Slander

Rating:
Summary: Liberals get a taste of their own medicine and some more...
Review: Conservative writer Ann Coulter does not mince words about her ideological opposition. She learnt from the liberals their way of attacking the opposition - vitriol, some exaggeration and far-reaching conclusions; however, she adds something that liberals totally forget - she backs her writing with the facts.

Page after page is devoted to exploring and refuting liberal ideology and arguments. It is richly spiced-up with humor and examples of liberals time and time again taking the side of the enemies of US against their own country. No matter who the opposing side is, be it Communists, Moslem fundamentalists, Black Panthers, or plain old Central Park rapists - liberals take their side and bash America, conservatives, capitalism, and anything that represents traditional American society. Ann Coulter exposes it time and time again with the examples and quotes of various liberal pundits.

Author sheds a light on the fact that in almost any public debate liberals have not offered valid arguments, it is always "stupidity" of their opponents that they attack. "Stupid" Ronald Reagan destroyed Soviet Communism, "stupid" Bush Sr. liberated Kuwait, and saved US from the imminent fuel shortage crisis, "stupid" G.W. Bush is leading war on terror. Liberals have criticized all of them, but never offered an alternative solution, with the exception of giving in to the demands of the enemies whenever possible. Ann Coulter explores this issue in great detail.

The reason I gave "Slander" four stars instead of five is because it is one-sided and contains some vitriol. Nonetheless, it is a book that sheds light on the myths that have been forced upon America by the politically correct, liberal Democratic party that would rather explore why all kinds of terrorists, criminals, and Islamists and Communists hate us and how we can appease them rather than oppose them.

Rating:
Summary: Informative ?? Funny ???
Review: As for its informative content, this book is crammed with false or dubious facts.
It would fail under any university examination.

As for its humour... where is it ??? 8o
Just look at the abstract on amazon !!!
Maybe the author shows some wit in her "writing", but certainly not humour. And as someone (was it Voltaire ?) said : "Wit has never proven anything."

If you want a really funny read, buy Michael Moore's books. At least, even if you don't agree with his views, you'll be rewarded with a big laugh.

Rating:
Summary: Sick
Review: This lady is very disturbed, i.e. sick. You see her o TV, read her stuff in the print media, and I suppose she is even on radio spreading her trash. This book is a waste of your time. Check it out from your library and read as much of it as you can stomach. Very disturbing - but,this garbage sells.

Rating:
Summary: Who's lying now?
Review: If you buy this book, you'd better buy "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" by Al Franken, too. With the help of his Harvard research team, he exposes this book for the steaming heap of BS that it is. Wake up, people!

Rating:
Summary: Ann Coulter Just Keeps Getting Better and Better
Review: This is Ann Coulter's second book and she has grown by leaps and bounds as a writer, finally finding her own special voice. Her third book, "Treason," is even better than this one (if that's possible).

This book will open your eyes and make you look at headlines, news stories, TV shows, movies, the entire media in fact, in a whole new light. You'll start noticing the bombardment of subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation by the media.

Ms. Coulter gives examples by citing some of the major political news stories of the past and I found myself reading about oh, say, Senator Packwood, and saying, "Oh my, I had no idea that was what was really going on!" (Apparently Packwood was useful to the feminists and groups like that but when his usefulness was no more, suddenly the news started reporting that he had been [physically] harassing women on his staff for decades, something at the time I thought strange .... why did they wait so long?) You see, I, like many or most of the public had fallen for the lies and [information] printed in the newspaper. Ann Coulter demonstrates in "Slander" exactly how the mainstream liberal media does it and by exposing this, shows the reader what to watch for.

Since I read "Slander" I read newspapers and watch the evening news in an entirely new light. One of my favorite "catches" is my newspaper printed an article about Rumsfeld coming to a local Marine Base and speaking to the troops. And what did the headline say? "Rumsfeld Grilled by Troops." Need I say more?

Read it, it will change you for the better. It will make you smarter.

Rating:
Summary: A convincing read...
Review: ... but not a very compelling one. I personally enjoyed this book. But then again, I'm a conservative. So of COURSE I'd like it, as long as it wasn't TOTALLY bogus.

