Slander

Rating:
Summary: Hypocrite?
Review: Ms Coulter writes in her book Slander about how the left hates the right. She also writes about how the media is biased against the right and other issues such as that one. I can understand her views about the left, but in this book she is very much a hypocrite.
She does make several good points about the liberal media. She has hard facts to back them up, and her disdain is understandable. Some liberal biases in the media are noticeable to viewers, and her book only backs up their beliefs. She shows us what the media really is.
She also shows us how the republicans are passed over by news organizations, and nearly all people hired are democrat. She shows how new employees are staunchly democrat; many have worked in democrat political offices or campaigns.
She writes in several passages about how the liberals are damaging society, and how wrong abortion is. It is obvious that she feels very strongly against the liberal viewpoint, but it is also obvious that she greatly dislikes the liberals who are saying them. In the rest of her book, she is condemning liberals for hating republicans, but how can she do this when she hates liberals?
I enjoyed reading this book from the factual standpoint of it. Any time she was outlining how the media was biased or how they mislead the public, I was intrigued. But any time she talked about issues, she lost me, and she lost much of my respect for her.

Rating:
Summary: What a jerk!
Review: Some Republican had the audacity to copy my stupid Dimetapp overdose induced review!

Rating:
Summary: Why did you have to execute my Teddy? :'(
Review: I don't get it! He was such a good Republican and then WHAM! You use your beloved capital punishment against your own Theodore Bundy!

Rating:
Summary: The Truth Told Like It Is
Review: As a student who has attended the liberal mecha UCLA for the past couple of years, I will say that Coulter's book is one of the best reads about the media published. I took a class called "Propaganda and the Media" which tried to prove that there was a liberal bias in the media with a book by Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky did a lousy job of proving his case because there were few examples given and too much theory presented. The liberals have no case for a conservative bias in the media. Ann Coulter took the unprecedented step in researching the media with hundreds of blatant liberal biases demonstrated in the media. It's fortunate that we have people like Coulter to expose the lies of the liberal media. This is a must read for liberals and conservatives alike.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking.
Review: I put off reading this book for a long time because I thought I knew everything Ann Coulter was going to say. I was right.

Blanket stereotyping, illogical conclusions, poor researching techniques, endless ranting, name calling, and shady siting all make this book a chore to read. I feel I deserve a cash reward for mucking through the whole book.

I'm not going to rehash everything the intelligent reviewers have already said. I'm not going to try and convince the right wing fanboys they're wrong. They want to throw their lot in with Coulter's group and convince themselves everything she says is gospel, trying to vilify everything a lib says, and covering every utterance sputtered by a right winger. anything that can't be covered is glossed over or lied about. Check out some of the pro-Coulter posts on this page for examples. What's gonna change their minds? Obviously the truth won't.

But for fellow moderates who are on the fence about reading this book, my advice is this: skim, skim, skim. Coulter often repeats herself, so if you miss a "liberals are stupid" on one page, rest assured you'll see it elsewhere. Many times. You simply can't avoid it. Also, Coulter didn't come up with a single political issue to represent her party's side of the argument, so those of you trying to find where the Republicans stand on a particular issue would do well to look elsewhere, in a non partisan book. Yes, they do exist.

Coulter, who belives she lives in a world with a liberal media and laments for unbiased reporting, is the picture perfect icon of hypocrisy. Any comments from liberal figures are put in the worst light possible, while she tries to downplay everything said by her fellow Republicans. For instance, religious zealot Jerry Falwell proclaimed the pagans, pro choice individuals, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU, and People For the American Way helped make the WTC attacks happen, because they had angered God. So God, Falwell says, allowed a terrorist group to murder thousands of people. Pretty serious charge, eh? However, when Coulter gets her hands on the quote, she tones it down to something along the lines of "he merely suggested that perhaps the Almighty may not be pleased with these indivduals." She didn't say, "Falwell said women for equal rights and gays helped Osama and crew." Stark truth is anathema to Coulter; she wouldn't have a book if she stuck to unvarnished truth. (Nor would 98% of all political writers, I'd wager.)

The liberal books on the market should serve as guidelines to Coulter: Be amusing, do your research, be precise, and don't lie. A tall order to be sure, but hey, I hear the self respect is worth it. Yes, authors like Al Franken and Michael Moore abuse statistics to their advantage, but at least said advantage is based on reality.

