Appendix 1. Fact-checking Ann Coulter.
(Note: This appendix was produced by the team at Tapped, the
daily web log of The American Prospect magazine, who generously
granted me permission to reprint for the purposes of this
book.)
Chapter 1
ANN COULTER READER CONTEST! We'd almost run out of things
to say about that nutty gal, Ann Coulter. But then she went
and wrote another
book. But it may not be much of a book. Tapped reader
U.R. reports that one chapter into Coulter's book -- "I
only managed to get through the first chapter," he writes,
because "I can't read the book more than a few minutes
at a time" -- he's already found two obvious factual
errors. On page 7, Coulter writes that Jim Jeffords "opposed
Reagan's tax cut, supported the elder Bush's tax hike, supported
Clinton's tax hike, and opposed the younger Bush's tax cut."
She's right about the first two. But we checked, and Jeffords
-- like all Republicans at the time -- voted against Clinton's
1993 budget (which included the tax hike) and for George W.
Bush's recent tax cut. The latter is a pretty glaring error,
both because it was so recent and because Jeffords' refusal
to oppose the cut was a major blow to liberals who thought
his party switch would help them defeat it.
(On the same page, Coulter also writes that Jeffords "voted
against Clinton's impeachment" -- which is impossible,
as the Senate never voted on impeachment. The House has the
power to impeach; the Senate only votes on whether or not
to convict. Jeffords did, however, vote against conviction.
So maybe we're quibbling.)
If Coulter is going to title her book Slander, it would
be nice if she would also go to the trouble of proofreading
it. But maybe she didn't have time. (She is, after all, a
busy girl.) So we've decided to help Coulter out. Starting
today, Tapped will hold a reader contest: Fact Check Ann Coulter.
We invite our readers to slog their way through Slander and
email Tapped with
examples of factual errors. Include the page number; we'll
take a look in our own copy and post the ones we can verify.
As a reward for this difficult, dirty task, the Tapped reader
who emails in the most examples will get a free year's subscription
to The American Prospect. Let the fact-checking begin!
Chapter 2
TIME STANDS STILL FOR ANN COULTER. Okay, this isn't exactly
a "fact check" of Coulter's new book. It's almost
too obvious for that. Nevertheless, we couldn't resist pointing
out something this glaring. On page four of her book Slander,
Coulter writes that "after the September 11 attack on
America, all partisan wrangling stopped dead," and soon
continues:
The bipartisan lovefest lasted precisely three weeks.
That was all the New York Times could endure. Impatient with
the national mood of patriotism, liberals returned to their
infernal griping about George W. Bush -- or "Half a Commander
in Chief," as he was called in the headline of a lead
New York Times editorial on November 5, 2001. From that moment
on, the left's primary contribution to the war effort was
to complain.
Sorry, Ann, but last we checked, November 5 was just under
two months after September 11.
Chapter 3
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER!: SHOOTING BLANKS ON CROSSFIRE. Okay,
this isn't from Slander. It's from Coulter's appearance
on Hardball, guest-hosted by Mike Barnicle. We missed this
gem, but reader R.L. passed it along:
I will guess that the judges who said the Pledge of Allegiance
violates the constitution were appointed by Democrats and
not Republicans. I haven't looked at the decision. I haven't
even heard about the decision because I've been busy today,
but that's a wild guess I'm going to make....Oh, I'm just
waiting to see if anyone will take any bets on me on whether
the judges who wrote the decision were appointed by a Democrat
or Republican.
We think we can safely assume the implication
here. In actuality, of course, only one of the two judges
was appointed by a Democrat -- Judge Stephen Reinhardt,
a Carter appointee. The other was Judge Alfred T. Goodwin,
who was appointed by that great liberal, Richard Nixon.
This really speaks volumes about just what a hack Coulter
is; it requires no elaboration on our part. But perhaps
now the chat shows will stop billing Coulter as a "constitutional
lawyer." No wonder the profession is held in such low
regard.
Chapter 4
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER!: LEXIS-NEXIS ABUSE. On page 15 of
Slander, she writes: "In the New York Times archives,
'moderate Republican' has been used 168 times...There have
been only 11 sightings of a 'liberal Republican.'" Coulter
does not footnote her methodology in "discovering"
this nugget, but we checked using both the Times's own free
search page and Lexis-Nexis. Our results? Our Times search
reveals twenty-two hits for "liberal Republican"
since 1996 -- that is, in just the last seven years. For Lexis,
we searched for "liberal Republican" in The New
York Times over "all available dates" -- and got
524 documents. Coulter's claim is obviously false. But stay
tuned -- Tapped spent all weekend reading Slander and there's
lots more to come.
P.S. We also have another non-Slander error, courtesy of
reader J.O. In Coulter's
latest column on Townhall.com, she writes:
If Arabs were being stopped at airports before Sept. 11
-- and that's a big if -- that was probably wrong. There
had been only one terrorist attack here in America by Arabs
-- the bomb at the World Trade Center in 1993. (This is
excluding Sirhan Sirhan, the first Muslim to bring the classic
religion-of-peace protest to American shores, when, in support
of the Palestinians, he assassinated Robert Kennedy.)
