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Ann Coulter's book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right

Ann Coulter (born 8 December, 1961 in New Canaan, Connecticut) is a conservative American author and commentator. Her books include High Crimes and Misdemeanors, How to Talk to a Liberal, Slander, and Treason. All of Coulter's books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Coulter is also a legal correspondent for the magazine Human Events, and writes a syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate, which is carried by several influential conservative websites such as Frontpagemag.com

Coulter has made frequent guest appearances on national television and syndicated radio programs. She has appeared on shows such as Hannity and Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, American Morning With Paula Zahn, Crossfire, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Scarborough Country, The Today Show, Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She also spoke in the movie FahrenHYPE 9/11, a conservative response to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Personal background

Coulter was born into a family that she has described as "upper middle class". She claims to have developed both her conservative opinions and her acerbic rhetorical style growing up in Connecticut. Her father was a lawyer, known for his legal work in cases against labor unions. Coulter followed him into the legal profession.

As an undergraduate in Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, Coulter helped to launch a conservative newspaper, The Cornell Review, with funding provided by Richard Mellon Scaife's Collegiate Network. She graduated with honors from Cornell in 1984, and went on to receive her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of The Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society. She also received training at the National Journalism Center. After practicing corporate law for four years, she became a congressional aide in Washington, D. C. in 1994, working as a staffer to Republican Senator Spencer Abraham, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee before working for a public interest law firm.

In 1996, MSNBC hired Coulter as a legal correspondent and political pundit, which began her media career. Though she was allowed to make many partisan and controversial comments as a panelist, she was fired in 1997 after an exchange with Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, in which she said "No wonder you guys lost." (MSNBC's NewsChat, October 11, 1997)

Coulter, when asked if she is a fundamentalist Christian, told interviewer David Bowman, "I don't think I've described myself that way, but only because I'm from Connecticut. We just won't call ourselves that." Though she seldom argues from a religious point of view, Coulter has stated that she admires Jerry Falwell, and opposes Pat Robertson (Slander, ch. 9). She is a strong supporter of Phyllis Schlafly, and, like her, opposes the Equal Rights Amendment.

Books

Coulter gained much of her recent prominence with two books. The first, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, is about media bias in the United States. She claimed that many American journalists have past or present ties to the Democratic Party, which influences their reporting. She argues that George W. Bush has faced a difficult and unfair battle for positive coverage in the media ever since he decided to run for president, and that a similar battle for fair coverage has been waged by practically every Republican presidential candidate since Calvin Coolidge. In effect, she asserts, news coverage is unkind to Republicans.

Her follow-up book was Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Here she claimed that Democratic politicians and the media have severely undermined much of America's foreign policy goals since the end of World War II, and that this is tantamount to conspiracy and treason. Summarizing events of recent history, she accuses Democratic presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman of being incompetent in the war against Communism and the Soviet Union, and charges Democratic members of Congress with similarly undermining the efforts of Republican presidents. In the final chapters, she argues that a similar process is undermining the present War on Terror.

Paula Jones controversy

Coulter debuted as a figure on the public scene during her days as a lawyer by helping Paula Jones sue President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. Coulter stated that "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president", even though that had been Jones' express intention since the beginning of the suit (Isikoff, 1999, p. 183). According to Coulter herself, quoted in the Hartford Courant in 1999, she leaked the details of Jones's testimony to the press in order to prevent Clinton from avoiding publicity by settling. This does not necessarily mean, however, that Coulter actually acted contrary to Jones' best interests and/or wishes, which would constitute legal malpractice.

When the case did get to court, after Coulter had broken with Jones, it was summarily dismissed because Jones could not show that she had actually suffered any damages, even if her allegations proved true. Jones did eventually gain a settlement from Clinton in exchange for not appealing the decision, although at $850,000 it was only one-third of the amount she had been asking for and went to pay her now-considerable legal expenses. However, the Jones case eventually led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and to the movement aiming for Clinton's impeachment, as Coulter had wished. She appeared on MSNBC as a commentator on the case, and went on to write a critical exposé of Clinton, boasting on Rivera Live that she "got a bestseller out of it" (High Crimes and Misdemeanors), and telling Hannity & Colmes, "The reason we were doing it for Paula – well, was for Paula. She had been defamed and I think we can say we got her reputation back." (Coulter, 1999)

