As with Malkin below, ash has assembled a collection of Coulter-related letters to her local paper published over a period of several years. They're roughly in chronological order, meaning those she had the foresight to date are, with the undated ones interspersed according to clues in the content. Note the one letter from another writer to which she responds, as well as the opinion piece linked in her corresponding reply.
And as with Malkin, ash eventually phased out Coulter entirely.
Friday 12 29 00
Let’s overlook how Ann Coulter has mangled the intent of Roe v. Wade in ways too numerous to delineate. Let’s not bother discussing whether she did so deliberately.
Let’s not debate whether her writing describes herself more than it elucidates the ultra conservative political view. Let’s not probe the psyche of someone capable of such ugly rhetoric.
And let’s not speculate whether the reduction of her column to once a week is the first step toward phasing her out entirely.
A recent letter writer compared providing a forum for Ms. Coulter’s vitriol to the scattering of roaches exposed to bright light. It’s a good analogy despite the fact that this roach doesn’t flee. The problem is she does get paid.
Friday, 8 10 01
If Ann Coulter's intention is to confound and obfuscate, she certainly is succeeding.
Take, for example, her column disparaging counterintuitive positions. What could be more counterintuitive than prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating someone for fictional entries in a private diary? Yet Coulter advocates doing precisely that, with the justification of her own skewed logic. No matter. Coulter has no heartfelt position on any issue. Her raison d'etre is self-aggrandizement. Her method is to blindside the reader by looking like a hippie while talking like an imperialist.
As for debunking the "slippery slope" argument, I agree with her. It is stupid. Now watch her attempt to argue against embryonic stem cell research today lest the elderly, crippled and mentally ill be exterminated tomorrow - as if the law can't "see the difference."
I was taught never to argue with an idiot. Time to extend that wisdom to include those who intend to make no sense.
Next Heartland feature story: letter writers whose submissions are routinely rejected by the SJ-R.
Saturday 10 06 01
I'm sick and tired of letters from Ann Coulter supporters who are sick and tired of letters from Coulter critics. Of course she is entitled to her opinions (though I dispute she seriously believes her incendiary rhetoric), just as detractors such as myself have a right to express their objections to her opinions. It works both ways.
So here's a proposal for those on the hands-off-Coulter side, as well as for those of us who denounce her: we'll stop reading your sick-and-tired letters and you can stop reading our derogatory ones.
Saturday 12 8 01
In her column of December 7, Ann Coulter describes the journalist Maureen Dowd as "typically pointless, rambling and completely non-factual."
Wow. In psychospeak, that's called projection: superimposing one's own behaviors or characteristics onto someone else.
This diva emperor has been naked far too long. Quick, someone, throw a burka over Coulter.
TH 12 11 03
Another week, another seven days of editorials. Friedman advising the Bushies on foreign policy; Ivens admonishing polluters, especially of Texas origin; Novak showing off his inside-the-beltway player status; Rall strategizing the pragmatics of overthrowing the regime that overthrew the people; Will explaining, hopefully in incomprehensible language, why corporations buying legislation constitutes “free” speech; Goodman addressing the social issues through the lens of feminism, circa 1970s; Safire so obscure I don’t know what point he’s making; Dowd DOCUMENTING society’s decline on numerous levels; Kemp attempting to dictate economic policy; Reeves offering a historical and international context to today’s affairs.
And then there’s Coulter, a paragraph unto herself. Praise the recent letter writer who predicted her “raising the stakes”; she’s finally managed to disparage senior citizens as “old geezers on the government dole.” The entitled, PRIVILEGED, compassionless Joan of Arc of our nation, actually a hate-consumed, demented, lying sicko, has now targeted what should be the most revered and deserving demographic for her cheap and insulting rhetoric.
She’s in free fall, folks. Having jumped off the Empire State Building, it’s only a matter of time before she hits the ground. To her critics, it may be satisfying, but it won’t be pretty, and it won’t be particularly interesting. She will go SPLAT. And readers of the State Journal-Register will view the spectacle as long as our newspaper insists upon continuing to afford her her weekly waste of space.
Mon 3 1 04
About four months ago, Ann Coulter, a frequent guest on MSNBC’s Hardball, asserted that the reason George C. Scott refused to attend the Academy Award some thirty years ago was out of embarrassment that the character he portrayed – General Patton – and for whom he was nominated for best actor had been inadvertently well received by audiences attending the film.
Hardball host Chris Matthews was outraged. “That’s not the reason!” he bellowed. “He didn’t go not because of his role but because he was protesting the ceremony itself, which he considered a meat market.” When Coulter persisted with her version of Scott’s motivation, something to the effect that while “liberal Hollywood wanted Patton to be hated by people, they decided they liked him,” Matthews literally threw up his hands, exclaiming, “The facts mean nothing to you, Ann.”
She hasn’t been on Hardball since that appearance.
