Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right

Slander book cover

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Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (ISBN 1400046610) is a 2002 book by author Ann Coulter, in which she attacks the so-called liberal media during the early George W. Bush administration. The book is infamous for its large amounts of falsehoods, distortions, and — well, slander about those whom Coulter dislikes. Strap yourselves in folks, this one might take awhile.

Dale Earnhardt affair

On the final page of Slander, Coulter writes that "It took the New York Times two days to deem [NASCAR driver Dale] Earnhardt's death sufficiently important to mention it on the front page." However, this turned out to be wrong, Dale Earnhardt had died on 2/18/2001, and The New York Times ran a front page story on this the following day.

Front page of The New York Times, 2/19/2001

This one is only notable because Coulter herself did acknowledge the mistake in a later column (albeit while making sure to downplay it as much as possible by pointing out it was "the only one" critics of hers have come up with), and newer editions of the book have the sentence omitted entirely.

As a small bonus, Coulter wrote mockingly of an article from a couple of days later, writing:

Demonstrating the left's renowned populist touch, the article began, "His death brought a silence to Wal-Mart." The Times went on to report that in vast swaths of the country people watch stock-car racing. Tacky people were mourning Dale Earnhardt all over the South!

However, actually reading the article Coulter mentions shows that the author did not mention Walmart to mock those who mourned his death, but because many first found out about it while watching NASCAR at Walmart:

His death brought a silence to the Wal-Mart.

They heard it first in the electronics department, where, it being this Sunday, the TV's were tuned to news of the Daytona 500.

Furthermore, the article never claimed that watching NASCAR nor even mourning Earnhardt's death was specifically a Southern phenomenon. In fact, the author specifically says it was Earnhardt "who powered stock car racing from a Southern obsession to a nationwide sport."

A book in need of an editor

For somebody who specializes in writing about politics — and who is selling a book dedicated to making a case, Coulter makes a number of rather basic mistakes. At one point, Coulter criticizes Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords because "he voted against Clinton's impeachment." The issue at hand was that Jeffords couldn't have voted one way or the other on Clinton's impeachment, because that is only voted on by the House of Representatives, not the Senate.

At another point, Coulter also claimed (in another mistake she was forced to admit to, in spite of her previous claim that the only substantial mistake she's even been caught making was the one about Dale Earnhardt) that "Evan Thomas… is the son of Norman Thomas, a four-time socialist candidate for president." Evan Thomas is the grandson of Norman Thomas, not the son of Norman Thomas, and Norman Thomas ran for President six times on the Socialist Party ticket, not four.(Also, even if this was true it wouldn't mean anything. Right-wing activist David Horowitz is the son of two members of the Communist Party. Yet his appearances on various news programs are not seen as evidence of liberal bias in media, while Thomas's are.)

While talking about the infamous Bloody Sunday marches, Coulter described it as "The march on Selma", when it was actually a march from Selma to Montgomery.

Mind you, none of these errors on their own would be enough to condemn the book — but the fact that Coulter fails to get the little things right (which can be found out with seconds of research in some cases) makes one question how well she can do at the big things — and the answer is not well.

A fact checker also wouldn't hurt

The aforementioned quote about Selma comes from a part of the book where Coulter claims "Between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times ran more than one hundred articles on 'Selma' alone." When actually going through the articles from The New York Times from that time period, it was found that only sixteen were actually about the event — with the rest being a series of offhanded mentions, references to Selma, California, or mentions of somebody who is named Selma.

On another occasion, she claims that The New York Times failed to report on a speech Jesse Jackson gave on British television on Christmas of 1994, when they actually reported the speech about a week before it aired. Her footnotes show that she came to this conclusion because a "LexisNexis search of New York Times archives from December 1994 through January 1995 for 'Jesse Jackson and Germany and fascism and South Africa' produces no documents." However, this was because, although the article did talk about the controversy around this speech, it did not use that specific exert. Another Lexis search for "Jesse Jackson and Christmas and Britain" produced the article no problem. Al Franken mocked Coulter's method by saying that, using the same tactic Coulter did, "I can prove The Washington Times did not cover the incident in which George H.W. Bush threw up on a Japanese prime minister. A LexisNexis search from January 1992 for 'Bush and Japan and prime minister and lap and cookies and tossed' produces no documents."

