Original research a/o commentary by Dr. Limerick is in italics.
LATEST UPDATE: September 18, 2002
NEW STUFF
SLANDER. (page unk) The NYT, by endorsing liberal presidential candidates, has gone for over 25 years without endorsing the winner of the majority of the popular vote. FACT. In the last three Presidential elections (i.e. since 1989, 13 years, over half of Coulter's alleged dry spell), the NYT has endorsed the winner of the popular vote, although third-party spoilers did prevent the winner to have an absolute majority. DAVID'S JOURNAL, 9/16/2002. COMMENT. This twist on the facts cannot have been other than deliberate.
p. 10. SLANDER. Criticizes Al Gore for airing campaign ad featuring the daughter of hate-crime victim James Byrd. FACT. Here we have Jim Ryan, GOP candidate for Governor of Illinois, doing it wholesale by inviting the families (plural) of murder victims (plural) to help at his fund-raisers. LINK
p. 15. SLANDER. "[In the New York Times] there have been only 11 sightings of a 'liberal Republican'." FACT. Maybe it's because Coulter, and other doctrinaire conservatives like her, want to throw Republicans like Lincoln Chafee out of the party. (Slander, p. 32).
MULTIPLE OR UNKNOWN PAGES
SLANDER. Liberals have been wrong about everything for the past 50 years. FACT. To support this claim, AHC tells us that the southern Senators opposing the Civil Rights Act were "liberals." SALON.COM
SLANDER. Journalists are, on the whole, biased to the left. FACT. To help prove this, she says that Rush Limbaugh and his right-wing ilk don't count because they are commentators, not journalists, but does quote liberal commentators such as Maureen Dowd to demonstrate journalists' bias. SPINSANITY.
SLANDER. AHC chooses Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag as typifying liberal reaction to 9/11. FACT. This is absurd on its face. SALON.COM.
SLANDER. Conservatives do not stoop to name-calling. Liberals do it all the time. FACT. GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's captive PAC, famously issued a memo suggesting the following words to describe Democrats: "sick, traitors, destructive, corrupt, bizarre, cheat, and steal." Such constructive advice is the sum total of the memo – how to (shall we say?) slander Democrats. DAVIS.
ACTUAL PAGE CITES
1. SLANDER. The NYT on Tom DeLay: "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. (“History teaches that when religion is injected into politics—the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo—disaster follows.”)" FACT. The quotation comes from an NYT article, 6/20/99, that starts off criticizing DeLay. However, the quoted sentence directly refers to—Al Gore! (it can be read to indirectly refer to G.W. Bush as well). HOWLER.
2. SLANDER. "Americans wake up in the morning to “America’s Sweetheart,” Katie Couric, berating Arlen Specter about Anita Hill ten years after the hearings. . ." FACT. Specter went on the Today show to promote his book, which included a discussion of the Clarence Thomas hearings, and Couric asked, "you accused [Anita Hill] of publicly, quote, “flat out perjury.” Any regrets?" COMMENT. This is "berating?" Especially when Specter, in his book, brought up the subject himself. HOWLER.
2. SLANDER. "Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals." FACT. This is mere hyperbole, neither true nor false. But it tells us something about the care with which the book was written; image is everything. Dr. Limerick, a liberal who has never spent more than two consecutive days in New York, does believe that tax policy is the more important. Although Charles Manson slaughtering baby seals would be an appalling and heartbreaking sight, the actual damage to the nation would be small. But even slight reductions in marginal tax rates (on the prosperous; I typically don't object to reducing tax rates on the poor) can in many cases do large damage to the commonweal, both because the government is starved of necessary revenue and because of the bad effect on the distribution of income and wealth. Dr. Limerick.
2. SLANDER. "Time magazine columnist Barbara Ehrenreich gives two thumbs up to 'The Communist Manifesto'" FACT. No such article appeared in my search of Lexis's Time database; apparently she is referring to "Communism on your coffee table!" which appeared not in Time but in Salon.com, 4/30/98. (Misdirection alert! There's no traction in showing that Salon.com is a little pink—what else is new?--so she tricks you into thinking the "Manifesto" piece appeared in Time.) But Ehrenreich does not give any thumbs up to the Manifesto. The article mocks the issue of an upscale edition aimed at the "sybaritic classes," and the state of capitalism that would encourage such a thing. The single positive thing she says about the Manifesto itself is that its message -- "The meek shall triumph and the mighty shall fall," is similar to that of Isaiah and Jesus, and is one that bears repeating. Dr. Limerick.
