Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American
lawyer,
conservative social and
political commentator, author, and
syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events. Well-known for her right-wing political opinions and the controversial ways in which she defends them, Coulter has described herself as a
polemicist who likes to "stir up the pot" and, unlike "broadcasters," does not "pretend to be impartial or balanced."
Early life
Ann Hart Coulter was born in New York City on December 8, 1961, to Nell Husbands (née Martin; a native of
Paducah, Kentucky) and John Vincent Coulter (a native of
Albany, New York). The family later moved to
New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers, James and John, were raised. She graduated from
New Canaan High School in 1980.
While attending Cornell University, Coulter helped found The Cornell Review, and was a member of the Delta Gamma national women's fraternity. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984 with a B.A. in history, and received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter was president of the local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.
Law career
After law school, Coulter served as a
law clerk, in
Kansas City, for
Pasco Bowman II of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. After a short time working in New York City in private practice, where she specialized in
corporate law, Coulter left to work for the United States
Senate Judiciary Committee after the
Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994. She handled crime and immigration issues for Senator
Spencer Abraham of Michigan and helped craft legislation designed to expedite the
deportation of aliens convicted of
felonies. She later became a litigator with the
Center for Individual Rights.
Media career
Ann Coulter is the author of seven books, and publishes a weekly syndicated
newspaper column. Known for her polemical style, she also makes numerous public appearances, speaking on television and radio
talk shows, as well as on
college campuses, receiving both praise and protest. During one appearance at the
University of Arizona, a
pie was thrown at her. Coulter has, on occasion, responded with insulting remarks towards hecklers and protestors who attend her speeches.
Books
Coulter is the author of seven books, all of which have appeared on
New York Times Best Seller list, with a combined 3 million copies sold, as of May 2009.
Coulter's first book, , was published by Regnery Publishing in 1998. The book details Coulter's case for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Her second book, , published by Crown Forum in 2002, became number one on The New York Times non-fiction best seller list. In Slander, Coulter argues that President George W. Bush was given unfair negative media coverage. The factual accuracy of Slander was called into question by then-comedian and author, and now Democratic U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken. He also accused her of citing passages out of context. Others investigated these charges, and also raised questions about the book's accuracy and presentation of facts. Coulter responded to criticisms in a column called "Answering My Critics", where she wrote "the most devastating examples of my alleged 'lies' keep changing" and that some accusations of her factual inaccuracy are either outright wrong or really just "trivial" factual errors (e.g., referring to "endnotes" as "footnotes", or incorrectly identifying Evan Thomas' grandfather, Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, as his father).
In her third book, , also published by Crown Forum, she reexamines the 60-year history of the Cold War — including the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Whittaker Chambers–Alger Hiss affair, and Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" — and argues that liberals were wrong in their Cold War political analyses and policy decisions, and that McCarthy was correct about Soviet agents working for the U.S. government. She also argues that the correct identification of Annie Lee Moss, among others, as communists was misreported by that liberal media. Treason was published in 2003, and spent 13 weeks on the Best Seller list.
Crown Forum published a collection of Coulter's columns in 2004 as her fourth book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter.
Coulter's fifth book, published by Crown Forum in 2006, is . In it, she argues, first, that liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, and second, that it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. Godless debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Coulter published If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, in October 2007.
Her most recent book was released January 6, 2009, entitled .
Columns
In the late 1990s, Coulter's weekly (biweekly from 1999–2000)
syndicated column for
Universal Press Syndicate began appearing. Her column is featured on six conservative websites:
Human Events Online,
WorldNetDaily,
Townhall.com,
FrontPageMag,
Jewish World Review and her own website. Her syndicator says, "Ann's client newspapers stick with her because she has a loyal fan base of conservative readers who look forward to reading her columns in their local newspapers."
In 1999, Coulter worked as a regular columnist for George magazine. Coulter also wrote exclusive weekly columns between 1998 and 2003 and with occasional columns thereafter for the conservative magazine Human Events. In her columns for the magazine, she discusses judicial rulings, Constitutional issues, and legal matters affecting Congress and the executive branch.
