Coulter responds, Unmasks threats!

[PancreasMatt]

Neat Slate Article on the most stroke-causing person in america

A Vast Right-Wing Cry of Treason
In her new book, Ann Coulter tells the unvarnished truth—and makes conservatives mad.
By Sam Tanenhaus
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 11:13 AM PT
Ann Coulter, the right wing's dial-900 girl—a rail-thin, chain-smoking, hard-drinking, big-eyed leggy blonde who winkingly serves up X-rated ideological smut on liberals—is at it again. "Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy," Coulter writes—or sneers—in Treason, her follow-up effort to the best-selling Slander. Like its predecessor, Treason sits atop the best-seller charts, riding higher than one of Coulter's signature miniskirts.

But this time around, it isn't the liberals who are up in arms; it's the conservatives. Coulter's slurring of Democrats—from Harry Truman (soft on communism) to Tom Daschle (soft on Iraq) —has set off a howling chorus on the right. David Horowitz, Andrew Sullivan, and Dorothy Rabinowitz, among others, have been sternly giving Coulter history lessons, dredging up (once more) the anti-Communist credentials of Cold War liberals like Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey.
Horowitz et al. are right, of course. But why are they so worked up? And why reach back so far to single out a few "good" liberals? This just reinforces Coulter's argument that today's breed can be dismissed as a single lumpen mass. In other words, they agree with her. So, why the outrage? Here's a guess: Coulter's conservative critics fear that her legions of fans—and lots of others, too—see no appreciable difference between her ill-informed comic diatribes and their high-brow ultraserious ones, particularly since Coulter's previous performances were praised by some now on the attack.

But this is yet another case where the dumb public is right. Coulter's shocking book is not shocking at all. Nor is it novel. It is merely the latest in a long line of name-calling, right-wing conspiracist tracts, a successor to Elizabeth Dilling's Red Network, Fred C. Schwarz's You Can Trust the Communists (To Be Communists), and—a personal favorite—John A. Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason. This last, which sold 2 million copies in 1964, "explained" how the U.S. military had consciously served "the long-range political advantage of the communist conspiracy" in World War II. You can laugh, but by the time the 25th-anniversary updated edition was published, it had sold 7 million copies and Stormer was holding weekly Bible meetings for Missouri state legislators.

Coulter's cheerleading on behalf of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and "his brief fiery ride across the landscape," as she puts it, is what has her critics most exercised. Doesn't she understand, they ask, that McCarthy wasn't an anti-Communist at all but a dangerous outrider who harmed a noble cause by defaming and giving ammunition to the left? Again they're right—but only on rather drearily familiar grounds. Coulter is closer to the truth on the big question, McCarthy's actual place in the conservative pantheon. For many years he was precisely the GOP folk hero she says—a pivotal figure who invented the inside-the-Beltway insurgency that has been the party's staple for half a century now, currently embodied by flame-throwers like Tom DeLay.

During McCarthy's peak years, he was a GOP heavyweight egged on by the likes of Senate leaders Robert Taft and William Knowland. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower, the GOP presidential nominee, shared a platform with McCarthy even though McCarthy had smeared Ike's mentor, George Marshall, by calling him a Communist dupe. And as Coulter says, the people—a lot of them, anyway—loved him, too. More than 1 million signed a petition supporting him during the censure debate of 1954, and half the Republican senators (22 out of 44) voted against the measure. A year after McCarthy's death in 1957 Robert Welch, another conspiracy-monger, founded the John Birch Society to pick up the cudgel and continue the "fight for America." Today, Birchers are remembered as kooks (and were often dismissed as such at the time). But these "little old ladies in sneakers" got a big hug from the conservative movement. Ronald Reagan for one—though mistily depicted of late as the ideological heir of the Democratic "traitors" Truman and JFK—made his political debut stumping for Congressman John Rousselot, a top California Bircher, in 1962.

And the McCarthy legacy lives on. Remember the attack ad used in the last election against Georgia Democrat Max Cleland—the one that spliced in videotape of Osama and Saddam? The McCarthyites used the same ruse to destroy Maryland Democrat Millard Tydings in 1950, only then it was a composite picture juxtaposing photos of Tydings and Earl Browder, the onetime leader of the American Communist Party.

