BRAINLESS

Debunking the Doyenne of Divisiveness

Credit where due

To give Ann Coulter her due, she is intelligent and quite a good writer, with a knack for humorous quips. (At least, she has them in some of her columns.) Her literary career would not be so successful if this were not so. Also, she is reasonably facile and entertaining at the podium or on talk shows. And she's a decent-looking woman, especially when dolled up for such appearances. (But, to be frank, no matter how dolled up she gets, she'll never be mistaken for Dolly Parton.) So, then: not "hot," but not exactly ugly either.1

The message is the malady

Coulter's big problem is the utter lack of integrity in her presentations. Her books are filled with baseless assertions, misleading juxtaposition of quoted passages, deceptive citations, and outright lies. There is in them a fair percentage of plagiarism. (Just how much is still a matter of dispute.) Finally, in both books and lectures she delights in blasting Bill Clinton, other prominent Democratic politicians, and anyone she perceives as being other than right-wing. She calls such people liberals, ignoring the accepted definition of the word, and there is no slur she has not hurled against them. It is for this reason she is known as the Queen of Mean.

She has other nicknames. Maguire lists them, but I will not repeat them here. Suffice it to say that though some are not accurate, they are all well-deserved.

I'll focus on the things she says in her books, and the effects those things have. First and foremost, she consistently damns all those she deems "liberals" as weak on defense at best, traitors at worst. She says they hate America but love all dictators, and warns that if they come to power the country will be overrun by foreign enemies or nuked to smithereens in short order. In particular she blames Bill Clinton for allowing the attacks of 9/11, even though they happened well into the administration of George W. Bush.

On most other topics she toes the Conservative line: Against abortion but for Biblical Christianity; against evolution but for Intelligent Design; against the U.N. but (at least implicitly) for a unitary executive. She has said the U.S. should "invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." She would arm women but take away their right to vote. (Whether she would give up her own vote is unclear. As for the other, having received threats of death she now has a bodyguard at all public appearances. It's a safe bet that she also packs heat at such events.)

Inconsistencies abound in her work and her life. She contradicts herself often, and frequently advocates doing things that she condemns "liberals" for doing. The other side of her hypocrisy is that there's a noticeable chasm between what she preaches and what she practices. To take one example, she paints herself as a practicing Christian, but has said it's okay for her to sleep around. To some degree, these discrepancies can be laid to self-promotion; outrageous pronouncements incite controversy, which sells lots of books. But Coulter's lies, her extreme and often senseless positions, and her hectoring of the left make her a divisive force — which is the last thing this country needs.

Maguire does a thorough job of debunking her, and one that is a joy to read. I won't spoil the fun by quoting great chunks of it, but here is one. The gist of it is that Coulter, in bashing U.S. primary education, cited a study of a survey that, according to her, claimed "roughly 290,000 students were subjected to physical sexual abuse by teachers or other school personnel" over a ten-year period (1991-2000.) Maguire found that Coulter cited an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a source. That is, she failed to cite the primary source — a failing she condemns in others. When Maguire dug deeper, he found that the sponsor of the 2004 study (the U.S. Education Department) had backed away from its conclusions and, further, that the study looked for offenses by students as well as teachers and staff, and that the "physical sexual abuse" actually included "sexual comments, jokes, gestures, or looks." (See pp. 114-116.) This is not to ignore the abuse of students by teachers, which does happen. But Coulter misused the information so egregiously as to discredit anything she might say about our system of primary education.

It is the same with any topic Coulter chooses to address in her books. The torrent of non sequiturs and sheer falsehoods, generously slathered with vituperation, soon becomes almost impossibly frustrating. Almost inevitably, it engenders a desire to respond in kind. Maguire, to his credit, has waded through all her books without losing his sense of balance. His analysis demonstrates indubitably why Ann Coulter's work deserves to be dismissed as worthless and why she herself should be allowed to fade from the public scene. Maguire summarizes thus:

Spitting into the wind?

Unfortunately for Maguire's worthy endeavor, I worry that it may be a wasted effort. I feel that way for several reasons. First of all, Ann Coulter is a publishing and media phenomenon: those four best-selling books have made her something approximating a household word around the world, and a host of TV appearances continues to bolster her popularity. That she says almost nothing credible in these countless public forays is as irrelevant as it is for Rush Limbaugh. Against that continuing deluge of disinformation, Maguire may not have much of an impact.

Second of all, the people Maguire's book needs to reach — Coulter's true believers — will dismiss it as just more "liberal whining", while the rest of us already know how threadbare is her ouvre. And third, Maguire is late to the party. Although she remains influential, Coulter's star is on the wane. It is hard to dispute that her steady increase in the level of vituperation across her books has begun to backfire. When Jerry Falwell starts to distance himself from someone, as Maguire notes, you know that someone has crossed some sort of line and lost standing with the extreme right wing. Also, there is already a formidable backlash online: a host of Web sites document the defects in Coulter's work — the non sequiturs, the lies, the vicious jabs, the plagiarism — and heap scorn upon her head.

Coulter as cash cow

The prime reason for Coulter's continuing influence is that she sells lots of books. For decades, this has been the sole criterion for publishing success in America; and, sadly, having a best-seller is too often held up as proof of superior wisdom. Here, slightly re-ordered from the way Maguire presents them, are the sales figures for Coulter's last four books.

These figures are concrete proof of Coulter's publishing clout. They are also relevant in another way for, as Maguire points out, she perversely pouts that "liberal media" deny her access to the public and has, on at least one occasion, even bashed her publisher's parent organization. It's more evidence of how lacking in substance her work is. And the lower sales of Godless are an early indication of her waning popularity.

So, in conclusion, I'll say that it appears Maguire is "piling on" to a horde of Coulter detractors. But I see nothing wrong with this, because he has done a creditable job of detraction without slipping into irate denigration. His work is valuable even if it will not turn the tide all by itself.

To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2007-2024 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 24 August 2024.