Ann Coulter Page

Dear Readers,

As many of you may have heard, we've dropped Ann Coulter's column from NRO. This has sparked varying amounts of protest, support, and, most of all, curiosity from our readers. We owe you an explanation.

Of course, we would explain our decision to Ann, but the reality is that she's called the shots from the get-go. It was Ann who decided to sever her ties with National Review — not the other way around.

This is what happened.

In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent. She's a smart and funny person, but this was Ann at her worst — emoting rather than thinking, and badly needing editing and some self-censorship, or what is commonly referred to as "judgment."

Running this "piece" would have been an embarrassment to Ann, and to NRO. Rich Lowry pointed this out to her in an e-mail (I was returning from my honeymoon). She wrote back an angry response, defending herself from the charge that she hates Muslims and wants to convert them at gunpoint.

But this was not the point. It was NEVER the point. The problem with Ann's first column was its sloppiness of expression and thought. Ann didn't fail as a person — as all her critics on the Left say — she failed as WRITER, which for us is almost as bad.

Rich wrote her another e-mail, engaging her on this point, and asking her — in more diplomatic terms — to approach the whole controversy not as a PR-hungry, free-swinging pundit on Geraldo, but as a careful writer.

No response.

Instead, she apparently proceeded to run around town bad-mouthing NR and its employees. Then she showed up on TV and, in an attempt to ingratiate herself with fellow martyr Bill Maher, said we were "censoring" her.

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship.

What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it — on TV and to a Washington Post reporter?

And, finally, what CONSERVATIVE publication would continue to publish a writer who doesn't even know the meaning of the word "censorship"?

So let me be clear: We did not "fire" Ann for what she wrote, even though it was poorly written and sloppy. We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty.

What's Ann's take on all this? Well, she told the Washington Post yesterday that she loves it, because she's gotten lots of great publicity. That pretty much sums Ann up.

On the Sean Hannity show yesterday, however, apparently embarrassed by her admission to the Post, she actually tried to deny that she has sought publicity in this whole matter. Well, then, Ann, why did you complain of being "censored" on national TV? Why did you brag to the Post about all the PR?

Listening to Ann legalistically dodge around trying to explain all this would have made Bill Clinton blush.

Ann also told the Post that we only paid her $5 a month for her work (would that it were so!). Either this is a deliberate lie, or Ann needs to call her accountant because someone's been skimming her checks.

Many readers have asked, why did we run the original column in which Ann declared we should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" — if we didn't like it?

Well, to be honest, it was a mistake. It stemmed from the fact this was a supposedly pre-edited syndicated column, coming in when NRO was operating with one phone line and in general chaos. Our bad.

Now as far as Ann's charges go, I must say it's hard to defend against them, because they either constitute publicity-minded name-calling, like calling us "girly-boys" — or they're so much absurd bombast.

For example:

Ann — a self-described "constitutional lawyer" — volunteered on Politically Incorrect that our "censoring" of her column was tantamount to "repealing the First Amendment." Apparently, in Ann's mind, she constitutes the thin blonde line between freedom and tyranny, and so any editorial decision she dislikes must be a travesty.

She sniffed to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that "Every once in awhile they'll [National Review] throw one of their people to the wolves to get good press in left-wing publications." I take personal offense to this charge. She's accusing us of betraying a friend for publicity, when in fact it was the other way around.

And, lastly, this "Joan of Arc battling the forces of political correctness" act doesn't wash. In the same 20 days in which Ann says — over and over and over again — that NR has succumbed to "PC hysteria," we've run pieces celebrating every PC shibboleth and bogeyman.

Paul Johnson has criticized Islam as an imperial religion. William F. Buckley himself has called, essentially, for a holy war. Rich Lowry wants to bring back the Shah, and I've written that Western Civilization has every right to wave the giant foam "We're Number 1!" finger as high as it wants.

The only difference between what we've run and what Ann considers so bravely iconoclastic on her part, is that we've run articles that accord persuasion higher value than shock value. It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior.

To be honest, even though there's a lot more that could be said, I have no desire to get any deeper into this because, like with a Fellini movie, the deeper you get, the less sense Ann makes.

We're delighted that FrontPageMagazine has, with remarkable bravery, picked up Ann's column, presumably for only $5 a month. They'll be getting more than what they're paying for, I'm sure.

— Jonah Goldberg

Devil in a Blue Dress

The problem isn't that she writes. The problem is that she distorts the truth and outright lies about most of what she writes about, and no one complains.