Of course, using dirty tricks isn't news in politics—and their use is not limited to the right. Nor, for that matter, is the cry of treason. Woodrow Wilson dusted off the Sedition Act in order to jail critics of World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the indictments of more than two dozen isolationists in 1942 on the sham charge that they were Nazi agents. A judge threw the case out, but conservatives didn't forget.

All Coulter has done is import this approach—the flat-out accusatory style of hardball politics—into the realm of serious political discourse, ignoring the preferred arts of indirection and innuendo. And that's why her critics are agitated. It all comes down to tact—or tactics. It's OK to denounce a semi-fictional construct: a "Fifth Column" that opposes the Iraq War or "the axis of appeasement" or liberals who "hate" America and wish it ill. Or to imply, as William Safire did this week, that unnamed journalists pressing the WMD case are, "by their investigative and oppositionist nature," unwitting handmaidens of Saddam.

But the indelicate Coulter has crossed the line, stating openly the message others push subliminally. Consider her notorious comment, following 9/11, that the solution to radical Islamists was for the United States to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." This met with an outcry that was, again, loudest from the right. Within days, National Review online dropped her column. (And Horowitz, to his credit, picked it up for FrontPage.) But no one, to my knowledge, has bothered to point out that her formulation was prescient—right up to the eerie moment in April when Ari Fleischer was dodging questions about the evangelicals camped on the Iraqi border, poised to Christianize the Muslim infidels.

Ann Coulter may have committed "treason" against conservative good taste. But she's done the rest of us a favor. She has exposed the often empty semantic difference between the "responsible" right and its supposed "fringe."

[Prez]

:brickwall
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
I hate Ann Coulter.
:brickwall

[PancreasMatt]

Yeah! me too! yeah!

[nomad]

:hearhear --- fascinating article.

[scooter]

body of an hourglass, brain of sand.

S

[opaun]

I can just feel the tolerance oozing out of this board.

Which party do you vote for again???

And shouldn't we, as debaters, love the idea of reexamining the way that herstory has been written. When did we become a bunch of Establishment apologists?

owen

PS: How many here have actually read the book anyways, or Slander for that matter?

[nomad]

1. I vote democrat mostly and sometimes more radical left. I voted republican for one candidate for state office my first time voting. It was a mistake.

2. I find her stuff as historically valuable as an alternative historical account as I do holocaust denial literature.

3. One so far.

[thedancingbear]

I think it's amusing that you and Jed are still mad that I said people who think gays shouldn't marry are homophobes. :)

IS

[scooter]

"For the record, I have always found Coulter's writings to be staggeringly trivial and content-free. She doesn't argue, she labels and flames. Then she exploits the reaction she gets to redirect attention away from her antics and towards the supposed defensiveness of the other side."

Hear, Hear, Jason. Agreed.

Oh, and Republican, over my lifetime for more candidates than not. I find her an embarassment to all that all that the party stands far and the notion that she is indicative or emblamatic of such is staggering in its inaccuracy. Many conservatives want her to shut up, esp, yes, several of those wonderful NE Reps.

And, yes, I've read parts of both books. Part commentary, part schlick, part crap.

And yes, I think Gays should marry and do not think that Jason is a homophobe.

S

[scooter]

"I'm sure that your's is a very, well, nice book, and well, people really do like it, and I think its part of the great Left Liberal World Conspiracy to sell __her__ books, and so...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/26/nyregion/26HILL.html?pagewanted=2&hp

[thedancingbear]

Oh, I don't think Jason is a homophobe either. I think he just likes to disagree with everyone, and since I run my mouth so much, he takes opposite positions of me frequently. ;)

IS

[Samopolis]

They prefer to demonize those who they believe are "the enemy" and snicker while patting each other on the back when in the presence of their political friends.
Case in point: Bridget's talk of "hating" Ann Coulter and physically assaulting John Ashcroft. (http://www.net-benefits.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2314&perpage=30&pagenumber=1)

I'm only half-joking.

[thedancingbear]

I guess I'm guilty of just being hopelessly extreme. I always thought I was a pretty rational guy but I guess I'm not.