In 2001, as a contributing editor and syndicated columnist for National Review Online (NRO), Coulter was asked by editors to make changes to a piece written after the September 11 attacks. On the national television show Politically Incorrect, Coulter accused NRO of censorship and said that she was paid $5 per article. NRO dropped her column and terminated her editorship. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of NRO, said, "We did not 'fire' Ann for what she wrote... we ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty [concerning the editing disagreement]."
Coulter contracted with USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She wrote one article that began, "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston..." and referred to some unspecified female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons." The newspaper declined to print the article citing an editing dispute over "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable." An explanatory article by the paper went on to say "Coulter told the online edition of Editor & Publisher magazine that 'USA Today doesn't like my "tone", humor, sarcasm, etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them.'" USA Today replaced Coulter with Jonah Goldberg, and Coulter published it instead on her website.
In August 2005, the Arizona Daily Star dropped Coulter's syndicated column citing reader complaints that "Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."
In July 2006, some newspapers replaced Coulter's column with those of other conservative columnists following the publication of her fourth book, . After the Augusta Chronicle dropped her column, newspaper editor Michael Ryan explained that "it came to the point where she was the issue rather than what she was writing about." Ryan also stated that "Pulling Ann Coulter's column hurts; she's one of the clearest thinkers around."
She has criticized former president George W. Bush's immigration proposals, saying they led to "amnesty". In one column, she claims that the current immigration system is set up to purposely reduce the percentage of whites in the population. In it, she said:
Overall, Coulter's columns are highly critical of liberals and Democrats. In one, she wrote:
Television and radio
Coulter made her first national media appearance in 1996 after she was hired by the then-fledgling network
MSNBC as a legal correspondent. She was dismissed from the network at least twice. First, in February 1997, after she insulted the late
Pamela Harriman (U.S. Ambassador to France), as the network was covering her memorial service. They missed her jousting and quickly rehired her, only to fire her eight months later after she tangled with a disabled
Vietnam veteran on the air.
Robert Muller, co-founder of the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines, asserted that, "in 90% of the cases that U.S. soldiers got blown up [in Vietnam] – Ann, are you listening – they were our own mines." (Muller was misquoting a 1969
Pentagon report that found that 90% of the components used in enemy mines came from U.S. duds and refuse). Coulter, who found Muller's statement laughable, averted her eyes and responded sarcastically, "No wonder you guys lost." It became an infamous — and oft-misreported — Coulter moment. The
Washington Post and others turned the line into a more personal attack: "People like you caused us to lose that war." But her troubles with MSNBC only freed her to appear on
CNN and
Fox News, whose producers were often calling.
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post made a point to respond to the Time article to explain that his widely quoted reporting of Coulter's reply to the veteran in an article he wrote had its origin in Coulter's own later recollection of the incident. Describing his previous story, Kurtz added, "I did note that, according to Coulter, the vet was appearing by satellite, and she didn't know he was disabled."
In an interview with Bob McKeown on the January 26, 2005, edition of The Fifth Estate, Coulter came under criticism for her statement: "Canada used to be...one of our most...most loyal friends, and vice versa. I mean, Canada sent troops to Vietnam. Was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?" McKeown contradicted her with, "No, actually Canada did not send troops to Vietnam." On the February 18, 2005, edition of Washington Journal, Coulter justified her statement by referring to the thousands of Canadians who served in the American armed forces during the Vietnam era, either because they volunteered or because they were living in the USA during the war years and got drafted. She said, "The Canadian Government didn't send troops [...] but [...] they came and fought with the Americans. So I was wrong. It turns out there were 10,000 Americans who happened to be born in Canada." (Between 5,000 and 20,000 Canadians fought in Vietnam itself, including approximately 80 who were killed.). John Cloud of Time, writing about the incident a few months later, said "Canada [sent] noncombat troops to Indochina in the 1950s and again to Vietnam in 1972". The other two films were FahrenHYPE 9/11, a direct to video documentary intended to rebut Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, and
Is It True What They Say About Ann?, a documentary on Coulter containing clips of interviews and speeches.
In 2006, Coulter refused permission to include a scene featuring herself and Al Franken in a debate in Connecticut in Franken's film, .
Personal life
Coulter has been engaged several times, but never married. In October 2007, she began dating
Andrew Stein, the former president of the
New York City Council, a liberal Democrat. When asked about the relationship, Stein told the paper, "She's attacked a lot of my friends, but what can I say, opposites attract!" On January 7, 2008, however, Stein told the
New York Post that the relationship was over, citing irreconcilable differences.
