Ann Coulter's Godless: An Analysis and Book Review

Click here

also, Media Matters has a conprehensive article on deception in the book's endnotes.

UPDATE: There's a blog that addresses Ann latest book If Democrats Had Any Brains They'd Be Republicans.

12/08 UPDATE: Check out my non-review of Coulter's latest book Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America.

Also, here is a YouTube video regarding Coulter's falsehoods:

Media Matters on Coulter's deceptive endnotes.

Talk Reason has the answers:
1. Secondary Addiction: Ann Coulter on Evolution
2. Secondary Addiction Part II: Ann Coulter on Evolution
3. Secondary Addiction Part III: Ann Coulter on Evolution

Not by the hairs of her chinny chin chin

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).

John Steinberg Asks.

Last Sunday, Coulter was on the Steve Yuhas show (Yuhas think: gay Rush clone and major league tool) on San Diego's KOGO radio. I took off from the beach early to get back home and call. I decided to find out whether Coulter was either a 44-year old virgin or the world's biggest hypocrite for writing in her book that liberals supposedly are against chastity. I kind of knew--but only because of a Coulter quote I read in Joe Conason's book Big Lies: "Let's say I go out every night and meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm single." I also wanted to get it in that Coulter is a lying tub of shit. Here's the conversation:

STEVE YUHAS: We have a call. I don't know--this guy wants to ask you something. Troy in San Diego, welcome to KOGO.

SCOOBIE: Hey, what's happening Steve?

STEVE YUHAS: Nothing's happening, bro. What about you?

SCOOBIE: Oh, just, you know, chillin' and I was part of the group of bloggers that exposed Coulter's book Slander as a literary fraud [click here and here], but--

STEVE YUHAS: Wow! [sarcastically]

SCOOBIE: I really enjoyed Godless. It was really unintentionally hilarious. For example, on page one, she makes the ham-handed generalization--

STEVE YUHAS: You got all the way to page one without dismissing it. I'm shocked. [Coulter laughs] But go ahead and make the point quickly.

SCOOBIE: Yeah, the ham-handed generalization that liberals do not value chastity and that leads to the question: Does Coulter believe in chastity before marriage and is she practicing what she preaches? [Laughing] I'd really kind of like--

STEVE YUHAS: Well in all defense, I talk about things--I talk about gays not being able to get married and things but I'm certainly living a gay lifestyle. Does that mean THAT I can't have a political position because I talk about it?

SCOOBIE: No, the thing is that she's bemoaning the fact that liberals allegedly don't--

STEVE YUHAS: So you don't like generalizations. Is that what you're saying? But you generalized your review of her first book. [note: Slander was her second book]

SCOOBIE: It's a--no, what we did we exposed her as being a fraud--

[YUHAS DISCONNECTS ME. I BEGAN TO DISCUSS THE COLUMBIA JOURNALIS REVIEW ARTICLE BUT WAS CUT OFF. WHAT A PUSSY]

STEVE YUHAS: I bet you got millions of hits. Troy, thanks for the call. So Ann, did you generalize in the book? Did you over-generalize? I don't want the caller to seem stupid since books are generally generalizations of topics unless you're writing a specific reference to the Battle of the Bulge, you tend not to be topic-specific. But what about that? What about generalizations? Is it too upsetting to the liberals to see that they're being talked about?

COULTER: Yeah, well that's basically it what I wrote about in my press review of my own book in this week's column.

STEVE YUHAS: I loved that, by the way.

COULTER: Thank you.

STEVE YUHAS: You're welcome.

COULTER: No, that isn't even a particularly good argument. If that's the best he's coming up with for the entire book on the liberal's religion--to demand to know if I've ever had premarital sex and the book must be withdrawn if the answer were "yes."

REALITY: I wasn't even remotely suggesting that the book be withdrawn. I just wanted to mock Coulter's hypocrisy. Being a right-wing author is a good gig if you have no integrity or soul. Coulter sells books to the rubes extolling the virtues of chastity (and how liberals are immoral) and then uses the money to live a promiscuous lifestyle. This is just one variant of Republican sexual hypocrisy. Don't you right-wing lurkers feel stupid? Let me know in the comments.