I mean I just can't convince myself that it's not funny to want to tackle John Ashcroft in the middle of a supermarket (as Bridget's original post jokingly implied). :)

And yes, Jason, I realize the original discussion was more complex than my statement indicated. But you're glossing over that complexity with "(right, Ian? har har)" too.

Sorry man, I thought we were just joking around. It's an Ann Coulter thread, I don't know how anyone could be serious in a discussion about her... :lol

:flamethro

IS

[Tom H]

Thought I'd throw this one in, from John Patterson, Hollywood reporter for The Guardian - a liberal paper in a country in which liberal means "a bit wet, and not left-wing enough to achieve anything useful", as opposed to "communist".

There was a great interview with Ann Coulter in the Guardian a while back, too, if anyone's interested.

-------------------------------------
The war against Hollywood
Friday July 25, 2003
The Guardian

Every time I turn on my TV, it seems, I don't have to listen long before another empurpled, fulminating, rightwing blowhard starts pontificating about all the damage that "the liberal media" is doing to our airwaves, to our children's future, to our morals, to the institution of heterosexual marriage, to our once-proud schools, to our precious bodily fluids and to our national ability to achieve and sustain workable hard-ons.
Now, I get 300 channels on my telly, and I clock between 10 and 20 hours most weeks, but I cannot find this liberal cabal's supposedly ubiquitous, evil spoor anywhere, and it's mainly because there are so many rightwing arseholes on TV blocking my view. To hear the Bush-munchers tell it, TV and movies are chocker with advertisements for the feminist "agenda" and the homosexual "lifestyle", with exhortations to immolate, then urinate on Old Glory, with slanders against the military and the Pentagon, with slurs against our great Commander-in-Chief and those who do his wrathful bidding, and with secular-humanist plots aimed at defaming the name of the Creator.

My God, if only. You'd think the Republicans might give their gums a rest now that they have a ferociously rightwing president, and now that his ditto-heads control Congress. Or now that the cable news networks are all trimming to the right in the hope of catching up with Fox, and now that the publishing industry has discovered that some on the right can actually read books, not just burn them. But no, they still have leftie scalps to collect, and their happiest hunting ground is Hollywood. The recent conflict - the one I call Dubya Dubya Two - showed us how much mileage the righties know they can get out of persecuting the lefties of the movie industry.

These days terms like "Traitor!" and "Appeaser!" are the first rightwing insults to get hurled, whereas they used to be the slurs of last resort. And mainly they got hurled at anyone from Hollywood who dared to suggest that Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Wolfie might be a bunch of oil-lubricated oligarchs with the basest of motives for stampeding us to war. That the revelations of recent weeks might suddenly prove them right is of no consequence to the renta-gobs: these traitors are from Hollywood - there's nothing good they can say or do. Ever.

This tune is played out relentlessly in a shallow book called Tales from the Left Coast: True Stories of Hollywood Stars and Their Outrageous Politics, by Michael Hirsen. Hirsen, who's whiter than Strom Thurmond, claims he used to be a touring keyboard player for the Temptations back in the 1970s. These days he teaches at some Christian degree-mill on radio, TV and Hollywood, a triad he appears to loathe. He also shows up on such right-leaning slagfests as The O'Reilly Factor (chaired by fightin' Bill O'Reilly, spiritual descendant of such fine Irish-American Catholics as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Jew-baiting 1930s radio-priest Father Coughlin) and has an anti-Hollywood website from which most of the anecdotes in his book were filched.

His book has one great scoop for us, and here it is: "Hollywood is packed with liberals!" As breaking stories go this one's right up there with "Langley, Virginia, is a nest of espionage agents!" or "Nashville is full of Republicans! And steel guitars!" Hirsen, however, seems to think he's uncovered another McCarthy-esque "conspiracy so immense..." and that we should all sleep with rifles under our beds in case Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon knock on the door in the wee small hours. Left Coast is a numbing reiteration of every rightwing bromide about the depravity and venality of anyone in Hollywood who disagrees with Michael Hirsen. Thus we get to hear again how dangerous to our national wellbeing are such pipsqueaks as Mike Farrell and Martin Sheen (The West Wing is, natch, an affront to democracy and the GOP), Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Julia Roberts, Spike Lee, Kevin Costner (who gave large donations to Bush, Sr), Chevy Chase, George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Oliver Stone, Ted Danson, Cybill Shepherd, Kathleen Turner and the hydra-headed Barbra Streisand.