Coulter owns a condominium in Manhattan and a house, bought in 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida. Although she says that usually she lives in New York, she votes in Palm Beach and is not registered to do so in New York. She is a fan of several jam bands, such as the Grateful Dead, the Dave Matthews Band, and Phish. Some of her favorite books include The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, true crime stories about serial killers and anything by Dave Barry.
Religious views
Coulter says that she holds
Christian beliefs, but has not declared her membership in any particular
denomination; she has mentioned that her father was
Catholic while her mother was not.
At one public lecture she said: "I don't care about anything else:
Christ died for my
sins and nothing else matters." In a 2004 column, she summarized her view of Christianity: "Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it." She then mocked "the message of Jesus ... according to liberals," summarising it as "...something along the lines of 'be nice to people'," which, in turn, she said "is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity".
Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian, Coulter has stated that "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it." She has also said: "... Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy — you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism." In , as well as in personal appearances, Coulter characterized the theory of evolution as "bogus science", and contrasting her beliefs to what she called the left's "obsession with Darwinism and the Darwinian view of the world, which replaces sanctification of life with sanctification of sex and death."
On October 8, 2007, Coulter ignited yet more controversy when she was quoted as saying that Jews should be "perfected" into Christians. She was talking about Republicans with Donny Deutsch, a Jewish CNBC talk-show host, and implied that she considered Christianity a virtue. Deutsch asked her, "It would be better if we were all Christian?", to which Coulter replied "Yes". Deutsch asked her, "We should all be Christian?", and got the same response, with an invitation to come to church. Later on, Coulter said, "we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say", saying that this was what Christianity was, and she compared the 'New Testament to Federal Express. Further, Coulter said that Christians considered themselves to be perfected Jews. Deutsch implied that this was an anti-Semitic remark, but Coulter said she didn't consider it to be a hateful comment. See also section on comments about Jews on The Big Idea below.
Political activities and commentary
Ann Coulter has described herself as a "
polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" and doesn't "pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do".
Paula Jones–Bill Clinton case
Coulter first became a public figure shortly before becoming an unpaid legal advisor for the attorneys representing
Paula Jones in her
sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Coulter's friend George Conway had been asked to assist Jones' attorneys, and shortly afterward Coulter, who wrote a column about the Paula Jones case for
Human Events, was also asked to help; she began writing legal briefs for the case.
Coulter later stated that she would come to mistrust the motives of Jones' head lawyer, Joseph Cammaratta, who by August or September 1997 was advising Jones that her case was weak and to settle, if a favorable settlement could be negotiated. However, in a later interview Coulter recounted that she herself had believed that the case was strong, that Jones was telling the truth, that Clinton should be held publicly accountable for his misconduct, and that a settlement would give the impression that Jones was merely interested in extorting money from the President. After the book came out, Coulter clarified her stated motives, saying:
The case went to court after Jones broke with Coulter and her original legal team, and it was dismissed via summary judgment. The judge ruled that even if her allegations proved true, Jones did not show that she had suffered any damages, stating "...plaintiff has not demonstrated any tangible job detriment or adverse employment action for her refusal to submit to the governor's alleged advances. The president is therefore entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's claim of quid pro quo sexual harassment". The ruling was appealed by Jones' lawyers. During the pendency of the appeal, Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000 ($151,000 after legal fees) in November 1998, in exchange for Jones' dismissal of the appeal. By then, the Jones lawsuit had led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
In October 2000, Jones revealed that she would pose for nude pictures in an adult magazine, saying she wanted to use the money to pay taxes and support her grade-school-aged children, in particular saying, "I'm wanting to put them through college and maybe set up a college fund." Coulter publicly denounced Jones, calling her "the trailer-park trash they said she was," (Coulter had earlier chastened Clinton supporters for calling Jones this name) after Clinton's former campaign strategist James Carville had made the widely reported remark, "Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, and you'll never know what you'll find", and called Jones a "fraud, at least to the extent of pretending to be an honorable and moral person."