Someone might be wondering about the review title. Yes, this book did provoke a thought or two. "Why did I waste my time reading this?" "Why isn't Ann in rage therapy?"

People who read this book and couldn't stop rolling their eyes, or people who think both Republicans and Democrats should stop whining about each other should check out the Libertarian party. Moderation at its best.

And with that, I wish you good day. I'm off to wish on a star that certain people didn't use the Amazon review forum like a chat board, posting snivelling responses to reviews they didn't happen to like. (And glossing over certain parts when they knew they didn't have an out. And nitpicking points. Al Franken's not the only one to do that. Oh yes, and posting a five star rating every time they do so, to make the average rating go up. How slimy.) Does this look like Usenet?

Rating:
Summary: Still looking for the point.
Review: Just what was the point of this book?! Coulter keeps jumping up and down, pointing her fingers and screeching like a monkey on crack, and that's about it. She doesn't talk about any right wing arguments. She just calls people names and makes generalzations about liberals! (And I haven't once read anything from a right winger trying to justify this. Or trying to justify the other rude things she says on a regular basis. Could it be GASP! that it's inexcusable?!) Oh yeah, and she claims that the media is liberal. Of course we haven't heard that conspiracy theory before, Annie-pooh. And don't forget, scary, scary monsters are hiding under the bed, waiting to attack. Please. That's why we heard so much about Clinton's military and pot folies, but hardly a word on Bush's crack snorting, frequent drunk driving, and, you know, the whole AWOL thing. (And then he has the gall to show up in uniform! How dare he show such disrespect to those who actually served!) The liberal media does a wonderful job of reporting on government changes and policies that affect us average Joes in a normal way. I've stop watching the networks for news; they're all too busy kissing up to the poor oppressed right. (Pardon the dripping sarcasm) Coulter and company just ignore all the news stories that put the war in a positive light, and cheerfully wave away evidence that shows the networks are in fact, conservitive. For example, she never answers when it is pointed out that a major network had a memo leak out, which gave explicit instructions to show anti war activists in a negative light, and to show photogenic, attractive people who were for the war.

Coulter takes fragments of facts and strings them together to make a sparkly hunk of lies and half truths. Whenever she's caught in a lie or caught misleading, rightie fanboys scoff and call it an innocent mistake, 'cause of COURSE sweet ole Ann wouldn't ever lie! She's just the moral girl next door!

On Coulter's Mix 'n Match the Quotes game, especially with the Times... Hello? You don't mix up quotes from different people in the same paragraph and not site them RIGHT THERE, in said paragraph. She and her pack of rabid righties can point to her endnotes (not footnotes! She was too cowardly to use easy-to-reference footnotes!) all they want, but that doesn't excuse her total lack of respect for journalistic standards. Most readers will not look through endnotes, period. Most people WILL think the Times said those things. Even a far right wing friend admitted she thought the Times wrote all those things until I showed her the endnotes. (And righties: don't start saying that "most intelligent people will look through the endnotes." Ask a few publishers, or look at a few books on writing research books. The endnotes are rarely touched.)

I cannot respect a thing this woman says. Her lack of regard for life ensures that. After all, she actually asked what was wrong about going to war just for oil. I guess she's okay with American troops getting killed left and right if she can get gas at $1.15 a gallon.

One last thing about Coulter that makes me distrust her and renders anything she says worthless (in my eyes). She misrepresents the usage of the term "flag waver." She claims that liberals hate America, and this is proof, because we use the term as insult. Annie, darlin', When someone is called a "flag waver" they are being scorned for using this proud nation's flag as an excuse to kill and pillage. You know, like your party. (I notice the righties use the flag often when trying to justify oppressing anyone who doesn't think like them, look like them, or gosh darn it, someone they just don't happen to like. These people are desecrating our flag. We need to take it back!)

I need to thank Coulter, however. Thanks to her rabid, psychotic ranting, more and more people are seeing what a sham the right wing rhetoric is! I know of several people who have become Libertarian or Green because of people like Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Riley, and company. Perhaps we need to spread this book around... Heh heh heh.