As for Yuhas' smug comment that I've received millions of hits, just for my work on Coulter, I've received hundreds of thousands--and I've received many e-mails by people thanking me for allowing them to see the light about what a complete phony Coulter is. I have not received a single e-mail indicating that my blog on Slander is incorrect in any way.

In her previous book Slander, Coulter wrote, "So which women are constantly being called ugly? Is it Maxine Walters, Chelsea Clinton, Janet Reno, or Madeline Albright? No, none of these. Only conservative women have their looks held up to ridicule because only liberals would be so malevolent."

So malevolent? I punctured Coulter's claim in my blog devoted to Slander (click here and scroll down to "The Beauty Myth").

Here's a little gem from Godless that illustrates Coulter's hypocrisy:

The only sort of authority Cindy Sheehan has is the uncanny ability to demonstrate, by example, what body types should avoid wearing shorts in public. Godless, Page 128.

Divided We Stand has more.

Click here and read.

About a year ago, John Cloud did a puff piece on Coulter. Probably the biggest howler in the piece was Cloud's asssertion that "Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words "Ann Coulter lies," you will drown in results. But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."

The problem was that my blog documenting how Coulter's book Slander was a fraud was one of the first sites to pop up in a Google search. So I quickly wrote this so that people who read the Time article would find out what a poor journalist Cloud is (as well as what a lying sack of crap Coulter is).

For some insights on what Coulter is really about, read Kathleen Reardon.

If you're reading this, you probably already know about author Ann Coulter's recent statements about the 9/11 widows. So let's make this a water cooler quiz. Go to work and find someone who hasn't been following the news and give him/her the following short quiz. The answer for each of the questions is either 1) a brutal terrorist sentenced for the 9/11 attacks; or 2) an author respected in conservative and Republican circles:
1. Who said that statements from bereaved family members of 9/11 were "disgusting"?
2. Who, referring to bereaved 9/11 widows, said, "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much"?
3. Who said, "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis"?
4. Who referred to 9/11 widows who lived in East Brunswick, New Jersey as "the witches of East Brunswick"?

Let me know in the comments how you or others did on the quiz.

Answer key: 1. Zacarias Moussaoui 2. Ann Coulter 3. Ann Coulter 4. Ann Coulter

Even though Coulter's statements in the book should have made her a national pariah, the right's media network is doing a competent (but soulless) effort to partially shield Coulter from all the condemnation she deserves (click here and here).

Probably the biggest hypocrite of the Coulter is Sean Hannity. After cartoonist Ted Rall made a woefully failed attempt at humor about the 9/11 widows (and which caused the New York Times to drop Rall's cartoons), Hannity rightfully lambasted Rall when he appeared on Hannity & Colmes. Now Slanthead is an ardent defender of a vicious personal attack on the widows that goes much more beyond the pale than Rall’s tasteless cartoon:

"You're saying that liberalism cannot be sold by the people in office, and you feel people like Cindy Sheehan ... Jack Murtha, who was a former Marine... [t]he Jersey Girls ... are being used by the left to make points that they [liberals] cannot make on their own. Isn't that the point of the chapter?"

"You're saying they've entered the political arena. Now, I've gone and I've been looking at some of the comments, for example, of the Jersey Women in particular. ... [T]hey have been harsh about [Secretary of State] Condi Rice, about [White House senior adviser] Karl Rove ... about President Bush, very outspoken. They were on the campaign trail with [Sen.] John Edwards [D-NC] and with [Sen.] John Kerry [D-MA]. ... So basically what you're saying is, if they're going to enter the political arena separate from the loss of their husbands, that now this is a dialogue. If they call the president a liar, this is now a dialogue. And you're saying most people won't dare get engaged with them because of what they've been through."

"[T]he point here is, is that they [the 9-11 widows] have taken a strong, a harsh line politically against the president, that they name-call on their side, and that now it's time to challenge them, based on what these issues are, because they've gotten a pass because of their positions."