All of these people are either full of shit, hilariously wrong-headed, downright dangerous or in league with Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden. Hirsen's Hollywood history is a parallel universe with about as much grounding in reality as Melrose Place. On the blacklist (and note the incandescent prose): "The idea that folks in Hollywood could be 'persecuted' for left-leaning rhetoric is so absurd it sends most people into a laughing fit." Those artists who were forced out of jobs and often into exile for 20 years "for their left-leaning rhetoric" might choose to disagree. So might the late John Garfield, hounded to his grave at 38 by the very witch-hunters Hirsen so cravenly venerates.

And Hirsen just loves Elia Kazan, as you'd expect. On The Graduate: "the film introduced promiscuity, incest and serial adultery" (incest?). On Oliver Stone in Cuba: "Attempting to show the softer side of Fidel Castro is like showing the softer side of Jeffrey Dahmer."

And so on. The witchhunts were A-OK, even though they never happened; the Fondas, Henry and Ted Turner included, were all evil dupes; Seven Days in May is mean to upstanding American fascists, Dr Strangelove is horrid to the military-industrial complex; and Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger's work for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) makes them formidable and deeply dangerous. The whole book falls in lockstep with the rebarbitive Gingrich worldview, and no nuance or doubt will interfere with Hirsen's mania, or his rotten jokes about hot tubs, gurus, plastic surgery and liberal guilt.

In the entire book, I can't find the name of a single movie he admires. Not one. Not even Forrest Gump or Left Behind. Nor can I find the names of more than 10 Hollywood rightwingers, which Hirsen seems to think bolsters his premise that they're all afraid to pipe up lest they go on some leftie Redlist.

This is just pathetic research on Hirsen's part. Anyone who can't dredge up the names of rightwingers in movies and TV is blinded only by the fact that his head is up his arse. He namechecks Bo Derek, Mel Gibson ("a faith-filled individual"), libertarian Kurt Russell, "legendary model and actress Jennifer O'Neill" (so legendary she hasn't been seen anywhere since Summer of '42 - except among the blurbs on the back cover of Hirsen's screed), director Lionel Chetwynd, the dependably gaga Charlton Heston, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Where are Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods on his bad days, superpatriot Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Walt Disney, Vincent Gallo? Hirsen has his McCarthyite "list of names" on the left, but in order to make his brainless thesis hold water he has to suppress the evidence of his own eyes on the right.

And finally, who are the most prominent people on the book's cover, a couple who clock up a massive five index mentions between them in a book of 314 pages? Why, Bill and Hillary Clinton, of course, the stars of . . . oh, wait. It's all clear now. Hollywood funded and voted, unforgivably, for Clinton - and that, in the eyes of Hirsen and his lamebrained ilk, is what it's really all about. Still, Tales from the Left Coast has a great future in store for itself - hanging on a nail in my lavatory.

[Tom H]

It's a long piece, but for anyone who's interested, it's here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,956452,00.html).

Tom

[Prez]

So I tuned out for a bit only to discover that I'm being used to make a point.. cool.

T- please calm down. really.. just chill out. :grin

As I jokingly make a remark about Ashcroft- you think that I'm like Coulter... well.. I think you use her tactics as much as anyone else- if not more.

Her goal is to demoralize people- to put them down- and often do so with a witty trick of the word. I feel that you do the same on NB very often- only you don't lump and dump based on democratic affiliation alone... you do it based on whomever has the courage to step up and oppose you.

Your observation about conservatives vs liberals on this board is possibly mistaken. What you are failing to see is that I have a sense of humor- and maybe you just don't get the joke.

Maybe that makes me a violent angry person that is like Ann Coulter in your eyes.. in my eyes it means that I don't take a message board meant for debaters too seriously, and that I think that most of the world is ironic and funny.

I guess we should just agree to disagree.

Oh... and maybe the reason that I hate Ann Coulter is because she is impossible to debate. Her facts are wrong, she makes inaccurate statements, she's cruel, and only makes accusations.

There is no point to debate someone so Cartoonish- particularly when they refuse to listen to reason even from their own camp.

