Ann Coulter's Godless: An Analysis and Book Review

Now that it's been thoroughly established that Coulter engaged in plagiarism, not only in the book Godless but for her syndicated column (quick note, kudos to The Rude Pundit for shaking things loose on the issue), it raises a question: why did she do it?

I can only speculate but here's my hypothesis: Coulter is a mendacious and venal cynic who has no heart. As an educated person, she hardly believes her own bullshit (e.g., that liberals hate America even more than terrorist who killed thousands of innocent people). However, she has carved a niche for being able to take the wackiest ideas from the fringe right and market them with her looks--thus her books are bought by Freeper types and her pictures serves as whack off material for the same people (if you don't believe me, read the Free Republic web site).

Because Coulter cares only about numero uno, she doesn't care what she says or writes and whether it's original or intellectually honest. Since she knows that people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been getting away with lying for years, she saw no problem with lying in her book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (although bloggers exposed the lies in the book, it received good reviews from the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times.

Since she has no compunction about intentionally misrepresenting people--even if she writes that her political opponents are the ones solely responsible for the decline in political discourse--cutting-and-pasting is no problem. She probably has as much disdain for the people who shell out their hard-earned money for her books as she does for liberals.

Let's just hope that this flap turns into a major scandal. I sense that with the other examples of intellectually dishonest aspects of Coulter's career, this could be a tipping point.


Addendum: For those of us familiar with Coulter, the latest charges of plagiarism are hardly surprising. Others came up with credible charges against her in previous years (I documented this on my Treason Blog).