2. SLANDER. Dan Rather called Bill Clinton an "honest man." FACT. True, sort of. Rather said this on the O'Reilly Factor, 5/16/2001. But, it leaves out most of Rather's point: "I think he's an honest man. . . . I think at core he's an honest person . . . . I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things." A Coulter trademark: prevarication by misdirection. Dr. Limerick.
3. SLANDER. "We wade through preposterous news stories on Enron, global warming, Tawana Brawley, “plastic guns,” the melting North Pole, the meaning of the word “is”—until you can’t keep up with the wave of lies." FACT. What does she mean by "preposterous"? Clinton's parsing of "is," for example, struck many as "preposterous," but as far as I know, the news stories reported it straight. (By the way, Ann, no word, certainly not a common word like "is," has one and only one interpretation. You should have learned that in law school. Indeed, awareness of such ambiguity is essential in a good lawyer.) What "preposterous" story about Enron would she mean? Its bankruptcy? The fact that its officers got away with millions of dollars while its employees lost everything? The fact that half the Bush administration has had close ties? Its manipulation of the California power crisis? I would agree that these are preposterous, if she means "outrageous." Does she think "global warming" and "the melting North Pole" are two different stories? Now that ice floes the size of Rhode Island have fallen off Antarctica, and the EPA itself has admitted the phenomenon, would she concede that maybe the stories were not so preposterous? I don't know about plastic guns. Much about the Tawana Brawley story was preposterous, but my understanding is that the mainstream media corrected itself at the end. Dr. Limerick.
4. SLANDER. November 5, 2001 was "precisely three weeks" after September 11, 2001. FACT. It's a day less than eight weeks. It's four weeks after the first attacks on Afghanistan. Trivial? Sure, but it shows how well she proofreads. TAP
4. SLANDER. "Liberals variously call the flag a 'joke,' 'very, very, dumb,' and—most cutting--'not cosmopolitan.'" FACT. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times ran this down; none of the three is what AHC would like you to believe. Ann's source for "joke" was Robert Altman, who was criticizing the commercialized overuse of the flag. "[V]ery, very, dumb" came from a controversy over whether the flag should be flown over a 19th century Hawaiian palace; a University of Hawaii professor said of people who accused Hawaiians of being unpatriotic: "This is when people start acting very, very dumb in their patriotism and flag-waving. I'll take Dan Inouye's empty sleeve as patriotism long before I'll take a passing bumper sticker on my car that says, 'America Forever.' " "Not cosmopolitan" comes from a (pre-9/11) comment by a New York history professor: "New York has just been too much of a cosmopolitan town for flag-waving. It is the home of the UN, and a place filled with tourists, with immigrants, with people doing trade," i.e. "cosmopolitan" in its dictionary sense of "belonging to the world." Altman is the only one of the three who is even demonstrably "liberal," and none of the three is denigrating the flag. They are all denigrating the thoughtless anti-patriotic uses to which it is often put. Roeper's conclusion: "How utterly bogus." ROEPER.
5. SLANDER: In a column published soon after 9/11, Frank Rich (of NYT) demanded that Ashcroft ignore Muslim terrorists and focus on anti-abortion extremists. FACT. Rich said no such thing. REBUTTAL. On Hannity & Colmes, 6/25/02, AHC said this was an "accurate paraphrase."(?) DAVIS
5. SLANDER. In the aftermath of 9/11, Prof. Bruce Ackerman (Yale Law) recommended dropping the war on terror to concentrate on "home-grown extremists." FACT. Ackerman does mention "home-grown extremists," but only in passing. DAVIS COMMENT. "Home-grown extremists" are suspected of the anthrax murders of October 2001.