[stannard67]

Coulter:

(1) has called for a political group (liberals) to live under the threat of execution for treason;

(2) insulted disabled veterans (her statement that "We lost the
Vietnam War because of people like you";

(3) race-baited a Japanese-American politician;

(4) referred to Arab Americans as "swarthy males";

(5) said we should "rape the earth"--thus trivializing both rape and the environment

...my god, the list goes on and on. You show me a "liberal pundit" who has done anything like this and I will attack them as viciously as I have Coulter. Remember, I am independent. I can criticize democrats without any problem. But Coulter is a scumbag. My only problem with Bridget's post is that she didn't paste "I Hate Ann Coulter" ten thousand more times.


U.S. Newswire
March 1, 2002 Friday
Right-Wing Watch: Ann Coulter's Latest Bigoted Bile Directed At Norman Mineta
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 1
Following was released today by People for the American Way Foundation:
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's most recent commentary (http://www. jewishworldreview. com/cols/coulter.html) accuses U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta of being consumed with hatred for America, belittles his experiences in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, and appears to imply that she would celebrate if he were killed.
"Ann Coulter's recent attack on Norman Mineta is despicable," said People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas. "It is outrageous to say that this long-time public servant hates America. But it is unfortunately not surprising, given Coulter's history of similarly rabid commentary. It's a sad and telling fact that this kind of rhetoric earns Coulter folk-hero status among right-wing conservatives and featured
speaking roles at events like the recent Conservative Political Action conference."
Neas noted that Mineta's career includes a stint in the U.S.Army as an intelligence officer in Japan and Korea. He entered politics as a member of the city council of San Jose and later served as mayor. Mineta served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 20 years, where among many accomplishments, he was a primary architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act. He was President Clinton's Commerce Secretary before
joining the Bush administration as Secretary of Transportation.
A Right-Wing Watch Online profile of Coulter follows:
This time it's Norman Mineta, Bush's Secretary of Transportation, who is under fire from columnist Ann Coulter, who is angry that he has not instituted aggressive racial profiling at airports in the wake of September 11.
Coulter begins her Feb. 28 column in Jewish World Review with a reference to the recent beating death of a transportation official in Afghanistan. "According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us."
After calling Mineta the "only stink-bomb" among President Bush's "dazzling team of advisers," she claims the Transportation Secretary is "burning with hatred for America."
She dismisses his long congressional career and service in both Democratic and Republican administrations by saying, "He is given plumb government jobs solely and exclusively because he is a minority." And she mocks his recent references to his internment as a child, which he has used to caution against racial profiling as a response to terrorism:
"He has taken the occasion of the most devastating attack on U.S. soil to drone on about how his baseball bat was taken from him as a child headed to one of Franklin Roosevelt's Japanese internment camps....Good G-d! A guard took Mineta's baseball bat as a child, and as a result he's subjecting all of America to the Bataan Death March! Somebody please give him a baseball
bat."
Coulter's hateful commentary has gotten her in trouble before. She was fired by MSNBC for tasteless statements about the late U.S. Ambassador to France Pamela Harriman and telling a disabled Vietnam veteran, "people like you caused us to lose that war." She was even dropped by National Review after a nasty spat inspired by her comments about the U.S. response to
terrorism. In a Sept. 12 National Review Online column, Coulter said, "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
But many on the Right appreciate her outrageous commentary and applaud her right-wing credentials. Those credentials include the Federalist Society -- as a college student, she founded the local chapter at the University of Michigan. She also served a stint as an aide to then-Senator Spencer Abraham
and as an advisor to Paula Jones' lawyers.
She is widely admired by right-wing groups. In 2000, Brent Bozell's Media Research Center presented her with its "Conservative Journalist of the Year" award. The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute gave her its annual conservative leadership award in 2000 and called her "an exemplar, in word
and deed, of what a true leader is."
Here's a sampling of what many on the Right apparently find so exemplary:
-- "In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into
outright traitors." -- CPAC conference, 2002. See PFAWF's RWWO Report on CPAC 2002 at http://www.pfaw.org/issues/right/rwwo/rwwo.020226.html.
-- "God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'" -- Hannity & Colmes, June 20, 2001
-- The "backbone of the Democratic Party" is a "typical fat, implacable welfare recipient." -- Coulter's column, Oct. 29, 1999

