More Slander: Refuting Ann

This may be the start of a regular feature of column rebuttals. Maybe.

A note: The more I read Coulter, the less patience I have for her. I started this web site pissed-off but intending to take the high road, or at least a not too low road. However, dealing with her waves of bilge make me less and less patient, and less and less temperate in my language. Forgive me, it's not my fault. It's all hers!!!!


More Slander
by Ann Coulter
July 11, 2002

Her title, not mine. But oh so appropriate.

ON THE BASIS of the logic on the New York Times editorial page, maybe Bill Clinton did kill Vince Foster. Evidently President Bush is responsible for Enron because he is from Texas and--it is insinuatingly noted--so is Enron! If the left's physical proximity argument constitutes evidence, I take it back: There are boatloads of evidence that Clinton killed Foster.

This is ugly on so many levels that I don't know where to began. Ok, I do. Let's start with the facts. Bush's connection to Enron goes well beyond proximity. Enron was a big Bush campaign contributor. Bush met Enron chairman Kenneth Lay on numerous occasions. He even had a cutesy name for him: "Kenny-boy." So at the very least one has to wonder if the Bush administration, out of gratitude for all those nice dollars, helped keep the heat off of Enron.

Next, the New York Times did not call Bush "responsible for Enron," that's a classic Coulter technique: complain about something which never really happened. In fact, in a search of Nexis over the past month I found no mention in any Times editorial (as opposed to an op-ed piece, which I did not search) of Bush's Enron connection. The most the oh-so-polite Times did was mention, on Wednesday July 10, that Bush needed to be better at explaining what he did with his Harken Energy shares, that Cheney should own up to what Halliburton did under his command, and that Army Secretary Tom White should be let go because of his close Enron ties. All legitimate, if moderate, points.

Finally, there's the nasty Vince Foster angle. Fanatics like Coulter (not normal, sane conservatives, just nut-job far-far-right pit bull fanatics) can't let go of the Foster story. The poor guy killed himself. In spite of the far-far-right wanting to make Bill and Hillary guilty of mass murder, they can't pin this one on our ex Prez. But they keep trying. Actually Coulter is even sleazier than that. She doesn't actually say that Clinton killed Foster, she could even argue that she's suggesting the idea of Clinton killing Foster is as silly as the idea that Bush helped Enron. But she knows her audience. One mention of Foster and all 5,000 of her rabid ditto-head fans will be nodding their heads knowingly, "yep, the bastard got away with murder, and Ann's throwing us a wink to show she knows it." Another classic Coulter technique, suggest an accusation without ever actually explicitly making one.

So Coulter opens with a false allegation, links it to any even nastier false allegation, and attempts to maintain implausible deniability the whole time. This is slander taken to a new level.

Indeed, the entire Republican Party is evidently responsible for various rich liberal "Friends of Bill" who now stand accused of insider trading, such as Martha Stewart and ImClone chief Sam Waksal. Republicans are responsible on the basis of the fact that liberals have spent 20 years calling Republicans "the party of the rich."

And who has blamed the Republicans for Martha Stewart? Did I miss some "Martha Stewart is all the Republicans Fault" editorial in the Times? I assume the connection between Martha and the GOP is the fact the Republicans pushed to cut back watchdog groups like the SEC, but I don't think anyone is pushing the Martha angle that hard. Of course, Democrats helped too defang the SEC also and one could debate who helped more. As for, "party of the rich," the average income of Republican voters IS higher than the average income of Democratic voters. By that, admittedly weakish measure, the Republicans ARE the party of the rich.

Liberals are like the monkeys in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book who explain: "We all say so, and so it must be true." Republicans are responsible for Clinton's pal Martha Stewart because liberals say so. Again, I note: If hysterical partisan insinuation constitutes proof, then we need to reopen the Vince Foster files.

"The good part of being a Democrat is that you can commit crimes, sell out your base, bomb foreigners, and rape women, and the Democratic faithful will still think you're the greatest."

Wait a minute, I thought Coulter liked it when we bombed foreigners?

Liberals have no real arguments--none that the American people would find palatable, anyway. So in lieu of actual argument, they accuse conservatives of every vice that pops into their heads, including their own mind-boggling elitism.

And doesn't this whole thing come out of left field? Weren't we talking about corporate insider trading? I mean, why the anti-liberal screed? Just because if Coulter can't say "liberals are bad, bad people" she has nothing else to say? It would be nice if someday, in some column, she actually had something of substance to say. Maybe her suggestions for why we've had this recent spate of corporate corruption and what we should do about it. I might not agree with her ideas, but at least I'd know she had some.