Merely counting up how many times something is referenced in this or that newspaper seems to be one of Coulter's favorite ways to prove liberal bias--the issue at hand is these commonly don't show the full picture. "In the entire New York Times archive on LexisNexis, there are 109 items using the phrase 'far right wing' but only 18 items that use 'far left wing,'" she writes. However, if one does the same trick over the same time period with the right-wing Washington Times, they find a similar theme, with thirty-seven uses of the phrase "far right wing" compared to only seven uses of "far left wing." The same method can be done with the same newspaper regarding her claim that “In a one year period (roughly corresponding to calendar year 2000), the New York Times found occasion to mention either ‘Christian conservatives’ or the ‘religious right’ 187 times. Not once did the paper refer to ‘atheist liberals’ or ‘the atheist left.’” With The Washington Times, it made 151 references to "Christian conservatives" and the "religious right" and also no references to the "atheist left."

Actually, comparing what Coulter's conservative friends have said over the years to what she gets angry at the "liberal media" for arguing shows just how silly many of her complaints are. At one point, she says that Katie Couric had called Ronald Reagan "an airhead." However, Couric was actually quoting a controversial biography about Reagan, not stating her own opinion. Sean Hannity even ran a segment on the same biography, and quoted the same part of the biography, on the same day as Couric's segment.

One commonly has to wonder if Coulter even bothered to read the articles she mentions or if she just half remembered them. The very first page of Slander sees her making a distortion when she writes that "For his evident belief in a higher being, DeLay is compared to savage murderers and genocidal lunatics on the pages of the New York Times," before quoting a columnist who wrote “History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.” First off, Coulter's quote fails to describe the quote she said. Even talking everything she claimed at face value, this person is not comparing DeLay to these people and events merely for his theistic beliefs, but because he attempts to inject those views into his politics.

However, the most recent person mentioned in that article before the part Coulter quoted wasn't Tom DeLay, nor even a Republican, but Al Gore:

In his announcement speech in Carthage, Al Gore joined the God Squad, intoning that "most Americans are hungry for a deeper connection between politics and moral values; many would say 'spiritual values.' Without values of conscience, our political life degenerates."

Faith is an intensely personal matter. It should not be treated as a credential or reduced to a sound bite. History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.

This column never once criticizes DeLay for believing in God, but it goes go after him for blaming the lack of theism in our civilization for the shooting at Columbine High School:

After linking Columbine to the culture of abortion and the teaching of evolution, Mr. DeLay went to a rally of ministers waving Bibles Wednesday and blamed separation of church and state for the tragedy. "All of this knee-jerk lawmaking is a waste of time," he said. Odd remark for the House whip.

Mr. DeLay has so debased the discourse that he included this charming anecdote as proof of the culture crisis: "I got an E-mail this morning that said it all. The student writes, Dear God: Why didn't you stop the shootings at Columbine? And God writes, Dear student: I would have, but I wasn't allowed in school."

Lies by omission is a favorite tactic of Coulter's, that much cannot be doubted. A particularly appalling example happens early on in the book, where Coulter says the following:

In the wake of an attack on America committed by crazed fundamentalist Muslims, Walter Cronkite denounced Jerry Falwell. Falwell, it seems, had remarked that gay marriage and abortion on demand may not have warmed the heart of the Almighty. Cronkite proclaimed such a statement “the most abominable thing I’ve ever heard.” Showing his renowned dispassion and critical thinking, this Martha’s Vineyard millionaire commented that Falwell was “worshipping the same God as the people who bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon” (the difference being liberals urged compassion and understanding toward the terrorists).

