Throwing the book at her

The bias Ann Coulter documents best may be her own.

By Bryan Keefer

July 13, 2002 | The rise of Ann Coulter's new book, "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right," to the top of the New York Times bestseller list may be a shock to some, but the controversial pundit's scathing rhetoric and outspoken conservatism have helped position her as exactly the sort of figure who sells books. More polemic than argument, "Slander" is riddled with factual errors, egregious misrepresentations and a constant stream of broad, inflammatory claims about liberals, as numerous critics have been quick to point out. Yet despite the limits of her one-sided argument, she actually offers a troubling lament for the state of our political discourse -- even as she contributes to its decline.

Coulter began her career as a pundit during the investigation and impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. An attorney, Coulter aided Paula Jones with her legal case and later wrote a book on Clinton titled "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." Since then, she has written a syndicated column and made frequent television appearances.

Coulter is self-consciously inflammatory. As she told the Sunday Times of London recently, "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that. I like to stir up the pot. I don't pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do." It is exactly that kind of invective which has earned her so much publicity.

"Slander" has already come in for heavy criticism over her factual errors and distortions. Throughout the book, for example, she relies heavily on quantitative searches of the Lexis-Nexis news database to support her assertions about the media's bias and its unfair treatment of conservatives, making at least 15 such claims. At first blush, these bits of evidence seem to provide strong support to her arguments. Yet very serious questions have been raised about her methodology.

The American Prospect's weblog, Tapped, noted that Coulter's claim that "Between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times alone ran more than one hundred articles on 'Selma' alone" is demonstrably false. Tapped also reported the inaccuracy of her claim that "In the New York Times archives, 'moderate Republican' has been used 168 times," while "There have been only 11 sightings of a 'liberal Republican.'" But a search in the New York Times' own archive found 22 hits for "liberal Republican" since 1996; in a search of the Times archives for "all available dates" in Lexis-Nexis, the weblog found 524 such citations.

Bob Somerby punctured Coulter's argument that the New York Times reveals a liberal bias by having used the phrases "Christian conservatives" or "religious right" 187 times during, roughly, the 2000 calendar year, while never using the phrases "atheist liberals" or "the atheist left." Somerby found that the New York Times compared favorably with the conservative Washington Times, which had 151 references to "Christian conservatives" or the "religious right" in 2000 -- along with, of course, no references to "atheist liberals" or "the atheist left."

Coulter also repeats several well-debunked myths in her book. Particularly striking is her relentless repetition of the claim that former Vice President Al Gore falsely suggested that he was the inspiration for the book "Love Story" -- a claim Coulter makes four separate times. As Robert Parry noted in an article in the Washington Monthly, author Erich Segal told the New York Times in a Dec. 14, 1997, article that Gore was indeed part of the inspiration for the main character in the novel. Gore did mistakenly say that the character of Jenny had been based on his wife Tipper, but he based this comment on an incorrect report in the Nashville Tennessean.

Another favorite tactics of Coulter's is the use of deceptive paraphrases to distort others' viewpoints. Blogger Scoobie Davis has noted that Coulter misrepresents the views of Frank Rich and Bruce Ackerman on the war on terrorism. Early in the book, Coulter writes that "New York Times columnist Frank Rich demanded that [Attorney General John] Ashcroft stop monkeying around with Muslim terrorists and concentrate on anti-abortion extremists." The column that she cites, however, makes no such argument. Coulter also writes that "Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman recommended dropping the war against global terrorism ('declare war at the first decent opportunity'!) and instead concentrate on 'home-grown extremists.'" Yet Ackerman's column suggests a cautious approach to a global war on terrorism, not "dropping" it, and nowhere does he advocate concentrating on domestic terrorists instead of international terrorists. Coulter's paraphrases are both wild distortions.

Next page: Footnotes that tell half the story