Jones, having accumulated enormous legal fees which were not covered by the settlement and her "legal fund" then posed for Penthouse, claiming a shortage of cash to pay her taxes, having purchased a house. Coulter publicly denounced her as "trailer trash", saying "I totally believed she was the good Christian girl she made herself out to be. Now it turns out she's a fraud, at least to the extent of pretending to be an honorable and moral person." Jones defended herself by saying, "I haven't been offered a book deal like everybody else in this huge thing has done. Ann Coulter's done books. I haven't seen her call me up and say: 'Paula, would you like for me to help you write a book, a really nice, decent book?' I haven't had any help from anybody whatsoever."

Coulter's communication style

Coulter gained prominence in the crowded field of conservative commentators with her brand of outspoken criticism of many liberal and Democratic Party figures and policies over the past half-century. She quickly became known for being a controversial and colorful speaker, and indeed has relished this role (Coulter, August 2002). As she told The Sunday Times in 2002, "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that. I like to stir up the pot. I don't pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do."

Columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan has created a parody Michelle Malkin Award for writing which he considers to be cliché-ridden, insulting, and in concordance with the reader's beliefs. Sullivan has declared that "Ann Coulter cannot be considered" for the award on the grounds that "No one else would stand a chance."

The 9/11 attacks

Two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, her syndicated column included discussion of her close friend Barbara K. Olson, who was killed on American Airlines Flight 77 when terrorists crashed it into the Pentagon. In the last paragraph, Coulter wrote, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." A week later, she detailed a five-point plan guided by an "all-new standard for airline safety procedures:...procedures that make the airplane safer" of which point 3 proposed requiring "passports to fly domestically". "Passports can be forged", she continued, "but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males". Point 4 observed, "All 19 hijackers in last week's attack appear to have been aliens.... Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave."

Relations with her media outlets

When the editors of the National Review Online, the website of a well-known conservative magazine that carried Coulter's syndicated column, and to which she was contributing editor, said they would like to discuss making changes to the aforementioned piece (Coulter, July 2002), she went on the national television show Politically Incorrect and accused them of censorship, claiming her pay was only five dollars per article. National Review Online then dropped her column and terminated her editorship (Goldberg, 2001).

Coulter was contracted by USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention, but was replaced by Jonah Goldberg after a "disagreement over editing" (Memmot, 2004). The article began "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston", and referred to an indefinite number of female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons". The newspaper did not print the article, but Coulter published it on her website.

Controversy regarding Coulter's accuracy

Coulter is frequently accused of being overly biased when reporting facts, and of twisting them to support her case. Even when she has taken pains to defuse these attacks by documenting her sources, as with the 780 footnotes provided in her book Slander, the criticisms have not abated. A large number of webpages have sprung up that take her Slander footnotes to task , prompting her supporters to launch equally vigorous campaigns in her defense amidst calls of unfairly partisan nitpicking.

Her opponents have also attacked Coulter for what they consider to be her unreliability in live interviews, alleging in particular that she frequently misstates facts rather than admitting error or unfamiliarity with the topic being discussed. Although many of these criticisms have been dismissed by Coulter and her defenders, a few have become staples among her critics.

Dale Earnhardt Ignored by the New York Times

As evidence that the "liberal elite" are out of touch with what matters to most Americans in the "heartland", Coulter stated in Slander that the New York Times, which Coulter and other conservatives often use as representative of the "liberal media", failed to report on the February 18, 2001 death of NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt until two days had gone by, despite this event having sent shock waves through tens of millions of Americans.

"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 name sufficiently important to mention it on the first page."

However, numerous New York Times readers who were also NASCAR fans had saved copies of the front page of the New York Times of the next day, February 19, 2001, bearing a lengthy illustrated article entitled "Stock Car Star Killed on Last Lap of Daytona 500", which began

"Stock car racing's greatest current star and one of its most popular and celebrated figures, Dale Earnhardt, crashed and was killed today after he made a characteristically bold lunge for better position on the last turn of the last lap of the sport's premier event, the Daytona 500."

and went on discuss the crash itself, recent deaths of other racing drivers, racing safety in general, and finished with a laudatory description of Earnhardt as not only a hugely popular star, but one who wore his role with grace and humility. The Times had in fact published a second front page article on Earnhardt's death, two days later.

