What Liberal Media? | 1, 2, 3, 4

FIRST MET ANN COULTER in 1996 when we were both hired to be pundits on the new cable news station, MSNBC. Still just a right-wing congressional aide, she had been hired without even a hint of journalistic experience, but with a mouth so vicious she made her fellow leggy blonde pundit, Laura Ingraham, look and sound like Mary Tyler Moore in comparison.

Coulter was eventually fired when she attacked a disabled Vietnam veteran on the air, screaming, "People like you caused us to lose that war." But this was just one of many incidents where she had leaped over the bounds of good taste into the kind of talk that is usually reserved for bleachers or bar-fights. In her columns, published in one of the most extreme of all conservative publications, Human Events, she would regularly refer to the president of the United States, Bill Clinton as a "pervert, liar and a felon" and "a flim-flam artist." She termed the First Lady to be "pond scum" and "white trash." The late Pamela Harriman a "whore." Coulter said these things all the while appearing on-air in dresses so revealing they put one in mind of Sharon Stone in the film, Basic Instinct.

The greater Coulter's fame, the more malevolent grew her hysteria. In her 1998 book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case against Bill Clinton, she wrote, "In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he 'did it,' even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate." Such was the wisdom of the alleged "Constitutional scholar" whose work George Will quoted on ABC's The Week. (Will is not very particular about his sources. I counted exactly one work of history in Coulter's copious footnotes. Coulter has also been accused of plagiarism by a former colleague, but denies the charge. )

Shortly after 9/11, Coulter became famous again when she suggested, in a column published by National Review Online, after seeing anti-American demonstrators in Arab nations, that we "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Coulter's column was dropped by the magazine, but not because the editors objected to its content. Editor Jonah Goldberg explained, "We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship and loyalty." (Coulter had called the editors "girly boys.") Coulter remained unbowed. At a meeting of the National Political Action Conference, Coulter advised, "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." She also joked about the proposed murder of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

In her second book-length primal scream, published in the summer of 2002, Coulter compared Katie Couric of the Today Show to Eva Braun. (She would later add Joseph Goebbels after Couric challenged her in an interview.) She termed Christie Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey and the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a "dimwit" and a "birdbrain." Sen. Jim Jeffords is a "half-wit." Gloria Steinem is a "termagent" and "deeply ridiculous figure," who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. Magazine. But the errors are even more egregious than the insults, and her footnotes are, in many significant cases, a sham. The good folks at The American Prospect's web log, "Tapped" went to the trouble of compiling Coulter's errors chapter by chapter. The sheer weight of these, coupled with their audacity, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a journalistic culture that allows her near a microphone, much less a printing press.

Coulter's view of the U.S. media can be summed up as follows: "American journalists commit mass murder without facing the ultimate penalty, I think they are retarded." In the New York Observer, published in one of the two cities attacked on 9/11, Coulter joked about how wonderful it would have been if Timothy McVeigh had blown up The New York Times building and murdered all of its inhabitants. Apparently nothing -- not even the evocation, serious or not, of the mass murder of journalists -- could turn Coulter's love affair with the so-called liberal media sour.

For such comments, she is celebrated and rewarded. While promoting Slander, Coulter was booked on Today, Crossfire (as both a guest and guest-host), Hardball, The Big Story with John Gibson, and countless other cable and radio programs. She was lovingly profiled in Newsday, the New York Observer and The New York Times "Sunday Styles" page, while also enjoying a seat at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner as a guest of The Boston Globe. She was even invited on ABC's Good Morning America as an election analyst in November 2002. In The Wall Street Journal -- a newspaper that had actually been destroyed by terrorists, and whose reporter, Daniel Pearl, had been murdered by them -- Melik Kaylan defended her comments in Coulter-like fashion. He argued, "We have been programmed to think that such impassioned outrage, and outrageousness, are permissible only on the left, from counter-culture comedians or exponents of identity politics." He also compared Coulter's alleged "humor" to that of Lenny Bruce, Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. Too bad, therefore, as Charles Piece pointed out, the conservative media darling has yet to be "arrested and jailed for what she said (Lenny Bruce), prosecuted in federal court (Angela Davis) or shot to ribbons in her bed (the Black Panthers)."

Next page | Bias-ed Against The Facts
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