The Democratic Party has basically remade itself into a party of left-wing academics and Park Avenue matrons. And then they attack Republicans for being elitist snobs protecting "corporate interests." It's bad enough that these rich snobs want to raise our taxes all the time. Having to endure Malibu Marie Antoinettes calling Republicans "the rich" is more than working Americans should have to bear.

So it's all those left-wing academics and Park Avenue matrons who got Gore more votes than Bush? That's a hell of a lot of matrons and academics! (And the connection to insider trading is...? Oh, never mind.)

Howell Raines, the former editorial page editor of The New York Times, described Ronald Reagan as "making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white and healthy." Striking a manly tone, Raines woefully noted that this "saddened" him.

The idea that Reagan was a privileged overlord swatting down working-class wretches with his polo mallet is more delusional than some of Barbra Streisand's wackier ideas. This was the same Reagan who cut taxes, bombed Libya, stood up to the left's beloved Soviet Union, built up the military and restored pride in America. (Yes, that Reagan.) Who were these initiatives supposed to appeal to? Martha Stewart? I think not. Average, middle-class Americans voted Reagan back into office for a second term in the largest electoral landslide in history.

Yes, Reagan was popular. He also hasn't been president for about 14 years. We need a new topic ma'am.

But 20 years of propaganda about Republicans being the party of "the rich" has created pre-programmed reflexes. The fact that propaganda works is demonstrated by the fact that people don't laugh out loud when Democrats try to pin corporate malfeasance on the Republican Party.

Liberals also have many important and substantive backup arguments such as they hate Republicans.

In December 1998, the New York Post described talk-show host Phil Donahue exploding with rage at a Four Seasons party (where the Party of the People mingles) screaming about how he hated Republicans. His wife, Marlo Thomas, apologetically explained: "I don't know why he's saying that. He doesn't really hate all Republicans." (He probably likes Jim Jeffords, for example.)

So, Coulter hates liberals and Democrats, but its wrong for Phil (who has a new show) to hate Republicans? And it's hardly logical to argue that because one liberal screamed about Republicans, ALL liberals hate Republicans. (I just can't stand it when someone knocks Phil. He's my fave. I never went for that Oprah broad.) Finally, Coulter doesn't mention that the Post (which is owned by right-winger Rupert Murdoch) noted in this gossip item that Donahue screaming at the conclusion to an argument about the Clinton impeachment mess, which was then filling the airwaves. So, although partisan, it was not simply a random, unprovoked outburst of anti-Republican rage.

In the alternative, liberals thoughtfully explain that Republicans are bigots. In a 1995 interview, Clinton's Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders called Sen. Jesse Helms a "typical white, Southern male bigot." It's a little difficult to imagine a Republican presidential appointee referring to any congressman as being a "typical" member of his race without inciting a blizzard of protest.

But this is standard political debate for the left. It is simply not possible to disagree with liberals about constitutional interpretation, guns, abortion, immigration, racial quotas--or really, anything. Serious political dialogue becomes the exception when political discourse is littered with ad hominem land mines.

Please, please, tell me Coulter didn't complain about ad hominem attacks? There's the pot calling the kettle partisan.

By contrast, when Republicans directly quote their opponents, all hell breaks loose. A Republican actually quoting a Democrat verbatim constitutes a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Thus, for example, in 1988, George Bush (41) pulled the old quote-your-opponent trick on Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. During the primaries, Dukakis had said: "I am a strong liberal Democrat. I am a card-carrying member of ACLU." Those were Dukakis' precise words. Bush quoted him during one of the debates.

Ten years later, liberals were still fuming about Bush's dirty rat trick of quoting Dukakis. On July 4, 1999, CNN reporter Bruce Morton cited Bush's low blow, saying it was a "echo of the late Joseph McCarthy's card-carrying member of the Communist Party, but it seemed to help Bush." They'll stoop to anything to win, those Republicans, even quote their opponents.

So we're commenting on something said 3 years ago about something else which happened 14 years ago? Damn, that Coulter woman stays up-to-the-second relevant!

Serious political debate evidently consists of randomly accusing your opponent of being a hateful bigot or having some vague ephemeral association with corporate crooks. Those are good arguments.

Similar to calling your opponents rich elitists who just hate people?

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

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