Several days later David Corn, another guest debating Coulter, looked up the pertinent passage in Scott’s autobiography. Sure enough, Matthews had the quote almost verbatim. Now I don’t know about you, but I tend to take the speaker at his word, as opposed to the interpretation of the speaker on the part of someone with ulterior motives.
So much for Coulter’s “FACTS.”
Wed 4 14 04
To my knowledge, Adolph Hitler had Jewish ancestry. His would-be protégé, Matthew Hale, has kinky hair and dark skin -common African-American features. Would it be reasonable to surmise that both of these men, motivated by self-loathing, have sought to excise these unacceptable traits in themselves by eradicating entire ethnicities?
That would explain their irrational, inhumane behavior. What demons haunt Ann Coulter, God only knows.
SUN 4 25 04
Marcia Sailsbury of Litchfield is wrong on several counts. Robert Novak and William Safire are not “middle-of-the-roaders”; they are devoutly partisan. Having said that, I for one welcome their inclusion in the mosaic of syndicated columnists, as they do indeed balance the left-leaning writers.
If I may presume to summarize the objections of us liberal “Bush-bashers” to Ann Coulter, we criticize not that she is so far on the right but that she’s not a legitimate journalist. Lies, distortions, and incendiary attacks do not constitute thought-provoking prose, nor do they contribute to the ongoing American debate. While Novak, Safire, and George Will, with whom I consistently and vehemently disagree, write columns, she writes unsubstantiated gibberish.
Recently, I speculated on the dark forces driving infamous figures in history. Coulter is in a class of her own. For a clue as to what lurks inside Coulter’s brain, Ms. Sailsbury might count the number of times Coulter uses the words “sane” and “insane.”
Allow the president his celebration
This letter is in response to Liz Cullen’s letter Friday “High price paid for inauguration.” Elected servants? Since when have our elected public officials become servants? They are not servants! I can only imagine the outrage which would have occurred if President Clinton had been referred to as a servant.
My second question is was the amount of money spent on an inauguration ever questioned this much in 1993 or in 1997? I highly doubt it. I suggest you read Ann Coulter’s article Friday, comparing the fuss made over Inauguration 2005 to the lack of complaints made in 1993.
While I do agree too much money is spent on any inauguration, I also do not see an end to it just as I do not see an end to the Oscars, Golden Globes or any other ceremony celebrating Hollywood celebrities.
Anyone elected to public office deserves a chance to celebrate because he/she and anyone who helped during the election worked very hard to win the election. There is no doubt in my mind that the only reason the money spent on the inauguration is even being questioned is because the liberals are still furious over Kerry’s loss.
If Kerry had been elected would there be any question on how much to spend on the inauguration? Nope - well, at least not by the media.
Please, whether you support Bush or not, allow him his celebration. Whether you agree with his policies or not, he is a person all the same who works very hard at what he does.
Kerry lost - get over it. If we are ever to truly be the United States of America, we must learn to work together to provide the best for our nation. Perhaps if we can remember that, so can our elected officials.
Elizabeth Ladage, Pawnee
I so didn’t want to write another letter so soon after my last one. After reading Elizabeth Padage’s comments in Monday’s paper, I so have to.
It’s not the sore loser implication of the phrase “get over it.” It’s not the assertion that public officials are not servants, which, whether Clinton or Bush, they surely are (or are supposed to be). It’s not even to assure Ms. Padage that “furious liberals,” particularly those in Congress, will not lie down, will not roll over, and most certainly will not play dead when it comes to legislative matters during Bush’s second term. It’s not to remind her that the job of the party out of power is to serve as the loyal opposition.
It’s her reliance on columnist Ann Coulter to bolster her case against Democrats complaining about last week’s inauguration excesses. Coulter may be – and is – deliberately deceptive, she may – and does – distort without conscience to delude gullible readers, but one thing she is not is stupid. So she could not possibly have honestly misinterpreted the sarcasm of Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd when they wrote, on January 21, 1993, “Now, in the capital, comes the movement for a Permanent Inaugural to complement Mr. Clinton's permanent campaign.
“Though this inaugural celebration has already lasted longer than ‘Gone With The Wind,’ ‘Roots’ and ‘The Winds of War,’ let it be remembered that there is always room for more…” Furthermore, when Coulter also attacked Rich and Dowd for quoting Hollywood agent Karen Russell as saying of the Clinton inaugural: "I'm in this fantasy world. I haven't slept. I'm punch drunk," she omitted Rich and Dowd's reference to Russell's comments as "corny, mushy and communitarian."
Padage is free, of course, to conflate the 1993 inauguration, pre-9/11 and during a time of relative peace, with the 2005 extravaganza against a backdrop of starkly different circumstances. She is also free to ignore my warning that by invoking Ann Coulter as an authority on any subject, she only discredits herself by association with America’s most disingenuous journalist.