2008 presidential campaign
Just as the 2008 presidential campaign was getting under way, Coulter drew criticism for statements she made at the 2007
Conservative Political Action Conference about presidential candidate
John Edwards:
The comment was in reference to Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington's use of the epithet and his subsequent mandatory "psychological assessment" imposed by ABC executives. It was widely interpreted as meaning that Coulter had called Edwards a "faggot", but Coulter has argued on a couple of occasions that she didn't actually do so, while simultaneously indicating she would not have been wrong to say it. Edwards responded on his website by characterizing Coulter's words as "un-American and indefensible" and asking readers to help him "raise $100,000 in 'Coulter Cash' this week to keep this campaign charging ahead and fight back against the politics of bigotry." He also called her a "she-devil", adding, "I should not have name-called. But the truth is – forget the names – people like Ann Coulter, they engage in hateful language." Coulter's words also drew condemnation from many prominent Republicans and Democrats, as well as groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Three advertisers (Verizon, Sallie Mae and Netbank) also pulled their advertisements from Coulter's website, and several newspapers dropped her column. Coulter responded in an e-mail to the New York Times: "C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean." Gay rights advocates were not convinced. "Ann Coulter's use of this anti-gay slur is vile and unacceptable," said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, "and the applause from her audience is an important reminder that Coulter's ugly brand of bigotry is at the root of the discriminatory policies being promoted at this gathering." A spokesman for Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, called Coulter's comments "wildly inappropriate."
By contrast, Coulter was critical of eventual Republican nominee John McCain. On the January 31, 2008 broadcast of Hannity and Colmes, Coulter claimed that, if McCain won the Republican nomination for president, she would support and campaign for Hillary Clinton, stating, "[Clinton] is more conservative than McCain."
In an April 2, 2008 column, she characterized Barack Obama's book Dreams From My Father as a "Dimestore Mein Kampf." Coulter writes, "He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's 'easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.' Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it."
2010 Canadian university tour
In March 2010, Ann Coulter performed a speaking tour of three Canadian universities: The
University of Western Ontario, the
University of Ottawa and the
University of Calgary. The tour was organized by the
International Free Press Society.
A day before Coulter's speech at the University of Western Ontario, an e-mail to Coulter from Francois Houle, provost of the University of Ottawa, was leaked to the media. The e-mail warned that "promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges." Coulter released a public statement claiming that by sending her the e-mail, Houle was promoting hatred against conservatives. During Coulter's speech at the University of Western Ontario, it was widely reported that she told a Muslim student to "take a camel", in response to the student's question about previous comments by Coulter that Muslims should not be allowed on airplanes.
On March 22, the University of Ottawa made international news when Coulter's speech was cancelled because of protesters (the number of which there are conflicting reports). Event organizers and her staff cited security concerns, but Alain Boucher of the Ottawa Police Service said the police were not undermanned; there were 10 officers visible at the scene "plus other resources" nearby. There was initially disagreement as to who cancelled the speech, but Boucher said Coulter's security team decided to call off the event: "We gave her options" – including, he said, to "find a bigger venue" – but "they opted to cancel ... It's not up to the Ottawa police to make that decision." Boucher said the crowd did not get way out of hand, and that there were no arrests. CTV News reported "It was a disaster in terms of just organization, which is probably one of the reasons why it was cancelled", citing the small number of students tasked with confirming who had signed up to attend Coulter's talk.
Event organizer and conservative activist Ezra Levant blamed the protest on the letter sent to Coulter by Houle. After the cancellation, Coulter called the University of Ottawa a "bush league", stating:
Legal and professional disputes
Irregularities in public registration
In September 2002,
Washington Post columnist
Lloyd Grove wrote a column titled, "Mystery of the Ages", raising questions about Coulter's actual date of birth. At the time, Coulter was insisting that she was not yet 40, despite media reports to the contrary. Attempting to resolve the discrepancy, Grove noted that Coulter had given her date of birth as December 8, 1961 when she first registered to vote in 1980 (the year of the
Reagan-vs-Carter presidential election), in New Canaan, Connecticut, where the legal voting age is 18. He said that Coulter's
Connecticut driver's license also listed her birth date as December 1961, but pointed out that a driver's license issued to her years later in
Washington, D.C., gave her date of birth as December 1963. In her emailed reply to Grove's inquiry, Coulter maintained that she was 38 years old. In April 2005,
Time's cover story on Coulter reported, "Coulter says she won't confirm the date 'for privacy reasons' — she's had several
stalkers. 'And I'm a girl,' she adds."