But Sirhan Sirhan was, in fact, a Christian of Arab descent,
not a Muslim. For a relatively recent source on this, you
can check out the historian Godfrey Hodgson's 1995 review
of Dan Moldea's The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy in The Washington
Post. We found it on Lexis, but a quick Google search led
us to the citation. Hey, Jonathan,
is Coulter phoning it in or what?
Chapter 5
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: THE "GORE LIED" LIE.
Today's first installment concerns Al Gore's reputation
as a lying, exaggerating braggart, gleefully perpetuated
by Ann Coulter in her new book, Slander. Coulter eeks out
impressive mileage from Gore's supposed lie about having
been "the inspiration" for Love Story, Erich Segal's
1970 bestselling-romance-novel-turned-Oscar-nominated-film.
She refers to the alleged Love Story lie a whopping four
times in Slander -- on pages 145, 154, 159, and 160. But
this one has been debunked by Eric Boehlert
in Salon, Bob Somersby
in the Daily Howler, Robert Parry in The Washington
Monthly, and Sean Wilentz in
TAP.
The truth is that Gore was the inspiration for the book's
hero, Oliver Barrett IV, according to Segal. Segal's reported
"denial" of Gore's claim was no denial at all.
Speaking to the New York Times's Melinda Henneberger for
a follow-up story, Segal said that Oliver Barrett was based
on Gore and his Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones.
He only denied that the female lead, the fiery musician
Jenny Cavilleri, was based on Tipper Gore. And even that
wrong detail was not Gore's mistake.
What actually happened? On a late-night plane ride in late
1997, shooting the breeze with Time's Karen Tumulty and
the Times's Rick Berke, Gore mentioned that the main characters
in Love Story were based on him and Tipper. At any rate,
Gore said, that's what Segal had told the Nashville Tennessean
years ago on his book tour. Segal met Gore and Jones when
they were students at Harvard together and Gore was dating
Tipper, then a student at Boston University. Tumulty reported
this comment in Time but neglected to include in her story
the fact that Gore had said explicitly that his only source
on Love Story was what the Tennessean had reported some
seventeen years prior. But the Tennessean, it turned out,
has misquoted Segal, who had said nothing about Tipper.
In Henneberger's follow-up, Segal himself defended Gore:
"Al attributed it to the newspaper...They conveniently
omitted that part. Time thought it was more piquant to leave
that out."
So did Coulter.
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 6
ANALYSIS: It's a small detail, but Coulter uses it so often
-- and so flagrantly disregards the truth -- that we're
giving this one an above-average score.
Chapter 6
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: THE SELMA LIE. Live by LexisNexis,
die by LexisNexis. That certainly seems to be the case with
Ann Coulter's latest book, Slander. Yesterday
we exposed a blatantly false statement in her book about
the use of the phrase "liberal Republican" in
the New York Times, and today we expose another. Here is
the relevant passage, from p. 199 of Slander:
Since abortion is not the left's proudest moment, liberals
prefer to keep reminiscing about the last time they were
giddily self-righteous. Like a senile old man who keeps
telling you the same story over and over again, liberals
babble on and on about the "heady" days of civil
rights marches. Between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times
alone ran more than one hundred articles on "Selma"
alone. I believe we may have revisited this triumph of theirs
sufficiently by now. For anyone under fifty, the "heady"
days of civil rights marches are something out of a history
book. The march on Selma was thirty-five years ago.
Tapped smelled a rat here. Maybe it was Coulter's repetition
of the word "alone"; or maybe it was the fact
that the famous 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march was
from Selma to Montgomery, not a march "on" Selma.
So we searched the New York Times archives on LexisNexis
for the word "Selma" for the years 1995-2001.
This produced 776 total hits. Of these, 424 were death notices,
18 were wedding announcements, 25 were other sorts of paid
notices, 5 were in photo captions, and 234 were either:
a) contents listings; b) people with the name Selma; c)
references to Selma, California; or d) references to Selma,
Alabama that had nothing to do with civil rights (b, c,
and d includes letters and op-eds as well as regular articles).
Of the remaining 70 items, in our judgment only 16 were
centrally concerned with historic happenings at Selma from
the civil rights era. The other 54 contained brief mentions
of Selma and civil rights but appeared in articles on different
topics. Once again, Coulter's dubious claim -- that "between
1995 and 2001, the New York Times alone ran more than one
hundred articles on 'Selma'" -- is false.
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 5
ANALYSIS: Another misdemeanor for Coulter. It's hard to
tell whether this one resulted from deliberate deceit or
incorrigible stupidity.
Chapter 7
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: LIBERAL CHEAP SHOTS. As Tapped
readers know, we've been fact checking Ann Coulter's new
book with some regularity lately. And we've got some more
on this today, but first, a couple of asides. Lest we be
accused of bias against Coulter -- as opposed to mere animus
-- let us note that she actually isn't wrong about everything.
Yes, we know it's a shock. But Mickey Kaus has
the goods.