The comment she is referring to is not one where Falwell simply said "that gay marriage and abortion on demand may not have warmed the heart of the Almighty" (or what Falwell had been saying for years by the time of this book), but that he specifically said the attacks of 9/11/2001 were caused in part by people pushing those things. Falwell's quote, in full, was:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

Furthermore, although Coulter uses backlash from this event is used as another example of liberals being irrational, liberals were far from the only people who took issue with Falwell's comments. Then-President George W. Bush denounced what Falwell said, and Falwell himself apologized for the comment a day later.

Lies with footnotes

If there is one thing that this book is infamous for, it's Coulter's manipulative use of footnotes. This book is filled with sources — seven hundred eighty to be exact — and if one actually begins checking them, one finds a large chunk of them to be a total misrepresentation of what happened. One occasion sees her claiming "Bush had won" the 2000 Florida vote "on any count", with her source being an article from The Washington Post, literally with the headline "Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots".

In another example, she claims "The New York Times had allowed loose associations between Nazis and Christians to be made in the pages." Her examples were a book reviewer framing the question of a book about an antisemitic play and an article about the claims that Pope John Paul II was an antisemite.

Citing people quoting things and treating that as if that is what they believe is another favorite of Coulter's. She writes about "The image of Bush as an “airhead” — as the New York Times nonjudgmentally put it." Her source, by her own admission, is an article about "voters who describe Bush as 'an airhead'". (The article also quotes John McCain voters who found Al Gore “plastic,” “detached,” and “a bore.”)

In yet another distortion, she claimed that President Ronald Reagan's approval rating only dropped five percentage points due to the Iran-Contra scandal; her source claimed that it actually dropped sixteen points.

Hypocrisy

Coulter does a bunch of things she gets onto liberals for doing.

How dare those idiots call us idiots

Chapter seven of Slander is called "The Joy Of Arguing With Liberals: You're Stupid!" "If liberals were prevented from ever again calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments … This is how six-year-olds argue: They call everything 'stupid.'"

The chapter goes into great detail about how liberals, when backed into a corner, have no other technique than calling Republicans dumb. As such, Coulter spends a large chunk of this book doing exactly that, writing that:

• Jim Jeffords is "a half-wit" and "a little D-U-M-M."
• Christine Todd Whitman "is a dim-wit."
• Gerald Ford was "a little dumb."
• Gary Johnson is "truly stupid."
• "It was blindingly obvious at the time that [Adlai] Stevenson was a boob."
• Susan Collins is a "half-wit."
• Al Gore is "stupid" and his criticism of Bush during the third debate was "a stupid quibble."

Sometimes Coulter even makes sure to call Democrats dumb while attacking them for calling Republicans dumb. For example, she writes that "though Bush was portrayed as a simpleton who couldn't talk, the most vicious attacks were trained on Dan Quayle. Whatever you can say about Quayle, he's smarter than Tom Daschle."

On the topic of her claim that the media treats Republicans as stupid and Democrats as smart, early on in chapter eight Coulter talks about Adlai Stevenson was seen as a genius despite, in Coulter's view, being an utter moron. "Widely known as a lover of literature," she writes, "with an erudite wit, Stevenson was supposed to be the thinking man’s president." However, it was Republicans, not Democrats, who attempted to make Stevenson seem as somebody abnormally smart, in order to paint him as an Ivory Tower intellectual. The term "egghead" was specifically created to mock Stevenson and coined by Connecticut Republicans.

Cruelty

Coulter writes against the "savagely cruel" attacks liberals use on their enemies. Of course, she bemoans liberals doing the same thing, writing angerly about a New York Times article which called Clarence Thomas, "The Youngest, Cruelest Justice" and using that as evidence that "Thomas is not engaged on the substance of his judicial philosophy." (The article was actually about how Thomas interprets the Eighth Amendment, with the claim of him being "the cruelest justice" being a reference to his rather conservative understanding of the phrase "cruel and unusual punishment.")

Elsewhere, she says "there is nothing so irredeemably cruel as an attack on a woman for her looks," especially when it comes "from the party of Bella Abzug."