Factual inaccuracies, actual and alleged
Comedian, author and political commentator
Al Franken has questioned the factual accuracy of her books, and also accuses her of citing passages out of context. Others have investigated these charges, and have also raised questions about the books' accuracy and presentation of facts. Coulter responded to these and similar criticisms in a column called "Answering My Critics", where she claims "the most devastating examples of my alleged 'lies' keep changing" and that some accusations of her factual inaccuracy are either outright wrong or really just "trivial" factual errors (e.g. referring to "endnotes" as "footnotes", or incorrectly identifying
Evan Thomas' grandfather,
Socialist Party presidential candidate
Norman Thomas, as his father).
New York Times' NASCAR coverage
In the first edition of
Slander, Coulter alleged that
The New York Times did not cover
NASCAR driver
Dale Earnhardt's death until two days after he died:
The day after seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt died in a race at the Daytona 500, almost every newspaper in America carried the story on the front page. Stock-car racing had been the nation's fastest-growing sport for a decade, and NASCAR the second-most-watched sport behind the NFL. More Americans recognize the name Dale Earnhardt than, say, Maureen Dowd. (Manhattan liberals are dumbly blinking at that last sentence.) It took The New York Times two days to deem Earnhardt's death sufficiently important to mention it on the first page. Demonstrating the left's renowned populist touch, the article began, 'His death brought a silence to the 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!
The New York Times did, in fact, cover Earnhardt's death the same day that he died: sportswriter
Robert Lipsyte authored an article for the front page that was published on February 18, 2001. Another front page article appeared in the Times on the following day. Coulter cited an article indeed written two days after Earnhardt's death—Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winner who grew up in the South, wrote a personal piece on Earnhardt and his passing—bringing the total to three days in a row in which the Times covered Earnhardt's death on its front page.
Canadian troops in Vietnam
Coulter has been criticized for a statement she made on
The Fifth Estate, an
investigative journalism program produced by
CBC television. During an interview by host
Bob McKeown, Coulter said, "
Canada used to be...one of our most...most loyal friends, and vice versa. I mean, Canada sent troops to Vietnam. Was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than
Saddam Hussein?" McKeown contradicted her with, "No, actually Canada did not send troops to Vietnam." On the February 18, 2005 edition of
Washington Journal, Coulter justified her statement by referring to the thousands of Canadians who served in the American armed forces during the Vietnam era, either because they volunteered or because they were living in the USA during the war years and got
drafted. (Between 5,000 and 20,000 Canadians fought in Vietnam itself, including approximately 80 who were killed.). John Cloud of
Time, writing a few months later, suggested that Coulter may have been right, on the basis that "Canada [sent] noncombat troops to
Indochina in the 1950s and again to Vietnam in 1972". However, Coulter's initial assertion was that Canada sent troops into Vietnam in support of the American position; in this connection,
FAIR countered that Cloud made "quite a stretch to prove that Coulter was correct."
New York Times Christians/Nazis controversy
In her book
Slander, Coulter also stated that the
New York Times made several statements comparing Christians to
Nazis. As examples, she cites a headline reading "Did the Nazi Crimes Draw On Christian Tradition?" and a quote, "The church was co-responsible for the
Holocaust." She does not mention that the first quote was from a book review in which the reviewer disagreed with the
thesis that the Nazi crimes drew on Christian tradition. The second quote was from a discussion printed in the
Times, in which a historian also states that
Pope Pius XII was responsible for saving 750,000 Jews.
Controversies and criticism
Coulter's
polemics - she has described herself as a "
polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" and doesn't "pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do" - sometimes start firestorms of
controversy, ranging from rowdy uprisings at many of the colleges where she speaks to protracted discussions in the media.
9/11 "Jersey Girls"
In
Godless, Coulter criticized the four 9/11 widows known as the "
Jersey Girls", writing:
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. ... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much ... the Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president ... cutting campaign commercials... how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy.