Let's begin with the basics. Ann Coulter basically charges the media with, in general, a liberal bias. She also criticizes the media's immature, volatile handling of anything conservative. She's definitely done her homework; she cites plenty of sources and draws valid conclusions from the evidence she presents. In this sense, Slander is of high scholarly quality.

However, the book does have a pitfall, and that is that her opinion shows through more than some people would like. Ann Coulter is, of course, very conservative politcally, and this is evident in her [overt] commentaries. To her credit, she doesn't resort to a ton of actual personal attacks and insults, and when she does, it's usually in reference facts she presented earlier (such as calling Bill Clinton "the felon" in reference to the fact that at one point, 80% of those polled believed he was guilty of rape, and while this label may not be factually appropriate, it's meant as an obvious exxaggeration). Nevertheless, her biting view of publically visible liberals is obvious.

Conservatives will love this book. You might not agree with every one of her political stances, but you'll eat it up and enjoy every page all the same. It's a wonderful refuge from the attacks on conservatives in much of the mainstream media (and, to some, might be seen as a form of revenge). Moderates may disagree with some of Coulter's opinions, but perhaps at least a few of them will be persuaded to at least sympathize with the right.

Liberals, you will probably not enjoy this book. If you choose to read it, I suggest you prepare yourself to look past a LOT of personal opinion to really get into what she's trying to say.

To sum it up, at the heart of Ann Coulter's words are generally true, valid points, but the book is not written in a style that is likely to persuade anyone who doesn't already agree somewhat. Hence why I give it four stars instead of the five that my Id tells me to give it.

Rating:
Summary: A Certified Fact-Free Book
Review: Ann Coulter would make a convincing case, if anything she said were true. Unfortunately, this book is a long series of distortions, exaggerations and outright lies.

Just a few examples (because a full rebuttal would be as long as the book!):

1. In trying to make the case that liberals and the media are elitists who don't care about the common folk, she offers this as evidence: After NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt died, on February 18, 2001, "It took the New York Times two days to deem Earnhardt's death sufficently important to mention it on the first page .... The article began 'His death brought a silence to the Wal-Mart'"

Fact: The New York Times ran a front-page article on Earnhardt's death on Feb. 19, the day after he died, the earliest a morning newspaper could do so. The article begins "Stock car racing's greatest champ, Dale Earnhardt was killed ... " and goes on to desribe the accident that killed him. Coulter is completely wrong.

2. To support her claim that the mainsream media is controlled by not just liberals, but far-left liberals, she reports that Evan Thomas, the Washington bureau chief of Newsweek, is the son of Norman Thomas, a six-time Socialist candidate for president.

Fact: Evan Thomas's father is Evan Thomas Sr., who was a businessman. (He is more distantly related to Norman Thomas, but there's no evidence he shares the same political views.) Coulter got it wrong.

3. Coulter writes that "New York Times columnist Frank Rich demanded that Ashcroft stop monkeying around with Muslim terrorists and concentrate on anti-abortion extremists." What Rich really did was to mildly criticize Ashcroft for refusing to meet with Planned Parenthood on the subject of abortion clinic violence. Rich said absolutely nothing about leaving Al Qaeda alone. Ann is fibbing just a bit here.

4. According to Coulter (four times in the course of the book), Al Gore claimed that he and Tipper were the models for the main characters in Erich Segal's "Love Story," and Segal had denied it.

In fact, what Gore said was the he had read once in the Nashville newspaper that Segal himself had said that. And in fact that is true, the Nashville Tennssean had published a story in 1980 or so quoting Segal as saying that. Turned out the newspaper had misquoted Segal -- Segal had said that the male character was based partly on Gore and partly on Tommy Lee Jones, period. But all Gore ever claimed was that he had once read an article saying that, and that was true ... the article was wrong, but it had been published.

5. She frequently confuses (intentionally I'm sure) any words that appear in a newspaper with that newspaper's position. In mutiple cases in her book, she will write that a newspaper "says" or "believes" something, when in fact the quote turns out to be from a source in a story expressing his or her opinion, or an op-ed piece by an outside writer. This is simple lying.