Rating:
Summary: Conservatism's blonde bombshell explodes again.
Review: Ann Coulter is Conservatism's blonde bombshell. "Blonde" as in blonde, and "bombshell" as in exploding with a blinding shower of prose shrapnel that leaves you with a ringing inside your head.

A large index and copious footnotes lend the book an air of scholarship. [There are over 1,200 index entries on 14 pages, and 780 end notes on 36 pages, totalling 50 pages of end matter for a 205-page text.] But what gets footnoted? Even her little quips. On p.202 she writes " 'Shut up,' they explained" and then refers us to this end note:

"From the Ring Lardner short story 'The Immigrants.' "

In fact, the phrase "Shut up, he explained" is from "The Young Immigrunts [spelled thus]." So for a four-word phrase, we get an eight-word footnote containing two errors. Scholarly indeed.

Let's pick out one of those 1,200 index entries at random. "Blair, Linda, 102" leads us to the sentence "Publishing houses react to conservative authors like Linda Blair to holy water." Heady stuff, but the entry missed at least one other reference to Blair, on p.22. Let's pick another. "Environmental Protection Agency, 53-54." On page 53 we find "Another profile in liberal courage is . . . Christie Todd Whitman, appointed by Bush to run the Environmental Protection Agency," with no further mention of the EPA on p.53, and none at all on p.54. I wanted to look up for inclusion here her valid comment on the Constitution's "three fifths of all other Persons" clause, but of the words I could remember from it, I could not find an entry for slave, Congress, aportionment, or votes, and the one entry for Constitution led elsewhere. So much for scholarship.

Still, if you can hold your nose through sections of absurd ranting, and her cut-and-paste version of what liberals say/think, there's still a lot to look at. Remember, she's a lawyer, not a philospher, so you've got to endure a certain amount of word-slinging while waiting for an idea to come whizzing by. [If you want philosophy, try Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions," available here in paperback.] Her observations on the liberal news media are often right on target, and she devotes an entire chapter to some loony liberal reactions to Bush's victory over Gore in Florida, always a source of mirth for those of us who did =not= vote for the man who grew up working on a farm in the foothills of Washington DC, inspired a sappy romance novel, and went on to invent the internet. "One [fact] that simply cannot be discounted as a factor in helping create the 'impression' that Bush won [the Florida election] is that he won." In every count and recount ever made, official and unofficial. But she wastes a chapter denying the existence of the "religious right" with the same fervor as liberals deny the existence of the "liberal media."

Conservatives, you'll enjoy much that's in this book -- you're the choir she's preaching to. Liberals, read it and learn that you're not fooling all of the people all of the time.

Rating:
Summary: Great teaching tool!
Review: Coulter's book made teaching my unit on logical fallacies a breeze! Even the slowest students easily identified countless hasty generalizations, ad hominem attacks, false analogies, non sequiters, and more--all within a couple of pages! Were adult readers as astute, Coulter's deeply flawed "arguments" wouldn't muster a passing grade--let alone a bestseller.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book...
Review: ...If you want to become disenchanted with the Republican party. This book is full of misleading phrases and lies, and they're easy exposed... if you do some research. Something Ms. Coulter seems to neglect. I can imagine many right wingers jumping up and screaming for proof *right now*, so here's a taste of what you'll find if you pay attention:

She's quick to point the finger at liberals and call them liars (Doesn't she claim *liberals* are whiny name callers...?), yet she lies left and right. She sites "evidence" that the media is in the libs' collective pocket. For example, she says, Newsweek Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas "is the son of Norman Thomas, a four time Socialist canidate for president." Um... No. First of all, he ran six times. More importantly, Evan Thomas is the son of Evan Thomas, Sr. See what the wonders of Google can do for you, Ann? Now, I'll bet a right winger will be rolling the ole eyeballs right now, asking why something so seemingly small matters. My response is this: If she can't correctly research such a small fact, how can she be trusted to report *important* facts accurately? Onward to a bit in _Slander_ that's truly sickening, On pg 12, she implies the New York Times called Clarance Thomas a "chicken and biscuit eating Uncle Tom," "house negro", "handkerchief head," among other things. These quotes actually came from a Playboy interview with former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and from another person at a meeting of the Southren Christian Leadership Con ference who was quoted. Those hateful things weren't said by the people at the New York Times.

