Slander

Rating:
Summary: Can liberals possibly be as nasty as Ann Coulter?
Review: In her book Slander, Ann Coulter portrays all contemporary political discourse in America as "insufferable" and "a nasty sport." The responsibility for this, she alleges, lies solely with liberals. Liberals are "bitter and angry," they "hate America" with "a species of primitive religious hatred." Their "idea of political debate" is "ad hominem attack," and a "central component" of their "hate speech is to make paranoid accusations based on their own neurotic impulses." Intriguingly enough, though, the more Coulter describes liberals as hate-filled, bitter and neurotic, the more they come off sounding remarkably like Ann Coulter.

Coulter's cartoonish Manichaeanism might be easier to take if it was supported by rational argument, but Coulter is to rational argument what Jackson Pollock was to painting - she just splatters invective in all directions and hopes that some of it hits the canvas. She does score an occasional hit (after all, as Gibbon once put it, "faction exaggerates, rather than invents"): her description of how serial tongue-prober Bob Packwood was depicted by the press before and after his fall from power has the ring of truth about it. And her advocacy of Phyllis Schlafly as an unjustly neglected intellectual is an intriguingly heterodox position which makes me want to see if Schlafly really is the towering intellect that Coulter depicts.

Coulter's own prose style is serviceable without being flashy. She uses the term "hoi polloi" correctly more than once, which always impresses me. But she repeats points over and over again, as if she believes that her ideal reader is a mental defective with a short attention span who needs to be hit over the head several times before they get the point. It's not enough for Coulter to claim that Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War" (a dubious enough assertion in any event) - she has to say it eight times. She is also addicted to the word "starlet," which she tosses around like Hedda Hopper in her heyday (at one point four times on the same page). Her contempt for women who are more attractive than she is knows no bounds, and one gets the feeling that Coulter thinks that a person should lose all right to express themselves politically once they've received a SAG card (Charlton Heston, I suppose, would get an exemption). Ironically, Coulter reveals less of herself and her opinions when she bellows than when she attempts to understate, as when she refers to the Wall Street Journal as a "conservative" - in quotes - newspaper, or when she posits that "Fox News may modulate slightly to the right" (she also refers to Washington Times writer Tony Blankley as "telegenic," at which point we enter the realm of science fiction).

Coulter in her endless interviews, when she's not bemoaning the fact that Timothy McVeigh didn't blow up the New York Times instead of the Murrah Building, tends to take great pride in the fact that her book has oodles of footnotes when in fact it has none (she is to be congratulated, however, for having made it through law school without learning the difference between a footnote and an endnote). Her endnotes are revealing, however. The number of actual books read and cited is depressingly skimpy - most of what evidence Coulter has accumulated has come from trolling through the electronic database Lexis/Nexis - which, incidentally, is too expensive to be accessed by the general public. I suppose it could be a coincidence that Coulter has seen to it than none of her readers will be able to check up on her references unless they're in what conservatives refer to suspiciously as the "mainstream media," but I tend to doubt it.

She pours disdain on liberals who referred to Ronald Reagan during the 1980s as "dumb," in spite of the fact that Norman Podhoretz left his first meeting with Reagan "wondering whether he had any brains at all" (the quote can be found on page 618 of Stephen F. Hayward's book The Age of Reagan). She condemns former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for "losing" the Vietnam War (which ended seven years after he left the government) and "condemning millions of people to live under a communist tyranny," when a celebrated Republican president did exactly the same thing. Coulter states that "Truman got the country into a war in Korea, and couldn't get us out for two and a half years. Eisenhower was elected and ended the war in six months." The fact is that Truman, when faced with Communist aggression, went to the UN and assembled a multinational coalition to stop that aggression - actions that conservatives tend to approve of, so long as they're being done by a Republican whose surname is Bush. Eisenhower, on the other hand, was so anxious to bug out of Korea that he blackmailed South Korea's President into acquiescing to a stalemate that handed half his country over to the Communists by threatening to withdraw all American troops immediately if he didn't accept the truce. As a result the war never officially ended, 37,000 American troops are stationed in Korea to this day, and 22,000,000 people (North Korea's current population), are, as Coulter put it when discussing Robert McNamara, condemned "to live under a Communist tyranny." Even Stephen Ambrose admits that, had President Truman tried to end the war under the same terms, the Republicans in Congress would have tried to impeach him.