5. SLANDER. Paraphrase of Jerry Falwell, 9/14/01: "Falwell had remarked that gay marriage and abortion on demand may not have warmed the heart of the Almighty." This was used to slam Walter Cronkite for calling Falwell's comments "abominable." FACT. As is well known, Falwell took the occasion to blame all his usual enemies (gays, abortionists, ACLU, etc.) for the 9/11 attacks. DAVIS
5. SLANDER. 9/11 "provided liberals with a religion they could respect." FACT. AHC provides absolutely no documentation for this claim. Scoobie also points out, correctly, that a lawyer (magna cum laude from Michigan, no less!) should understand the difference between forcing school kids to pray and permitting the prisoners at Camp X-Ray to pray. DAVIS
7. SLANDER. Jim Jeffords always votes for higher taxes. FACT. Jeffords voted "nay" on Clinton's 1993 tax hike, and "yea" on Bush II's tax cut. TAP. COMMENT. In fact, he postponed his departure from the GOP so the tax cut would go through.
12. SLANDER. In NYT article on Clarence Thomas: "He is called 'a colored lawn jockey for conservative white interests,' 'race traitor,' 'black snake,' 'chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom,' 'house Negro' and 'handkerchief head,' 'Benedict Arnold' and "Judas Iscariot'."" FACT. The NYT did not, as AHC would like you to believe, author these epithets. They are due to, among others, Jocelyn Elders and Joseph Lowery. SALON.COM.
15. SLANDER. Search of Lexis-Nexis database shows NYT uses "far right wing" 109 times; "far left wing" only 18 times. FACT. Corresponding search of Washington Times yields FRW, 37; FLW, 7. Ratios: NYT: 6.1:1; WashTimes, 5.3:1. DAILY HOWLER 5/19/02. COMMENT. That is, relatively speaking, the NYT uses "FRW" only a little more often that the—dare I say—far right wing Washington Times.
15. SLANDER: NYT uses phrase "moderate Republican" 168 times, "liberal Republican" 11 times. FACT. "liberal Republican" 22 times over 1996-present; 524 hits for entire database. TAP
16, 33-4, 125, 130-134, 145, 197. SLANDER. Reagan won the Cold War. FACT. At best debatable. Soviet sources say that Reagan's acceleration of the arms race had little effect on Soviet military spending. TAP
17. SLANDER. The media calls only conservative women names like "ugly." FACT. Conservative uglification and derision: Rush Limbaugh on Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ann Richards, Donna Shalala; Jay Leno, others on Janet Reno; AHC herself on Bella Abzug ("A blind man in America would think the ugliest women ever to darken the planet are Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, and Katherine Harris. This from the party of Bella Abzug."). DAVIS, TAP, ROEPER. COMMENT. Let's not forget the National Review's column saying that Chelsea should be killed before she has a chance to reproduce.
40. SLANDER. The media is consistently dismissive of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. FACT. She must reach back as far as 1979 in search of at best mediocre examples. AHC is apparently correct that People did diss Schlafly in its review of The Muppets Take Manhattan; this was in 1984. She reads flattering pieces in the Chicago Tribune, 8/1/96, and Newsweek, 4/30/79, as insulting Schlafly. Yet another claim about the NYT's choice of words could not be corroborated on Lexis-Nexis. HOWLER 7/22/02 (also citing Janet Maslin's review of Slander in the NYT).
49. SLANDER. 10 quotations about Bob Packwood, some from before, and some from after, revelations that he had repeatedly sexually harassed staff members. These are arranged to appear as if they come from 10 different sources. FACT. 9 of the quotes come from a total of three sources, for a total of four sources, undermining her point that the media had turned on Packwood for violating one of its taboos. SPINSANITY.
51. SLANDER. Katie Couric called Ronald Reagan an "airhead." FACT. On the Today show, 9/27/99, Couric said, "Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead. That’s one of the conclusions of a new biography of Ronald Reagan that’s drawing a tremendous amount of interest and fire today." I.e., Couric said Morris called Reagan an airhead, and this is what AHC misstated. Indeed, in the furor over the book, Dutch, lots of TV hosts, left and right, were saying that Morris called Reagan an airhead. This gets confusing because in fact, Morris had said he started off thinking Reagan an airhead, but changed his mind as the project wore on, but that is not what AHC was talking about. DAILY HOWLER, 7/15-19/02, rebutting KAUSFILES 7/8/02.
57. SLANDER. She cites a study showing that during the 2000 campaign, the NYT ran twice as many anti-Gore articles as anti-Bush, and twice as many pro-Bush as pro-Gore, then pretends to have refuted it by saying, "Claims of 'conservative bias in the media at large are amusing oddities. But a claim that the New York Times has a conservative bias can be explained only by the sheer joy liberals take in telling lies." FACT. Nowhere does she address the substance of the study; she merely tries to laugh it off. SPINSANITY.
