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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Coulter's publisher, Crown, had to correct five errors in "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right," although scores more should have been fixed. Here are some lowlights:
Coulter tries to document liberal bias by claiming that "Today" host Katie Couric called Ronald Reagan "an airhead." Here's the transcript: "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." Coulter simply lied about Couric.
"Al Gore saw busts of Washington and Franklin and asked, "Who are these guys?" Not true. Gore was referring to busts of John Paul Jones and the Marquis de Lafayette.
"Al Gore lied about how he and Tipper were the inspiration for "Love Story." Not true. In an interview years ago with "Love Story" author Erich Segal, the Nashville Tennessean reported that Segal had suggested Gore and Tipper had been the inspiration for the "Love Story" characters. That's where Gore picked up the story.
Coulter accused New York Times columnist Frank Rich, in the wake of 9/11, of writing a column that demanded that Attorney General John Ashcroft "stop monkeying around with Muslim terrorists and concentrate on anti-abortion extremists." Rich did no such thing.
Complaining about how the liberal Times endlessly recycled the glory days of the civil rights era and the famous march from Montgomery to Selma, Ala., Coulter claimed, "Between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times alone ran more than one hundred articles on 'Selma' alone." As American Prospect's Tapped noted, of those 100 Selma mentions, only 16 were centrally focused on civil rights events.
According to Coulter, Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., "supported Clinton's tax hike, and opposed the younger Bush's tax cut." Wrong and wrong. He voted against Clinton's tax hike (as did all Republicans), and he voted for Bush's tax cut.
So, exactly how hard -- if at all -- did Time actually look for Coulter's well-documented errors? "I don't say she's never made a mistake. I say she has a reputation for carelessness," Time's Cloud tells Salon. "I didn't feel the need to make the story another rehash" of Coulter's factual missteps. "Slander came out a long time ago. I think on balance the story is fair."
Searching for some new way to support the "Coulter's really important" thesis, Time latches onto this unique angle: "As a congressional staff member 10 years ago, Coulter used to help write the nation's laws. Now she is far more powerful: she helps set the nation's tone" (emphasis added). Forget the nonsense about setting the tone -- even conservative scribes don't buy in to that. But Coulter, working between 1995 and 1997 for Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., helped write the nation's laws?
According to contemporaneous news clips from Capitol Hill trade publications, such as the Hill and National Journal, Coulter at the time was almost always referred to as either Abraham's "deputy press secretary" or his "legislative assistant." In 1995, one article noted that Coulter "puts on conferences and seminars" for the senator. It wasn't until she actually left Abraham's office in '97 that Coulter received a retroactive promotion in the press and morphed into Abraham's former legal counsel, which makes it sound like she wrote laws.
We don't begrudge anyone padding their résumé. It's a Beltway tradition. But Time looks pretty foolish for trying to turn that fluff -- and Coulter herself -- into a cover story of substance.