Democrats richer than Republicans

In Slander, Coulter continues to expand upon this view that liberals are out of touch with America and "have absolutely no contact with the society they decry from their Park Avenue redoubts"; however, her critics, such as Joe Conason, author of Big Lies, accuse Coulter as being herself a highly educated upperclass woman from an affluent background with a highly visible media presence, yet she does not similarly dismiss herself or similarly privileged Republicans as out of touch.

Similarly, Coulter is quoted in an article in Newsday as saying that the media are biased to the left because Republicans don't have the wealth to start media outlets, while Democrats do. That Republicans are rich, she says, "is one of the stunning lies that Democrats have been able to palm off." Coulter's opponents, however, quote the Gallup poll of 2002 as stating that "regular voters in the two higher-income categories prefer Republicans by an average of about 15 percentage points, while the two lower-income groups support Democrats by an average of about 23 percentage points. The crossover point appears to be at an annual income of about $50,000 a year". This would seem to clash with Coulter's statement that it is a "stunning lie" that Republicans are richer than Democrats.


Canada and the Vietnam War

In January 2005, Coulter gave an interview to CBC's The Fifth Estate (video clip of this part of the interview) in which she 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. She attempted to contrast the situation with the Vietnam War, stating "Canada sent troops to Vietnam". The interviewer contradicted her repeatedly before concluding "Australia was there, not Canada" .

In response to this apparent mistake (see Canada and the Vietnam War), the Michael Moore website published an excerpt from the interview under the headline "CBC Exposes O'Reilly and Coulter for the Liars They Are!".

In a subsequent interview on C-SPAN, Coulter said:

... they came and fought with the Americans. So I was wrong. It turns out there were 10,000 Americans who happened to be born in Canada. I talked to him for three hours, and the topic was not Canada's war history. It was an incidental point that he challenged me on, and I didn't believe him because I had read about Canadian troops in Vietnam. I was right. People keep saying, well he didn't tell you that they - 10,000 troops - ran across to sign up with the Americans because I don't think he knew .

Quotations

The following quotes are examples of Coulter's flamboyant and polemical style, for which she is well-known. They cover a wide variety of topics, but each demonstrates Coulter's unwillingness to compromise her strong views for political correctness or media palatability. Many view these quotes as examples of a tongue-in-cheek use of hyperbole or satire, while others take them more seriously. Coulter herself once stated, "Liberals love to pretend they don't understand hyperbole." However, she has also stated, "I believe everything I say."

On law and order

  • "I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood to be flogged publicly." - MSNBC March 22, 1997.
  • "If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one gunman ." "Don't pray. Learn to use guns." - Politically Incorrect, December 18, 1997.

On the environment

  • "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view." - from her column "Oil Good; Democrats bad" October 12 2000

On public "safety nets"

  • "Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal." - WorldNetDaily, December 2, 2003.

On liberalism

  • "Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now." - (from Slander, pp. 5-6; published June 2002).

On the media

  • "The only standard journalists respect is: Will this story promote the left-wing agenda?" How to Talk to a Liberal, 2004.

On women

  • "I think should be armed but should not vote ... women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it ... it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care." - Politically Incorrect, February 26, 2001.
  • "Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex without consequences, prance about naked, and abort children." - How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), 2004

On government

  • "My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." - MSNBC February 8, 1997.

On religion

  • "Being nice to people is, in fact, 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')". - from her column (at townhall.com)March 4, 2004.
  • "The Times was rushing to assure its readers that 'prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions.' (That's if you set aside Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill nonbelievers whenever possible)" - How to Talk to a Liberal, 2004.

On international affairs

  • "They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent." - Hannity & Colmes, November 30, 2004. When asked by an interviewer why she had "to ridicule them and be deeply offended if they disagree with us", she replied: "Because they speak French."

References

Books by Ann Coulter

  • How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (Crown Forum, 2004) ISBN 1400054184
  • Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (Crown Forum, 2003) ISBN 1400050308
  • Feminist Fantasies by Phyllis Schlafly, foreword by Ann Coulter (Spence Publishing, 2003) ISBN 1890626465
  • Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (Crown Forum, 2002) ISBN 1400046610
  • High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (Regnery Publishing, 1998) ISBN 0895261138

External links

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