It’s simple. Until he got caught, Rumsfeld did not personally sign condolence letters to the families of fallen troops. He (or a clerical worker) used an autopen. That means Rumsfeld was never aware of the names of the dead, nor did he sacrifice one moment on each who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Coulter defends the autopen use. In fact, she ridicules those who criticize Rumsfeld, even after Rumsfeld himself has promised to suspend the practice. Coulter dismisses such mechanisms as comparable to the widespread use of autopens by politicians and business types when someone has not died to protect the country she so loves.
In so doing, Coulter dishonors the military. Coulter is a traitor.
Ann Coulter’s weekly column is posted on her website every Wednesday night. She is as punctual as she is misguided. Meanwhile, though she hardly is inclined to heed the advice of a detractor such as myself, and though she most certainly does not read the State Journal-Register, I would caution her not to write about the abortion issue vis a vis the Peterson murder case at risk of her own credibility.
The reasons are threefold. First, it wouldn’t be valid. Regardless of whatever argument she is likely to present (can feminists defend the double murder charge without being hypocrites? is it or is it not a baby when the fetus was named?) or any twisted variation thereof, the questions answer themselves. As she is well aware, a first trimester embryo is a far cry from an eight month one, laws in every state forbid late term abortion absent the mother’s health to be at stake, her son, Conner, was viable outside the womb, and, most pertinent, Laci, his mother, chose this child. In other words, there is no conflict between supporting abortion rights and the fact that Conner Peterson was a human being.
Second, to date, this debate has been held in numerous forums. It is stale now. By the time she posts her column let alone it is published in our newspaper on Friday, it will have positively decomposed. Far from being perceived as original, Coulter will have merely jumped on the bandwagon.
And third, it would constitute exploitation at its worst, even for Coulter. To morph a tragedy into political fodder would be the ultimate in distaste, even for her.
In the alternative, I would suggest that Coulter write about why Franklin Graham should be appointed the religion czar of the new Iraq, or why Sen. Sanitarium’s (misspelling intentional) recent remarks about homosexuality are actually quite patriotic.
MON 1 9 06
Congratulations to C.L. Crockett for his righteous expose of Ann Coulter foolishly treading into subject matter about which she knows nothing.
To his salient point about all holidays being made-up, whether to commemorate an event (Christ’s birth, the miracle of oil burning for eight days), or to celebrate a concept (Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa), I would add: is Coulter suggesting there‘s an expiration date for inventing new ones?
With her increasingly bizarre columns, Coulter has made it incrementally impossible NOT to address her mental health issues as well as a point-by-point rebuttal of her preposterous claims, as masterfully illustrated by Mr. Crockett. Soon no one will bother dignifying her lunacy with a face-value response.
So much for her pathetic self-hatred directed outward. I would suggest the time is past due for a community reevaluation of whether Coulter holding us hostage has reached critical mass, that is, whether far more subscribers to the State Journal-Register resent – and that’s putting it mildly – paying her sydication fee than continue to support her. If this is indeed the case, the time has come to drop this sorry excuse for a journalist from the editorial page.
While Coulter is free to say whatever she pleases, this publication is under no obligation to tacitly endorse her as the evidence mounts that she is as ignorant as she is vicious.
FRI 3 3 06
On page one (continued on page five) of Friday’s edition, two members of the Illinois Hate Crimes Commission hold Sister Claudette Marie Muhammed accountable for her association with the anti-Semitic, homophobic Louis Farrakhan by resigning from the commission.
On page two, the National Religious Broadcasters board of directors holds Pat Robertson accountable for his ill wishes upon Venezuela’s and Israel’s leaders by voting him off the board.
On page six, the house editorial holds gubernatorial contender Oberweis accountable for denouncing fellow Republican opponent Topinka’s refusal to hate gay people and other offenses by implying he deserves to lose the primary.
On page nine, Judge Pallmyer holds former Governor Ryan’s attorneys accountable for a proposed 68-page jury instruction by disallowing it.
And on page seven, no one holds conservative columnist Coulter accountable for her vicious ridicule of homosexuals, Jews, Asian, and “the blacks.” In fact, by continuing to syndicate her ugly diatribes (which, by the way, are available on her website and in numerous other formats accommodating her freedom of speech), the State Journal-Register not only tolerates her, it endorses her as well.
Here’s an idea: How about gathering, in a huge stadium, all subscribers to the State-Journal Register. Now let’s have a referendum. Everyone who would cancel his or her subscription if Ann Coulter’s column were cancelled, raise your hands. Now, everyone who would be willing to cancel unless or until Coulter’s column is discontinued when it comes up for renewal, in other words, who subscribe in spite of her column, not because of it, raise your hands.
There you have it. Majority rules. In the meantime I commend Stuart Schiffman for pointing out that Coulter has changed her age to two years younger than she actually is.