These statements received national attention after an interview on The Today Show, and were widely criticized. Coulter refused to apologize, and responded, "I feel sorry for all the widows of 9/11...[but] I do not believe that sanctifies their political message....They have attacked Bush, they have attacked Condoleezza Rice, they're cutting campaign commercials for Kerry. But we can't respond because their husbands died . . . I think it's one of the ugliest things 'the left' has done...this idea that you need some sort of personal authenticity in order to make a political point..."
Comments about the New York Times
Coulter has a long-running animosity toward the
New York Times. Her book
Slander accuses the news media of unfairly criticizing conservatives, and cites the
Times as a prime example.
In an interview with George Gurley of the New York Observer shortly after the publication of Slander, it was mentioned that Coulter actually had friends and acquaintances who worked for the Times, namely restaurant critic Frank Bruni and correspondent David E. Sanger. Later in the interview, she expressed amusement at her recollections of the Times' gratuitousness in publishing two photos of George H. W. Bush throwing up at a diplomatic meeting in Japan, then said:
"Is your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say...My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." Gurley told her to be careful, to which she responded "You’re right, after 9/11 I shouldn’t say that".
By way of context, during an interview earlier in June 2002 with Katie Couric to promote the same book, Coulter expressed frustration about "constant mischaracterization" through being misquoted. "The idea that someone can go out and find one quote that will suddenly, you know, portray me — just dismiss her ideas, read no more, read no further, this person is crazy... is precisely what liberals do all the time".
When asked by John Hawkins through a pre-written set of interview questions if she regretted the statement, Coulter replied by saying: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'" Lee Salem, the president of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's column, later defended Coulter by characterizing her comments as satire.
The subject came up again when Coulter appeared on the Fox News program Hannity & Colmes. Alan Colmes mentioned Salem's claim, and said to her that remarks like saying "Timothy McVeigh should have bombed The New York Times building" were "laughable happy satires, right?" He then said that Coulter was "actually a liberal who is doing this to mock and parody the way conservatives think." She replied, "Well, it's not working very well if that were my goal. No, I think the Timothy McVeigh line was merely prescient after The New York Times has leaped beyond — beyond nonsense straight into treason, last week". She was referring to a Times report that revealed classified information about an anti-terrorism program of the U.S. government involving surveillance of international financial transactions of persons suspected of having Al-Qaida links. Colmes continued in vein when he responded, calling her remarks "great humor", and that it "belongs on Saturday Night Live. It belongs on The Daily Show."
Comments on Islam, Arabs and terrorism
On September 14, 2001, three days after the
9-11 attacks (in which her friend
Barbara Olson had been killed), Coulter wrote in her column:
Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
Responding to this comment, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations remarked in the Chicago Sun Times that before September 11, Coulter "would have faced swift repudiation from her colleagues", but "now it's accepted as legitimate commentary."
David Horowitz, however, saw Coulter's words as irony:
I began running Coulter columns on Frontpagemag.com shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself, this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe – that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter’s phillipic (sic) as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts.
One day after the attacks (before the culprits had been identified and when death toll estimates were higher than they later became), Coulter asserted that only Muslims could have been behind the attacks:
Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims -- at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours.
Coulter has been highly critical of the U.S. Department of Transportation and especially its then-secretary Norman Mineta. Her many criticisms include their refusal to use racial profiling as a component of airport screening. After a group of Muslims were expelled from a US Airways flight when other passengers expressed worries, sparking a call for Muslims to boycott the airline because of the ejection from a flight of six imams, Coulter wrote:
If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.
Coulter also cited the 2002 Senate testimony of FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, who was acclaimed for condemning her superiors for refusing to authorize a search warrant for 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui when he refused to consent to a search of his computer. They knew that he was a Muslim in flight school who had overstayed his visa, and the French Intelligence Service had confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups. Coulter said she agreed that probable cause existed in the case, but that refusing consent, being in flight school and overstaying a visa shouldn't constitute grounds for a search. Citing a poll which found that 98 percent of Muslims between the ages of 20 to 45 said they would not fight for Britain in the war in Afghanistan, and that 48 percent said they would fight for Osama bin Laden, she asserted "any Muslim who has attended a mosque in Europe -- certainly in England, where Moussaoui lived -- has had 'affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups'", so that she parsed Rowley's position as meaning that "'probable cause' existed to search Moussaoui's computer because he was a Muslim who had lived in England." Because "FBI headquarters...refused to engage in racial profiling" they failed to uncover the 9-11 plot, Coulter asserted. "The FBI allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered on the altar of political correctness. What more do liberals want?"