To quote that well-known Freudian Peggy Noonan in her most recent book on Ronald Reagan, "A lot of people have a way of projecting their own flaws, their own sins, onto others. They see in others the transgressions they themselves routinely commit." The more you read Slander, the more it becomes obvious that Coulter's book is nothing more or less than a 256-page-long exercise in projection, and in the final analysis, her career is nothing more than conclusive proof of how far you can go in this country with a maximum of self-promotion and a minimum of class.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece!
Review: This book is a masterpiece! I read it with pleasure twice. (Which caused a bit of friction with the friend I'd borrowed it from, who is also a Coulter fan. I'd have bought it myself, but I've been out of work for 18 months now.) I'm grateful to Ann for exposing that so much of what we're told by the biased media is lies. She's also been masterful at showing that Clinton was the most deceitful and worst president ever. ( I myself paid little attention to politics back then; didn't have time to as I was quite well-employed throughout his presidency).

I agree with Ann that the anti-war movement is a disgrace to this proud country. After what the Iraqis did to us on September 11, how could anyone not think that we are justified in this war? I also agree with her that we must not waste too much of our military's time with so-called "peacekeeping" in Afghanistan or Iraq; there are so many other areas of the Islamic world that must be shown that the US is a powerful nation, and to keep our boys in Iraq frittering away after the fighting is done will possibly make them become soft . . . . just like the liberals that Ann has helped exposed. She is also right that only by bringing to submission all of the Middle East can we end terrorism on the US. They brought their terrorism here because they thought we were weak; by using our God-given military strength in their countries we will show them that hating us is futile. Each terrorist act they commit here, we will bomb another Mid East country. This will help end terrorism in our country for good.

The beauty of this book and of Ann Coulter's writing is her clarity of vision and expression. God Bless the USA and God Bless Ann Coulter!

Rating:
Summary: Persecuted By "Liberals", a Conservative screed
Review: Though this excellent tome is easily found in good, conservative book stores everywhere (at a substantial discount), I vehemently recommend paying full price for the hard cover edition!!! It is treasure that your children - and your children's children - will savor in the years to come.

I found it a bit heavy on the postmodern symbolism - a flaw I attribute to the notorious Liberal Arts Mafia that has plagued our once distinguished education system for lo these many years - but, nonetheless, a scathing indictment of the circular logic, pomposity and sneering condescension so typical of "liberals".

The fully supported allegations speak volumes about the disturbing national trend towards moral relativism. Just read a few chapters and it will become clear; "liberals" have undermined all that is good and pure in America. Right thinking Americans need to know about the pernicious influences poisoning civilized discourse.

Does Ann resort to hyperbole while gigging the "liberal" frog? Yes! But a shock to the system becomes necessary when one is contending against the dark forces that threaten to consume what's left of our once wholesome traditions.

One naturally hesitates to modify what is destined to become a classic, but a more appropriate title would be "Lancing the Festering Boil, Pustulence and Depravity in the Liberal Mindset".

Rating:
Summary: It's all true - I've seen it. So what else is new?
Review: It is indeed a very ad hominem book, and one very vicious to liberals, and I imagine it must give a foreigner a very jaded view of American Politics, but it's the truth. I've debated American leftists myself, and I can tell you they did exaclty what Ms. Coulter said they do: call names and quote other liberals. They said my "language" was "dangerous", and one of them referred me to Edward Hermann, Greg Palast, and Noam Chomsky in one paragraph.
A lot of it amused me, but none of it shocked me, as most of what she said was stuff I could identify with. She says in I think her first chapter that conservatives call names too, but conservatives are reserved and choosy in their name-calling. We like to have our name-calling impart our genuine opinion of someone, rather than merely state "I hate you". She mentions this in her book as well - the fact that the majority of liberal name-calling "conveys nothing other than 'I hate you'" or "good dog" and "bad dog".
This is a trend which has been going on for a while, and I'm glad someone stood up and put it all in perspective. I can only hope that in the future, or at least the near future, liberals will feel ashamed to randomly call their opponents "Nazi", "fascist", "racist", etc, remembering how stupid it gets to sound after a while.

Rating:
Summary: water-tight
Review: I think the term "Water-tight" just about sums it up. Slander is for anybody who is willing to listen to reason. Every single conviction in the book is backed by a statistic or fool-proof, logical reasoning. There can be no doubt in the reader's mind that Ann Coulter achieves her goal of exposing the Left in America of its double-standards and biases. The facts (as presented by Coulter) are overwhelming. Despite the vast amount of information (statistics, timelines, personal accounts, etc.) this is not a dry read. It is a page-turner. By reading Slander, I absorbed more than enough ammunition to argue the Left into the ground. Ann Coulter writes with a brilliance and clarity that most authors cannot even try to impersonate. I'm hooked-as long as she keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them.

