Ann Coulter's Godless: An Analysis and Book Review

Dear Mr. Olson (polson@randomhouse.com),

As you know, several months ago, Random House Publishing was the target of widespread (and justifiable) condemnation for its lack of fact-checking of James Frey's purported memoir A Million Little Pieces. A media firestorm erupted after The Smoking Gun web site reported that Frey fabricated incidents about his life in the book. Frey's embellishments portrayed his earlier life as more dysfunctional than it really was in order to be more dramatic. As a consequence, Random House acknowledged errors and took some corrective action.

In 2002, Random House (through its imprint Crown) published Ann Coulter's book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. I received an advance copy of the book and when I did some preliminary fact-checking of the references in just the first few pages, I found that what was written in the references did not match Coulter's portrayal of what was written. I found that Coulter intentionally distorted the words of Frank Rich and Bruce Ackerman to make them appear to be soft on Islamic terrorism (the nonpartisan web site Spinsanity reported on this). In addition, in the first few pages, I found that Coulter deliberately misrepresented Jerry Falwell’s outrageous statements in the days following 9/11 that put partial blame on the various liberal groups and gays to make them appear less outrageous than they really were. As I read further, I found more distortions and calumnies in the book (I created a blog devoted to correcting the misrepresentations in the book). Other bloggers joined in--notably Dr. Limerick and the Daily Howler (scroll down to July)--and found many more examples of literary misconduct. Those of us who took the time to fact check Slander found that the book is an exercise in postmodernist absurdity. The stated premise of the book is that the decline in American political discourse is "all liberals' fault" yet the author and the very book itself epitomizes the intellectual dishonesty of the contemporary American right (to compound the absurdity of the situation, the forward for the paperback edition of the book was written by Rush Limbaugh). Thus, a small group of bloggers had exposed the book as a literary hoax full of intentional misrepresentations.

Let us quickly compare Coulter’s and Frey’s literary dishonesty. Frey embellished his own activities to make his book more interesting to the reader. On the other hand, Coulter intentionally attempted to inflict damage to the reputations of others for political and financial gain. Frey’s dishonesty was exposed only after representatives of The Smoking Gun did a painstaking search of public records and interviewed Frey’s acquaintances. On the other hand, Coulter’s falsehoods were easily debunked by internet searches. Thus, Coulter’s misconduct was not only more serious than Frey’s, it was apparent to anyone who bothered to examine her endnotes.

Unfortunately, the response to the literary misconduct in Slander by the mainstream media and Random House was much different than the response to Frey’s dishonesty. Although, the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review and the St. Petersburg Times reported on the episode, the larger newspapers and media outlets largely ignored the scandal (in fact, the book reviews for Slander in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times were largely positive). Crown made some revisions in later editions such as correcting false statements in the book (such as Coulter’s flubbing of New York Times' reporting on Dale Earnhardt's death) but no retractions or apologies were made about Coulter's flagrant libels in the book.

In fact, Random House continued to publish Coulter’s wild diatribes (the argument in Coulter’s next book Treason that Joe McCarthy was a hero was panned by even David Horowitz’s far right web site—-quick note: Coulter began refusing to return Horowitz’s phone calls after this symposium was published).

My questions to you:

1) Why were Random House's actions in response to Frey's less serious infractions more serious than its actions in response to Coulter's libels? Was it because of the massive media response to Frey's misconduct and the tepid response from the mainstream media to Coulter's misconduct?

2) What will Random House do to correct this disparity?

3) If it is discovered that there is literary misconduct in Coulter's latest book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, what action will Random House take?

4) Does Random House have a literary code of ethics? If so, could you e-mail it to me?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Scoobie