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission and a former Democratic Congressman, urged Americans not to buy Coulter's book.

She has consistently defended her words and makes no apologies, even goading her critics by repeating her criticism of the Jersey Girls in subsequent columns. "If you're upset about what I said about the Witches of East Brunswick, try turning the page. Surely, I must have offended more than those four harpies."

Comments about the New York Times

Coulter has had a long-running animus toward what she sees to be the liberal bias of the New York Times. About half of her columns written between July 1999 and July 2002 (the time of the publication of her second book, Slander), mention the newspaper , usually evaluating its conduct in a negative way. Slander itself was dedicated to the New York Times as epitomizing the practice of stealthily calumniating conservatives.

In an interview with George Gurley of the New York Observer shortly after the publication of that book, it was mentioned that Coulter actually had friends and acquaintances who worked for the newspaper, namely Frank Bruni and David E. Sanger. Later in the interview, she exclaimed amusement at her recollection of the gratuitousness of the Times publishing two photos of George H. W. Bush throwing up at a diplomatic meeting in Japan, then said:

"Is your your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say."


Then she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
I told her to be careful.


"You’re right, after 9/11 I shouldn’t say that," she said, spotting a cab and grabbing it.

By way of context, during an interview earlier in June 2002 with Katie Couric to promote the same book, Coulter expressed frustration about "constant mischaracterization" through being misquoted. "The idea that someone can go out and find one quote that will suddenly, you know, portray me—just dismiss her ideas, read no more, read no further, this person is crazy...is precisely what liberals do all the time," she said. Coulter claims the New York Times is liberally biased (a theme of Slander) and deserves severe castigation.

When asked by John Hawkins, the web manager of a right-wing blog, through a pre-written set of interview questions if she regretted the statement, Coulter replied by saying: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'" Lee Salem, the president of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's column, later defended Coulter by suggesting that she was a brilliant satirist who does not mean it when she periodically wishes violence or even death on liberals and their enablers.

The subject came up again when she appeared on the Fox News program Hannity & Colmes. Alan Colmes mentioned Salem's claim, and said to her that remarks like saying "Timothy McVeigh should have bombed The New York Times building" were "laughable happy satires, right?" then said he now realized that Coulter was "actually a liberal who is doing this to mock and parody the way conservatives think." She replied, "Well, it's not working very well if that were my goal. No, I think the Timothy McVeigh line was merely prescient after The New York Times has leapt beyond -- beyond nonsense straight into treason, last week," (referring to a Times report that revealed classified information about an anti-terrorism program of the U.S. Government involving surveillance of international financial transactions of persons suspected of having Al-qaida links). Alan Colmes continued in this sarcastic vein when he responded, calling her remarks "great humor", and that it "belongs on Saturday Night Live. It belongs on The Daily Show."

Comments on Islam, Arabs, and Terrorism

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Coulter has advocated a more warlike response to terror and fanatic terrorists. On September 12, 2001, the day after the attacks (in which her friend Barbara Olson had been killed), she wrote in her column:

Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Responding to this comment, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations remarked in the Chicago Sun Times that before Sept. 11, Coulter "would have faced swift repudiation from her colleagues," but "now it's accepted as legitimate commentary."

Coulter has been highly critical of the U.S. Department of Transportation and especially its then-secretary Norman Mineta. Her many criticisms include their refusal to use ethnic profiling as a component of airport screening.

Coulter also called for increasing the power of U.S. law enforcement agencies to search Muslims, describing the testimony of Coleen Rowley, an FBI whistleblower who argued before the Senate in 2002 that in cases where Muslims suspected of a crime are known to be affiliated with radical fundamental Islamic groups or even simply had lived in England, authorities should be granted a search warrant based on probable cause, neither of which could have been considered a factor before 9/11, and which actually prevented Zacarias Moussaoui, later convicted of conspiring with the 9/11 hijackers, from being searched prior to attacks. Coulter cited a poll by the Daily Telegraph which found that 98 percent of Muslims between the ages of 20 to 45 said they would not fight for Britain in the War in Afghanistan, and that 48 percent said they would fight for Osama bin Laden, said she agreed with Rowley, "certainly after Sept. 11", and concluded: "The FBI allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered on the altar of political correctness. What more do liberals want?"

She wrote in another column that she had reviewed the civil rights lawsuits against certain airlines to determine which airlines had subjected Arabs to the most "egregious discrimination" so that she could fly only that airline. She also said that the airline should be bragging instead of denying any of the charges of discrimination brought against them. In an interview with the The Guardian she quipped, "I think airlines ought to start advertising: 'We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'" When the interviewer replied by asking what Muslims would do for travel, she responded, "They could use flying carpets."

One comment that drew criticism from the blogosphere as well as fellow conservatives was made during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2006, where she said, referring to the prospect of a nuclear-equipped Iran, "What if they start having one of these bipolar episodes with nuclear weapons? I think our motto should be, post-9-11: raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences." Coulter had previously written a nearly identical passage in her syndicated column: "...I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about 'camel jockey'? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"

In 2004 the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an pro-Islam lobbying group with ties to Hamas, issued a press release denouncing Coulter for "bigotry", "racism and islamophobia".

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