http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0011/coulter.html
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter got a polite but firm "no thanks" when she approached the Connecticut LP about running for Congress as a Libertarian -- and responded with a vitriolic column that accused Libertarians of being "addicted" to the drug issue. But Connecticut LP officials say they made the right decision since Coulter isn't really a Libertarian and has admitted that she planned to run only to punish a "pantywaist" incumbent who didn't vote to impeach President Clinton
"It doesn't do the LP any good to run celebrities who won't take a solid Libertarian stand -- all that does is confuse the public and link us with Republicans," said Connecticut LP State Chair Carl Vassar. "In other words, it harms us." Coulter, one of the so-called new wave of "blonde bombshell" Republican
commentators, is the author of the anti-Clinton manifesto, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, a weekly columnist for Human Events magazine, and a frequent guest on political television shows. She first made contact with the Connecticut LP in early summer, said Vassar, when a lawyer representing Coulter called him to discuss "something of
importance" for the state party -- Coulter's plan to run for Congress in Connecticut's 4th District, currently represented by Republican Chris Shays. The lawyer said Coulter wanted the LP's current candidate, Daniel Gislao, to drop out, so she could run. He also revealed that Coulter planned to run a "media-intensive, third-party, Jesse Ventura campaign" and jump into the
race just "one month before the election." Vassar's first reaction was interest, he said -- although he acknowledged he
didn't know much about the columnist. "I consulted a few of my associates and did a little research; looked at her
book High Crimes & Misdemeanors, and [realized] she was a conservative, not a Libertarian," he said. "Her book was the usual Republican clap-trap; it wasn't about why Clinton should be impeached for his Constitutional violations." James Madison, the Connecticut LP's communications director, said he reached
the same conclusion after looking into Coulter's background.
"I realized that Ann has some fantastic views on economics, gun rights, and respecting the Constitution, but I could find almost nothing on the personal choice issues," he said. "This was a concern to me because the personal choice issues are the main thing that differentiate us from the conservatives."
However, Coulter's lawyers continued to press, and state party officials finally met with her in person on August 10 in Cromwell, Connecticut. Coulter's reluctance to talk face-to-face with Libertarians for several months had concerned him, said Vassar. "Everything was through intermediaries until the Cromwell meeting," he said. "That's one thing that left an increasingly bad taste in my mouth. She apparently never considered it important, or felt it beneath her, to approach us directly. Never joined, gave money, or to our knowledge, even
registered as a Libertarian." At the meeting, Libertarians queried Coulter about her positions on the issues, and probed her reasons for wanting to run as a Libertarian, said
Madison. "At no time during the negotiations did Ann say that the campaign would be a grudge match with Shays, but we could tell that it would be," he said. "She had made her contempt for Shays quite clear, so while she did not actually say her main intent was to beat Shays, we could tell that it was."
In fact, Coulter later admitted that she wanted to run only to defeat Shays, who she described as a "phony, ponderous, hand-wringing pantywaist" who voted against the Clinton impeachment.
"Coulter is obsessed with getting even with Shays," said Gislao, who also sat in on the meeting. During the discussions, it became increasingly clear that Coulter was not a Libertarian, said Madison. "I have been a libertarian long enough to know when I'm talking to a fellow libertarian, and Ann Coulter is not one," he said. "I could tell that I was talking to a conservative. As with most conservatives, the thing she misses
is that limited government applies to personal choice, too."