6. She also lies with her end notes. In trying to prove that the media was friendly to Democratic Senator Robert Packwood before he was accused of sexual harassment and hostile afterward, she cites 10 quotes alternating between positive and negative, from before and after Packwood's leaving Congress in scandal.

Look closely though, and it turns out that all 10 quotes come from a total of only four articles ... one for four of the five negative quotes, one for the remaining negative, one for three of the positives and one more for the final two. A sampling of four stories is hardly evidence of general media trends.

I find it alternately amusing and frustrating that conservatives dismiss critiques like this as "liberal bias," because I'm talking about documented facts. No matter what Ann Coulter says, the NYT did publish a page one story about Dale Earnhardt the day following his death and did not begin it with a patronizing sentence about Wal-Mart. No matter what Ann Coulter says, Newsweek's Washington bureau chief is not the son of a Socialist. No matter what Ann Coulter says, Frank Rich did not write that John Ashcroft should "stop monkeying around" with Muslim terrorists. No matter what Ann Coulter says, Al Gore did not claim he and Tipper were the models for the characters in Love Story. No matter what Ann Coulter says, a source quoted in a newspaper story is speaking for him or herself, not the newspaper.

This book has been deconstructed expertly time and time again, on Web sites like spinsanity.com, in books like Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" and many other places. How Ann Coulter can show herself in public is beyond me.

Rating:
Summary: Shattering Paradigms
Review: Too many people view Ann Coulter through their in-place political lens. As a consequence many who disagree spent all of their energy venting spleen and ignoring the splendid logic and thorough scholarship that went into this Coulter gem as it has with all of her's. If the reader is willing to accept the fact that the world as we see it may not be exactly the world we think it to be, then Ann Counter can be a valuable learning experience. If, on the other hand, the reader is comfortable with preconception and does not wish to leave a comfort zone they you might wish to give this a pass.
One reason that Ann Counter elicits the depth of response that she is able to evoke is precisely because she takes on the most solidly entrenched beliefs that she thinks are false and exposes them. Some people do not wish to see the emperor naked and will avert their eyes. Others will recognize the truth and profit thereby.
Coulter brings exceedingly sharp wit, a great sense of humor and biting commentary to the subject of media bias, exposing it along the way for the propaganda machine that it has become. She thinks out of the box with a sense of history and a strong moral core that characterizes her as a person and as a writer. Growth is painful for some, happier for others. Slander was a happy experience for me and I hope will be for you too.

Rating:
Summary: Ann Coulter is demonstrably insane
Review: This book is riddled with inaccuracies, faulty logic and poorly researched "facts". For instance, she claims that "Newsweek" magazine's Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas "is the son of Norman Thomas, a four-time Socialist candidate for president. Had the author done a reasonable amount of research she would have discovered that Norman Thomas actually ran six times. Not to mention the fact that he is NOT the father of Evan Thomas. This book, like her other works are brimming with this kind of crud punctuated by her characteristic vitriol. It represents the worst kind of journalism and ranks right up there with various books concerning UFO's, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster (i.e., bunk from cover to cover), but without the entertainment value. Save your money.

Rating:
Summary: A Interesting read
Review: This book was an interesting read. Ever try to hear children argue? Well, ever heard a one-sided child argument? If not, then this book will be quite an experience. Essentially, the book is about 200 pages of "your stupid!" (directed mostly at democrates). And what's her basis for such an argument? As she claims, the liberals say to conservatives (apparently all the time) "Your stupid!". Now, Ann Coulter has a lot of good things to say, unfortunately she has no logically coherent way of saying them. So instead of being a book about how liberal philosophy is inherently flawed and unworkable, she mistakenly assumes this then goes on to say how stupid liberals are for believing such a thing, then goes even further to show how much they hate everyone b/c no one else buys into their argument.

From the title of the book you'd THINK it would be about specific lies the left has about conservatives. However, what she basically did was laboriously point out every single indescretion any popular liberal has done in the last 30 years. I do not believe Ms. Coulter has any business trying to come off as an intellectual anaylist of politics. She's a mud-slinger. All her arguments have NO logical basis(ex. Liberals can't win arguments unless they call you names. So liberals are stupid!)

If you are a dumb liberal and want a good intellectual match, or if your a hardline conservative with no thought process of your own, this is the book for you!