I want to point out the incredible hypocrisy of those on the right, the center and the "liberal media" who defend the lunatic ravings of Ann Coulter, whether because she is "kidding" or because "the left does the same thing." (For those who have been lucky enough to have missed the Coultergeist of the past few months, the author of the summer's number-one bestselling nonfiction book in America has--in language identical to that above--expressed her regret that Timothy McVeigh did not blow up the New York Times building, mused aloud whether Bill Clinton should have been impeached or murdered, and called for the execution of John Walker Lindh in order to intimidate liberals.)

It's degrading to have to write about Coulter again. As a pundit, she is about on a par with Charles Manson, better suited to a lifelong stay in the Connecticut Home for the Criminally Insane than for the host's seat on Crossfire. Her books are filled with lies, slander and phony footnotes that are themselves lies and slanders. Her very existence as a public figure is an insult to our collective intelligence. I should really be writing about the campaign by neocon chickenhawks to intimidate Howell Raines and the New York Times on Iraq. But fortunately, John Judis and Nick Confessore have taken responsibility for that, leaving me to the less ominous but more baffling phenomenon of the bestselling Barbie-doll terrorist-apologist, who continues to be celebrated by the very media she terms "retarded" and guilty of "mass murder" while calling for their mass extinction by the likes of her ideological comrade Timothy McVeigh.

Make no mistake. Coulter may routinely call for the murder of liberals, of Arabs, of journalists, of the President, among many others. She may compare adorable Katie Couric to Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels and joke about blowing up the Times building. But instead of ignoring, laughing at or, perhaps most usefully, sedating her, we find Coulter's blond locks and bony ass celebrated by talk-show bookers and gossip columnists--even a genuine book reviewer--from coast to proverbial coast.

Do I exaggerate? While promoting her hysterical screed against "liberals"--a category so large she occasionally includes, I kid you not, Andrew Sullivan--this malevolent Twiggy with Tourette's was booked on Today, Crossfire (as guest and guest host), Hardball, The Big Story With John Gibson and countless other cable and radio programs. She was lovingly profiled in Newsday, the New York Observer and the New York Times Sunday Style section. She was the Boston Globe's honored guest at the White House correspondents dinner. Her incitements to murder and terrorism have been cheered and defended in the Wall Street Journal and National Review Online. (The latter did so, moreover, despite her having termed its editors "girly boys" and behaving, in the words of the website's editor, Jonah Goldberg, "with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty.") And her publisher, Crown, says it has no plans to correct her lies in future editions. Why should they care? Is anyone holding them accountable?

The slanderous nonsense she puts between hard covers, moreover, is selling not only to the caveman crowd, it's also receiving praise in such respectable outlets as the liberal LA Times Book Review and being quoted as constitutional gospel by alleged intellectual George Will on ABC's This Week. This despite the fact that Coulter's accusations have been as effectively discredited as Hitler's diaries. (The last time I checked, the folks at Tapped, the American Prospect's weblog, had compiled so many of these falsities it took them nearly 3,000 words to enumerate them. Coulter has also been ripped to shreds by dailyhowler.com, spinsanity.com, mediawhoresonline.com, Scoobie Davis Online and by Joe Conason in Salon. The most comprehensive compilation can supposedly be found at slannder.homestead.com. I cannot bring myself to actually wade into it.)

So what's the deal? Is looking like an anorexic Farrah Fawcett and wearing skirts so short they lack the dignity and reserve of Monica Lewinsky's thong enough to insure the embrace of the national entertainment state no matter what you say, just so long as your murderous bile is directed at "liberals"? Would it have worked for Saddam if he wore a size 6? I really don't know. Naïve optimist that I am, when I first picked up Coulter's book in galleys in the late spring, I felt pretty certain we were done with her. I mean, how even to engage someone who terms Christie Todd Whitman a "birdbrain" (page 51) and a "dimwit" (page 53); Jim Jeffords a "half-wit" (page 50); and Gloria Steinem a "deeply ridiculous figure" (page 37) who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. magazine (page 38)--all of which makes her "a termagant" (page 39)? Coulter's done far worse since, of course, and yet, like one of those Mothralike creatures that feed on bullets and squashed Japanese villagers, the monster continues to grow, debasing everyone and everything in its wake. Coulter jokes about McVeigh blowing up the Times, and the Wall Street Journal--which was blown up by terrorists on September 11--rushes to her defense. Their man, Daniel Pearl, was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. Have they no shame? At long last, have they no sense of decency left?

Early years

College

Personal life

UBIQUITY

BOUND PAGES

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton

Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans

Calculatedly Controversial Combinations of Words

Trivia

Hot? Not!

Ann Coulter: On the Gay Circuit in West Hollywood

Coulter Under Fire for Anti-Gay Slur

Ann Coulter: The Jargon Jezebel

Background on Coulter

Understanding basic Coulterism

Cutting-edge Coulter jargon

One, unfortunately, of many

The Non-Wisdom of Ann Coulter