Although there was agreement on many smaller-government issues, Coulter tended to side with Libertarians "only on economic freedom; not personal" freedom issues, agreed Vassar.
Coulter also refused to take a position on the War on Drugs, said Madison -- whether the particular question was medical marijuana, asset forfeiture, foreign aid to Colombia, or Fourth Amendment violations. "We were willing to be [very] moderate on the drug legalization issue," he said. "We were willing to let her take the federalist argument and simply say that it should be a state issue. We were willing to let her focus on specific winning aspects of the issue like asset forfeiture and medical
marijuana." But when asked specific questions, Coulter would move "on to something else without ever answering the question," said Madison. "In reality, we could tell that she simply could not afford to say anything [about drug legalization] that would offend her conservative friends," said Gislao.
The deciding issue, however, was when Coulter refused to agree to endorse Harry Browne, said Vassar. "What finally made me adamant was when she replied, when asked if she would
support our presidential candidate, 'I'll have to get back to you on that,' " he said.
"This was most definitely a bigger sticking point than drug legalization," said Gislao. "If you are going to run as a Libertarian, you support our presidential candidate without hesitation." In the month following the meeting, the Connecticut LP discussed the Coulter issue at a State Central Committee (SCC) meeting, said Madison. "By that time, I had decided that under no circumstances should we run her for Congress," he said. "This is in sharp contrast to my view before we met
Ann. Before the meeting, I was leaning toward having her run. I thought it would be great. But after discussing the possibility with her and thinking it over for a few days, I completely changed my mind. "The rest of the SCC pretty much felt the same way" -- and voted to reject Coulter's offer.
Less than a month later, Coulter fired back with a harsh essay in Human Events magazine.
In her column in the September 15 issue, Coulter wrote: "The local Libertarians' opposition to government is almost totally focused on only one small aspect of government: the drug laws."
Coulter had declined to state a position on the Drug War, she wrote, because "my position on drugs was to refuse even to discuss drug legalization until I don't have to pay for the food, housing, transportation, and medical care of people who want to stay home all day shooting up heroin. "It's not like we live in the perfect Libertarian state of nature with the
tiny exception of those pesky drug laws." As a result of this difference, Coulter reported that she is now "virulently, passionately opposed" to ending the War on Drugs. "There's a joke about a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Russian who are told
they have only one day until the end of the world," she wrote. "The Frenchman says he will spend his last day with a bottle of Bordeaux and a beautiful woman. The Englishman says be will take his favorite sheepdog for a walk across the moors. The Russian says he will burn down his neighbor's house. I'm with the Russian."
Madison said he was not surprised by the tone of the essay.
"It became apparent in our discussions with her that she has a very childish tendency to throw a tantrum when she does not get things her way," he said. "So it is not surprising." Gislao agreed. "She is very bitter about her rejection, and I think it shines through in the article," he said. "It is clear she is the woman scorned."
"It vindicated our decision," said Vassar. "I'm proud of what we did." Madison said that Libertarians who yearn for "celebrities" to run under the Libertarian Party banner should learn from the Coulter experience. "[Coulter] had no intention of furthering the objectives of the Libertarian Party," he said. "Her primary if not sole objective was to battle Shays, and we all saw that. She also said she was not sure that she would support Harry Browne for president.
"Do we want to start filling up the party with high-profile figures who do not support our presidential candidate? I don't think so. I certainly don't."