98-101. SLANDER. The "liberal" media is surprised that conservative policy books become best sellers because they cannot imagine that anyone would want to read a conservative book. FACT. The media is surprised whenever a dense policy tome like The Closing of the American Mind is a best-seller. This applies equally across the spectrum. SALON.COM
108. SLANDER. In the rush to provide the public with yet more liberal bilge, editors apparently dispense with fact-checking. . . . [I]t's hard to think of a single hoax book written by a conservative. FACT. Try, for example, Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right; Brock, The Real Anita Hill (Brock has written at length about how his was a "hoax book written by a conservative"). Scoobie Davis has several others.
132. SLANDER. Magazines tried to undercut Reagan's reelection bid by running articles on senility: AHC cites four such articles published in 1984, of only eight to run in Presidential election years from 1976-2000. FACT. Time and Newsweek discussed Reagan's poor performance in the televised debate of October 7, 1984. Time repeatedly said that the debate was no indicator of senility. Newsweek compared Reagan favorably to Churchill, and never even mentioned the s-word. Ladies' Home Journal (yes, cited by Ann) ran a personal account of the health care received by the writer's mother, and referred to Picasso, Martha Graham, and Alfred Hitchcock as examples of people working well into their 80s and 90s. U.S. News used Reagan, William Brennan, and several others as examples of the "dynamic elderly." Moreover, WSJ, not cited by Ann, was openly questioning Reagan's competence. HOWLER, 7/26/02.
134. SLANDER. NYT, 3/12/2000, called Bush Jr. an "airhead." FACT. The Times was quoting a Republican, a disappointed McCain supporter. HOWLER.
139. SLANDER. In 1993 Al Gore saw busts of Washington and Franklin and asked, "Who are these guys?" The story was carried only by USA Today. FACT. First, several papers carried the story, and the NYT had two articles, by then-reporters Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. Also, Gore said, "Who are these people?" Gore was actually referring to busts of John Paul Jones and the Marquis de Lafayette. Quick, Ann, what do they look like? TAP, DAVIS.
145, 154, 159-60. SLANDER: Al Gore lied about how he and Tipper were the inspiration for "Love Story." FACT: Many years ago, Erich Segal, the author, told the Nashville Tennessean that Al had been the model for Oliver, but Tipper had not been the model for Jenny. Unfortunately, the Tennessean got it wrong, and said that Al and Tipper had been the models. That's where Al got the story. Was Al lying? No. TAP COMMENT. Besides, isn't including Tipper good ol'fashioned gallantry? Ann's offhand epithets like "girly boys" and "parakeet males" suggest that she should approve.
166. SLANDER. The Religious Right is "apocryphal," a figment of liberals' imagination. FACT. This is obviously ridiculous. But see Scoobie Davis's handy list of characteristics of a Religious Rightist. Not all the points apply to every Religious Rightist, and you could probably come up with some more, but the point is that there is general agreement about the contours of what it takes to be a Religious Rightist. DAVIS.
166. SLANDER. Newspapers' liberal bias is betrayed by frequent use of "Conservative Christians" but never "atheist liberals." FACT. Not even the Washington Times ever refers to "atheist liberals." It is simply not a phrase in common currency. HOWLER. COMMENT. By the way, there are true-blue conservative icons who are also atheists. Exhibit A: Ted Williams.
199. SLANDER: 100+ NYT articles on the March "on" Selma. FACT: 16 stories on Selma, 54 mentioning Selma in passing (total 70). TAP
205. SLANDER. Almost every U.S. newspaper, except the NYT, carried the news of the death of Dale Earnhardt on the front page. The story that did appear, on day 2, was a down-the-nose look at sad Southern yahoos at Wal-Mart. FACT. Earnhardt died on a Sunday; the NYT did carry this news, on page 1, Monday morning. The Tuesday piece was about the impact of Earnhardt's death on his home town in North Carolina; it opened in Wal-Mart because one touching aspect of their grief was that they had bought up all the Earnhardt memorabilia, written farewell messages on them, and left them along the fence at Earnhardt's offices. HOWLER. Joe Conason reports that Crown is considering correcting this error, at least, on the next (if any) printing of Slander. Salon.com,
Truthfully yours,
/s/
Dr. Rush Limerick