Now that that's said, though, we'd like to get on to the
various problems with Coulter's book. Coulter, herself a
paragon
of high-minded political dialogue, charges that the
left resorts to ad hominem low blows and cheap shots on
conservatives, especially women. On p. 17 of Slander, she
asks rhetorically: "[W]hich women are constantly being
called ugly? Is it Maxine Waters, 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."
Coulter apparently forgot John McCain's notorious joke about
Chelsea Clinton: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because
Janet Reno is her father." And let's not forget Jay
Leno calling a man dressed as Reno an "ugly bitch."
Now, is this a "fact check"? Well, note that Coulter
says categorically, "No, none of these" -- i.e.,
none of these women are frequently being called ugly. Coulter's
point about low blow attacks is well taken, but her comment
plainly isn't true.
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 6
ANALYSIS: How could anyone honestly claim that Chelsea Clinton
hasn't suffered slights based on her appearance? If Ann
Coulter had a movie made about her, it would have to be
titled "Say Anything."
Chapter 8
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: RONALD REAGAN, COLD WAR HERO. In
her new book, Slander, Ann Coulter repeats herself a number
of times on a number of points (and we use the term "points"
here loosely). Her most beloved mantra, however, is Ronald
Reagan's heroic Cold War victory. Coulter returns to Reagan
as a sacred mantra, reiterating at least ten times her assertion
that Reagan "won the Cold war" (see pp. 16, 33,
34, 125, 130, 132-33, 134, 145, and 197).
Now, mind you, Coulter's book isn't about Reagan. She simply
uses Reagan's Cold War victory as the ultimate trump card
against liberals who criticized Reagan, then and now. How
can they call him stupid, she asks -- and fiscally irresponsible,
and a supporter of brutal third-world regimes -- when "the
ripe old fellow single-handedly won the Cold War, ending
the forty-year threat of nuclear annihilation"? (Aside:
Will someone please tell India and Pakistan to get with
the program? Nuclear brinksmanship is so fifteen years ago
-- it went out with shoulder pads and good punk rock.)
The obvious objection to Coulter is that both the collapse
of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union took
place while Bush Sr. was president. So at the very least,
she ought to explain how they're Reagan's doing (she doesn't).
More importantly, though, the frequently-touted argument
that Reagan deserves credit for exhausting the Evil Empire
through huge increases in military spending (with which
the Soviets were forced to keep pace) is flawed. Soviet
documents released in the 1990s reveal that Reagan's defense
policies had little effect on Soviet spending (see, for
example, Jonathan Kwitny's Man of the Century). The Soviet
Union was going to collapse under its own weight no matter
how many peasants U.S.-trained death squads murdered in
El Salvador. Reagan deserves credit for disarmament efforts,
but those certainly had support from Democrats -- as, to
be fair, did huge budget deficits. (For a good summary of
how the Cold War ended, see here.)
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 5
ANALYSIS: Cold War debates are always murky, and Coulter
isn't the first to lionize Reagan, so she isn't lying. Still,
Coulter never bothers to back-up her claim with any historical
argument, even a flawed one. She glibly refers to Reagan's
"winning" as though it were common knowledge,
substituting soggy repetition for evidence.
Chapter 9
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: MEDIA DARLING AL GORE. This, gentle
reader, is the mother of them all. Make sure you're sitting
down. Thanks to Coulter whistle-blower K.M.
On page 139 of her new book, Slander -- now a bestseller
-- Ann Coulter describes how cruelly the media treated George
W. Bush during the election. By contrast, she reports:
[T]he press maintained radio silence on stories embarrassing
to Gore. For example, … Al Gore couldn't pick George
Washington out of a lineup. In a highly publicized stop
at Monticello during Clinton's 1993 inaugural festivities,
Gore pointed to carvings of Washington and Benjamin Franklin
and asked the curator: 'Who are these guys?' He was surrounded
by reporters and TV cameras when he said it. Only one newspaper,
USA Today, reported the incident.
Coulter isn't wrong if, by "only one newspaper,"
she actually means "dozens of newspapers." In
the immediate aftermath of the incident, references to Gore's
gaffe appeared in USA Today, Newsday, The Washington Times,
London's Evening Standard, and, the coup de grace, two articles
in Coulter's favorite bulwark of liberal bias, The New York
Times. The Associated Press also ran a story with the incident
in its headline, so many local papers probably picked it
up.
But wait! There's more! The authors of one of the New York
Times articles were none other than Maureen Dowd and Frank
Rich, two of Coulter's most reliable liberal scapegoats,
who were both reporters in 1993 when the incident occurred.
If these two are co-leaders of the vast, left-wing conspiracy,
they sure dropped the ball.
Had enough of the love? We're still not done yet because
…Coulter also misquoted Gore! His actual words were
"Who are these people?" not "Who are these
guys?" It's a small error, but it obviously makes Gore
sound more disrespectful of the founding fathers, and even
the USA Today article Coulter did find got the quotation
right.
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 7
ANALYSIS: Either Coulter is purposefully lying, or she is
breathtakingly incompetent, even using her favorite research
tool, LexisNexis. Have you no sense of decency, madam, at
long last?
Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred
Citation: , "Tapped: Fact check
Ann Coulter, a special edition.," The American Prospect
Online, July 26, 2002