http://www.therationalradical.com/diatribes/ann_coulter.htm
Ann Coulter's controversial statement in her column that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" is not the least of Coulter's sins.

Ann Coulter: Her Excuse
Coulter claims that she wasn't speaking of all Muslims:
Coulter says her line about "convert them to Christianity" has been misconstrued and was aimed at those celebrating the attacks. "I wasn't talking about Muslims generally," she says. "I was talking about the crazed homicidal maniacs dancing in the streets."

[The Washington Post, October 2, 2001]
Ann Coulter: Her Column
Let's look at the full context in which Coulter made her infamous declaration:
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.
[Town Hall, September 14, 2001]
A fair reading could be that Ann Coulter wasn't explicitly referring to all Muslims, but that the "they" referred back to those in the streets of Arab nations who were celebrating the World Trade Center attacks. Coulter's statement as thus interpreted is, of course, still outrageous.

Ann Coulter: Her Excuse Debunked
While Coulter can maybe get away with parsing her own text here, I wonder if any commentators on this brouhaha have taken what Coulter said in her column together with what she said on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect September 25:
Ann Coulter: What's different about Germany than here, but I think is more similar to Japan and ought to be the model, is that Germany at least had a wealth of civilization prior to the Third Reich and it had a respect for human life, something that was not as noticeable in Japan. And one of the things General MacArthur did, he considered converting the emperor to Christianity. Decided not to because he thought there would be a fight between Catholics and Presbyterians. But General MacArthur called in thousands of Christian missionaries. He distributed thousands of Bibles. It wasn't as much of a success story as the Christian missionaries were in Korea after the Korean War, but you know how it was a success story? They have unprecedented religious freedom there, something that is absent in every Muslim country. In fact --
[Transcript of Politically Incorrect, September 25, 2001, emphasis added]
This shows Coulter would like to apply her conversion concept to entire countries, such as she believes was done in Japan.
Ann Coulter: Her Ignorance
Moreover, Coulter, as the following dialogue, in relevant portions, makes clear, continues to put her foot in her mouth, with respect to her claims -- begun above -- that Arab countries have never had any "civilization," nor a history of tolerance for other religions: ("Jerry" is producer/journalist
Jerry Nachman, and "Eric" is Eric Braeden, star of "The Young and the Restless."):
Eric: We have to allow the tolerant part of Islam to flourish. In other words, establish Democratic institutions and
then --
Ann Coulter: What tolerant part of Islam?
Eric: Islam has an enormous history.
Ann Coulter: Where is that in evidence in the Middle East right now?
Eric: Do you know anything about the history of the Middle East?
Bill: Islam was the most flourishing civilization in the middle ages. When Western Europeans were shivering and cowering and cast behind --
Ann Coulter: Fine, they invented the flying buttress, but they don't have a history of tolerance. That's the point --
Eric: She's absolutely wrong. Excuse me. You are wrong.
Ann Coulter: Well, then, name --
Eric: Historically, you are wrong. In all the Muslim countries, they allow Judaism to flourish and Christianity to flourish.
Ann Coulter: That's not true.
Eric: That is absolutely true.
Bill: Before --
Eric: In these kinds of countries right now, they don't. But in most Muslim countries in the past, they have allowed religious freedom.
Jerry: The Taliban is an exception, correct?
Eric: That's the problem.
Jerry: Ask any Jew who used to live in Iraq or Syria or Egypt until 20 or 30 years ago.
Ann Coulter's ignorance of history is amazing -- ignorance of the flourishing, advanced Arab civilization in the past, and of the religious tolerance toward Christianity and Judaism which was its hallmark. Ann Coulter: not only vicious, but ignorant.

[thedancingbear]

You know, my political philosophy isn't as in line with the LP as it used to be, it still makes me feel good when I see them doing the right thing. Of course in this case it was a relative no-brainer but whatever, who cares.

I don't see how Coulter is even comparable to Michael Moore, who she's often compared to, even in this thread. Michael Moore may be annoying and yes, he quite obviously plays fast and loose with the facts in his films. Is he a wholly rational voice in political discourse? No. Anyone who is about to launch their anti-Michael-Moore screed can save it.

But "slightly out of place Academy Award speech" and "rape trivialization" are not even on the same scale.

This is getting me upset so I'm going to stop writing before I just devolve into expletives.

IS

[stannard67]

Michael Moore isn't a very good pundit, often bends the truth, can get nasty, and paints himself as "working class" even though he has oodles of dough. I don't much respect him and certainly wouldn't hold him up as a shining example of the left.

But to my knowledge, he's never said anything racist, and he's never insulted disabled vets.

stannard

[thedancingbear]

Michael Moore is clearly irresponsible and annoying a lot of the time. Much of his useful message is likely obscured by his presentation.

He isn't Ann Coulter's peer, though. He's much closer to someone like Bill O'Reilly or really any of the conservative FOX News commentators. Loud, very opinionated, far more driven by the needs of entertainment than serious political dialogue.

This does not make him a good guy, but he also isn't as bad as "rape the Earth."

IS

[thedancingbear]

I wouldn't even consider Coulter particularly right-wing; she's just a fascist authoritarian. Plenty of right-wing critics hate her guts.

Andrew Sullivan is one notable example. www.andrewsullivan.com still has a link to his article on her, I believe.

IS

[stannard67]

Steck says:

"taking the title of Coulter's book Treason and using that to claim she wants all liberals to "live under the threat of execution" is taking poetic license a bit far."

Actually, this has nothing to do with her book. While at a CPAC speech, she said exactly what I attributed to her:

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
(January 2002 quote from Coulter's address to CPAC)

stannard

[stannard67]

Of course.

stannard

[PancreasMatt]

"The best way to read Ann Coulter: put everything in the voice of Mr. Burns. A lifetime's worth of pleasure awaits you.

quote i saw on another board. I love it!