The Said-Without-Irony Award has to goes to Mike Gallagher. I heard a few minutes of his radio show today and he was commenting on the poor sales for the Dixie Chicks' concert tour and said that was a good thing because, according to Gallagher, the Chicks are anti-American and anti-war-on-terror for daring to give their opinion about George W. Bush. Gallagher then made a seamless segue into vociferously defending Coulter's personal attacks on the 9/11 widows. Gallagher's rationale was the straw man that if the widows want to take policy positions, they can receive criticism for them. Earth to lame middle-aged guy: accusing a bereaved widow of being a celebrity-seeking “broad” who enjoyed her husband's death doesn't address any policy issues.

Quote from Godless:

As a matter of faith, liberals believe: Darwinism is a fact, people are born gay, child-molesters can be rehabilitated, recycling is a virtue, and chastity is not.

While this statement, like most in the book, is meaningless (do over 100,000,000 people believe all of these things? I, for instance, believe some and not others), it raises a question with me: what is Coulter's view on chastity? Does she think chastity is a virtue? If so, is the 44-year-old never-married woman still saving herself?

I gleaned the book for humorous howlers: Coulter wrote that liberals are big on having "trophy wives" (sorry but I forgot to write down the exact quote). While certainly there are some Democrats who have trophy wives, one thing that some people noticed is that a lot of the GOP class of 1994--many of whom were unexpectedly thrust into congressional seats--suddenly gave their wives walking papers when they became big shots--soon-to-be-indicted Congressman Bob Ney is a good example. It was kind of fitting considering that the engineer of the Republican Revolution was none other than Coulter's friend Next Gingrich (who has a habit of dumping the old-ball-and-chains once they approach Coulter's age--BTW, Coulter turns 45 in December). For more on Gingrich and his serial harems, click here for a hilarious transcript of me laying out the facts to Sean Hannity.

I know that sounds like a personal attack. Even if it were, that would put me in the smae boat as Coulter. I don't know exactly what the motives are, but one thing I have know since I first read Coulter's work: she is a completely unprincipled person who doesn't think she's being unprincipled.

How can an unprincipled person think he/she is acting in a principled manner? That's easy: when you believe that your way is the only way and God is on your side, then anyone who disagrees with you and who supports a different party is not a member of the princpled opposition: he is on the side of the Devil and it's okay to dehumanize that person (not surprisingly, one of Coulter's heroes is Joe McCarthy). In trying to destroy a poltical opponent, you're doing God's will. Jerry Falwell probably didn't think he was being an asshole when he sold worthless smear tapes at a high price to his flock (using fraudulent infomericals); he thought he was in battle with Satan. That's the nature of the manichaean worldview: it fosters what Max Weber called "the ethic of ultimate ends."

While Coulter demonized liberals in general, there is something about Frank Rich that causes Coulter to become particularly nasty.
That's why in Godless, Coulter had no compunction about unceremoniously lumping Rich in with mass murderers in Godless. Exact quote (no, I'm not making this shit up):

They [liberals] have an irreducible fascination with barbarism and will defend anything hateful--Tookie, Mumia, Saddam Hussein, Hedda Nussbaum, abortion, The North American Man/Boy Love Association, New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

This God-is-on-my-side mentality is probably what allowed Coulter to justify in her mind her libel of Rich in her book (ironically titled) Slander.

Even though I am considered to be "godless" (note to Coulter and her apologists, I didn't endure major pain to get the AUM tattoed on my body for kicks), I try to adhere to what Weber called the ethic of responsibility. The ethic of responsibility posits that the means to an end affects the end itself. That's the whole thing about karma--something that Coulter and her friends on the sectarian right certainly don't condone (in fact, Coulter's friend Pat Robertson thinks this kind of thing is demonic and should be kept out of the country (check out my conversation with Hannity about this).

Ann Coulter on the 9/11 Widows: "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Godless: The Church of Liberalism, p. 103.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

Jesus wept.

Not surprisingly, Godless is godawful. More on Godless later tonight.

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