Coulter wrote in another column that she had reviewed the civil rights lawsuits against certain airlines to determine which airlines had subjected Arabs to the most "egregious discrimination" so that she could fly only that airline. She also said that the airline should be bragging instead of denying any of the charges of discrimination brought against them. In an interview with the The Guardian she quipped, "I think airlines ought to start advertising: 'We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'" When the interviewer replied by asking what Muslims would do for travel, she responded, "They could use flying carpets."
One comment that drew criticism from the blogosphere, as well as fellow conservatives, was made during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2006, where she said, referring to the prospect of a nuclear-equipped Iran, "What if they start having one of these bipolar episodes with nuclear weapons? I think our motto should be, post-9-11: raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences." Coulter had previously written a nearly identical passage in her syndicated column: "...I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about 'camel jockey'? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"
In October 2007, Coulter made more controversial remarks about Arabs, in this case Iraqis, when she stated, in an interview with the New York Observer
We’ve killed about 20,000 of them, of terrorists, of militants, of Al Qaeda members, and they’ve gotten a little over 3,000 of ours. That is where the war is being fought, in Iraq, that is where we are fighting Al Qaeda. Sorry we have to use your country, Iraqis, but you let Saddam come to power, ha-ha, and we are going to instill democracy in your country.
In a May 2007 article looking back at the life of the recently deceased evangelical Reverend Jerry Falwell, Coulter commented on Falwell's statement after the 9/11 attacks that "pagans", abortionists, feminists, and gays and lesbians, among others, helped make the attacks happen. In her article, Coulter stated that she disagreed with Falwell's statement, "because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and 'the Reverend' Barry Lynn."
In October 2007, Coulter participated in David Horowitz' "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week", remarking in a speech at the University of Southern California, "The fact of Islamo-Fascism is indisputable," she said. "I find it tedious to detail the savagery of the enemy . . . I want to kill them. Why don't Democrats?"
2007 John Edwards controversy
The next year, Coulter drew criticism for statements she made at the 2007
Conservative Political Action Conference about presidential candidate
John Edwards. Coulter said:
I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm - so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards, so I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions.
This was an allusion to Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington's use of the epithet and his subsequent mandatory "psychological assessment" imposed by ABC executives. but Coulter has argued on a couple of occasions that she didn't actually do so, while simultaneously indicating she would not have been wrong to say it.
The audience laughed, but Edwards responded on his website by characterizing Coulter's words as "un-American and indefensible" and asking readers to help him "raise $100,000 in 'Coulter Cash' this week to keep this campaign charging ahead and fight back against the politics of bigotry." Coulter's words also drew condemnation from many prominent Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians, as well as groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Coulter responded in an e-mail to the New York Times: "C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."
On March 5, 2007, Coulter appeared on Hannity and Colmes and said, "[f]aggot isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays. It's a schoolyard taunt meaning 'wuss'". and several newspapers dropped Coulter's column.
Responding to the controversy, Coulter said:
Just for the record, I've never attempted to revise, or extend, nor have I apologized and the attempts to silence me have made me even more money…Those newspapers pay me about 25 cents per month, but I picked up a LOT of speeches...Attempts to censor me have really backfired.
She also said, "I wasn't saying it on TV. I was saying it at a right-wing political convention with 7,000 college Republicans. I didn't put it on TV." The CPAC convention was, in fact, broadcast on
C-SPAN. In an interview with
Glenn Beck, she said, "
Sarah Silverman uses the word, and, oh, liberals don't mind it when she uses it."
This controversy revived an earlier dispute originating from a 2003 column where Coulter disparaged Democratic Presidential candidates who mention family tragedies in their campaign speeches — including Edwards, who, she stated, talks frequently about the death of his son Wade in a traffic accident.
In a June 25, 2007 appearance on Good Morning America, Coulter said: "But about the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack -- so I've learned my lesson: If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The next day, on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, Coulter received a phone call from Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards’ wife, asking her to stop the personal attacks and to stick to discussing the issues. Coulter responded, saying that the Edwards campaign was “raising money off it” and denied "saying anything about him [Edwards], actually, either time." Mrs. Edwards also confronted Coulter for writing that they had a bumper sticker on their car saying "Ask me about my dead son" in reference to the death of their son Wade. Coulter responded by characterizing Edwards' call as an attempt to silence her and by attacking Edwards for his activities as a trial lawyer.