Rating:
Summary: Irony is a wonderful thing
Review: Coulter has written an excellently documented, straight forward approach to the rift growing in American politics today. If you have ever tried to discuss politics with a liberal - and found yourself feeling like you were talking to a five year old who would not hear reason or even listen - Coulter has the explanation of why.

Rather than debate, liberals have resorted to name calling. No more can you even discuss a viewpoint other than an approved left view than you will be labeled a heretic and come under vicious attack. Coulter documents, explains and hits back at those who use the same debate approach that they used in preschool.

Don't believe she is right? Check out the other reviews on this page. Had these people actually read the book, they might have decided not to come prove Ms. Coulter correct by attacking her personally instead of on the basis of what she says. An excellent book this is highly recommended, both by myself and those "1 star knee jerks" who don't want you to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Demagoguery in a short skirt
Review: Ann Coulter has written a book that is so filppant with the facts that it loses all credibility. She uses 'uban myths" of liberal avarice and sloth to craft an image of liberals as America-hating hippies. The danger of this type of book is that whenever Coulter is pushed on the facts, she always falls back on the fact that it was really written as entertainment and to lighten up. So which is it? Entertainment or fact? Doesn't matter, it fails miserably as either.

Rating:
Summary: Amazon Cust reviews almost as eyeopening as this book
Review: I read between 15-20 reviews of this book (which I read quite a while ago) before deciding to write my review - what an eyeopener. Not that liberals hate it and conservatives love it, but how people define themselves within these groups. Conservatives seem to lump together fairly easily - I think because the media has been doing this to them for years. But liberals really like to differentiate themselves from one another.

I think this is why so many liberals write such scathing reviews of this book - they actually HATE being neatly labeled Liberal. Which is fine, it probably explains why the Democratic party is so fractured these days, with "liberals" being such a large part of their numbers.

Oh, but to actually review the book - Coulter has a good writing style which makes a book that could be fairly dull fun to read. Some have complained that she cites no facts, others say her facts are all wrong - these obviously contradictory statements can not both be right. The truth is she cites a HUGE number of facts and statistics (which is why it could have been a boring book), and I am sure that some of these facts were wrong or overstated. I am also sure that this is true of all other books as well.

The fact is it is the job of the reader to analyze and make decisions - not based on emotion. Coulter brings enough of her own bias to the table to make this challenging, but the book is still very much worth the effort.

"wipe out impression, check impulse..."

Rating:
Summary: Mad as a box of frogs...
Review: As a Brit who regularly votes Tory (that's the British version of the Republican party for those of you who aren't aware of the fact - Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher and the like) I am nevertheless astonished at the extent to which American politics seems to have become personalised and... well... shrill, recently. We have a saying in Britain that what happens in America will happen in Britain two years down the road - well here's hoping we pass on this sort of thing!

This is a TERRIBLE book. It's been a personal object lesson in why you shouldn't allow morbid curiosity to get you to fork out good money. The literary/political equivalent of slowing down on the road to stare at the results of a car crash. Mean spirited, partisan nonsense. And most (not all) of it IS nonsense. Since this book I've seen Ann Coulter on a political panel show (where she talked over and shouted down the host and all the other panelists, including the historian Niall Ferguson who was meant to be there to back up her side of the argument) and tracked down some of her articles and... oh dear.

Seriously folks, if you want to seem like a well-informed, non-clinically insane conservative, go and read Edmund Burke. Or Thomas Hobbes. Or even P. J. O'Rourke or Mark Steyn. Or anything but this. This is shockingly bad, mean spirited nonsense that preaches to the converted and tells a certain sort of person what they want to hear and not much else.

Before people start claiming I'm some sort of left wing plant (though I suppose given that I don't subscribe to the idea that there's some sort of [plan] sweeping the western world I will be considered inherently suspect) I should point out that this sort of thing is not a sin that is exclusive to the right. The left has more than it's share of cranks too. But don't be fooled into thinking that this book is anything other than a right wing version of the sort of [weak information] by the likes of Al Sharpton and Noam Chomsky because it isn't.

Also, for the record while we're on the subject, Bill Clinton - neither the [bad guy] nor the great white liberal hope. Just a profoundly forgettable, superficially attractive (to some - I never understood personally) mediocrity. There, I've said it. Startling revelation isn't it?

Rating:
Summary: Coulter, unamerican
Review: The book highlights the hypocrisy of today's right wing pundit: the author romanticizes war without having fought, pushes tax cuts that assist no one but herself and her elite friends, advocates cuts in education knowing her family will never need public education and launches unamerican personal attacks on political opponents in the name of "patriotism."