Another bad habit of Coulter's is siting a source, but not actually giving a direct quote, so she can misrepresent what said source said. Example: She claims New York Times Frank Rich demanded that Ashcroft stop monkeying around with Muslim terrorists and concentrate on anti-abortion extremists. Ahh... No, Ann. In the sited column, Rich criticized Ashcroft's refusal to meet with Planned Parenthood. You know, the group with years of experience of being attacked by religious zealots with sniper rifles and bombs. Not ONCE did Rich anything about Ashcroft needing to stop "monkeying" around with terrorists. Want more? Coulter mixes and matches quotes for her points. (Apparently, she doesn't have a point if she can't lie and/or mislead) She took a quote from a *book review* and another from a *quote of a quote* in the Times, paired them up, and claims the paper is against Christians.

The most curious thing I noted was the lack of evidence for any Republican issue. Nothing about the economic crisis. Nothing about schools. She doesn't argue for anything on behalf of Republicans. The entire book is just Coulter calling people names (for instance, calling several actresses "silicon nothings". In Coulter's eyes, it seems, one can't be pretty and intelligent at the same time. And don't forget NPR is only listened to by elitest wannabes, from her view.), lying, misleading her readers, etc.

Coulter knows no compassion. She has said she wished Tomothy McVeigh had gone to the Times building. (That excerpt is from a New York Observer article) She's written "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." (From her column)

If you're not wretching in shame yet, you should look at her endnotes in depth. If you're not afraid of what you'll find.

My biggest problem with Coulter's rantings: She says liberals hate America, and that is one of the filthiest lies ever told. I am a liberal, and I would die for my beloved country. I know liberals who are willing, and some who did die for this land. She talks about Clinton draft dodging, but never mentions Rush, Bush, Pat, etc, and their deft draft dodging skills.

If Coulter thinks there's so much wrong with this country, why isn't she actually getting her hands dirty trying to make it better?

Rating:
Summary: Please Help Ranting Conservative Find a Home
Review: I will play along with Ann and Rush (Author of the Foreword), and humor them by stating that Ann Coulter is an educated conservative. She stands up for her fellow conservatives in the midst of a liberal, name-calling media. Even assuming that all of these wild accusations are true, this book is ridiculous ranting. The sparsely scattered facts are documented in the 790 "footnotes" (quoting Rush Limbaugh's foreword) that are actually at the end of the book rather than the more traditional bottom of the page. A quick glance here will show the reader why these notes are at the end of the book: because many of them are inaccurate and unreliable. Coulter accuses the media of being liberal, yet a basic Nexis search comparing Clinton's military background to Bush's is overwhelmingly conservative biased.
If the fact that Coulter pulls many of her sources out of thin air is not enough to dissuade you from reading this, most of her writing is hypocritical or wrong. Her key point is that liberals often resort to name-calling in arguments. However, many of her key citations show that the liberals are often misquoted and then aggressively accused by their debate opponents, or, more commonly, the subjects of their interviews, for completely random reasons. Also, in one of the book's witty satirical moments, Coulter jokes that liberals would be robbed of all their debate material if they were not allowed to call conservatives dumb, homophobic, racist, etc. This is ridiculous!

Not only do liberals usually make the more educated argument, but it is entirely fair to accuse conservatives of being homophobic, for instance, considering that they promote passing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I realize that this is just petty squabbling, but I am not getting paid millions to rant; I am doing it out of the kindness of my heart. Finally, this book is completely mistitled. Since one of Coulter's signature points is accusing The New York Times of being too liberal, even if she is referring to liberals rather than herself the book is misnamed. Libel is the term for written "slander". I find it difficult to believe that such an educated individual would make such a stupid mistake.

In conclusion, this is not a book for everyone. If you are interested in hearing the same unfounded, biased, and senseless conservative dribble with a refreshingly nasty mocking flair to it, this is the book for you. Maybe you should help Ann Coulter find a safe home before Rush Limbaugh gets her hooked on something more toxic than what she is already taking. However, if you, like most people, actually want to read something that will challenge your mind, let you think for yourself, or at least is more entertaining, look elsewhere. Try Franken, Orwell, or Alterman. Compared to Slander, even the Sunday comics or Home Shopping Network are intellectually stimulating. At least they are logical, not too mention cheaper.