Coulter refused to apologize, and explained her response to Mrs. Edwards in a subsequent column: "Edwards is...the trial lawyer who pretended in court to channel the spirit of a handicapped fetus in front of illiterate jurors to scam tens of millions of dollars off of innocent doctors...Apparently every time Edwards began a story about his dead son with 'I've never told anyone this before,' everyone on the campaign could lip-sync the story with him... If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those 'Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident' bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent's criminal record for partisan political advantage... As a commentator, I bring facts like these to the attention of the American people in a lively way."
Disenfranchisement of women
Time magazine's John Cloud observes that Coulter "likes to shock reporters by wondering aloud whether America might be better off if women lost the right to vote." For example, in a May 2003 interview with
The Guardian, Coulter said:
Again, in an October 2007 interview with the New York Observer, Coulter said:
Comments about Jews on The Big Idea
During an interview with
Donny Deutsch on his
CNBC program
The Big Idea (October 8, 2007), Coulter stated that the United States is a Christian nation and suggested Christians viewed themselves as "perfected Jews". Deutsch, a practicing Jew, told Coulter he found the comments personally offensive and
anti-semitic; Coulter replied that she could not understand his reaction.
DEUTSCH: You said—your exact words were, "Jews need to be perfected." Those are the words out of your mouth.
COULTER: No, I'm saying that's what a Christian is.
DEUTSCH: But that's what you said—don't you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic—
COULTER: No!
DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You're an educated woman. How do you not see that?
COULTER: That isn't hateful at all.
DEUTSCH: But that's even a scarier thought. OK—
COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don't want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean [Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is "Christ died for our sins." We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian[sic] is not offensive at all.
In an interview published in Adweek three days after the interview, Deutsch noted that when he challenged her comments, Coulter appeared "to back off" and "seemed a little upset", adding, "I think she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions. I mean, did it show ignorance? Anti-Semitism? It wasn't just one of those silly things."
Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host, commented that although, as a practicing Jew, he obviously did not agree with Coulter's comments, they were not anti-Semitic. He noted that: "There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state. And if none of those criteria is present, how can someone be labeled anti-Semitic?" Conservative activist David Horowitz's reaction was similar: "If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a problem?... Why do some Jews think that Christians should not really believe what they believe while it's okay for Jews to really believe they are God's Chosen People? I don't get it."
In response to Coulter's comments on the show, the
Anti-Defamation League issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns Ann Coulter for her anti-Semitic comment", and that to "espouse the idea that Judaism needs to be replaced with Christianity and that each individual Jew is somehow deficient and needs to be 'perfected,' is rank Christian
supersessionism and has been rejected by the Catholic Church and the vast majority of mainstream Christian denominations." The
American Jewish Committee issued a statement asserting that "Ms. Coulter's assertion that Jews are somehow religiously imperfect smacks of the most odious anti-Jewish sentiment." The National Jewish Democratic Council, self identified as "the national voice of Jewish Democrats", called on media outlets to stop inviting Coulter as a guest commentator/pundit."
Bibliography
References
External links
Official Web Site
Biography at Notable Names Database
Column archives
Ann Coulter column archive for Human Events articles at BNet Find Articles with advanced search (1998–2007)
Ann Coulter column archive at Human Events (2002–present)
Ann Coulter column archive at National Review (2000–2001)
Ann Coulter column archive at uExpress.com (1999–present) [select headline archive]
Category:1961 births
Category:Living people
Category:American Christians
Category:American political pundits
Category:American political writers
Category:American columnists
Category:American anti-communists
Category:American anti-illegal immigration activists
Category:Conservatism in the United States
Category:Cornell University alumni
Category:Federalist Society members
Category:Intelligent design advocates
Category:Lewinsky scandal figures
Category:People from Fairfield County, Connecticut
Category:National Review people
Category:University of Michigan Law School alumni
Category:Human Events people
Category:Commentators
Category:Anti-Islam sentiment
.jpg)
