Ann Coulter vs. Michael Moore

Newsmax ^ | 16 June 2006 | Humberto Fontova

[ChessExpert]

“As he turned to assault the next bunker an NVA machine gun opened up and he was mortally wounded. Captain Sosa-Camejo's valorous action and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army."

From his limousine Michael Moore sneers at this Cuban-American and his Band of Brothers as wimps and crybabies "with a yellow stripe down their backs."

Maybe I'm biased, but nothing – absolutely nothing – Ann Coulter has said about Murtha, Kerry or McClellan strikes me as remotely comparable in vileness, cowardice and rank stupidity as Michael Moore's blanket calumny against some of the bravest men of the 20th century.”

[NonLinear]

Opinions on Mr Ramsey's honesty and conservatism do not all make a ringing endorsement:

More On That Bruce Ramsey Column

Andy Macdonald has already said most of what needs to be said about the column, but Ramsey came on the John Carlson show and left me so annoyed that I have to add some points.

Let me begin by noting three serious factual errors in the column: First, Ramsey says that:

A taboo prevents American newspapers from running cartoons attacking Sharkansky's religion, which is Judaism.

I'll leave it to Stefan to say whether the last part of that sentence is accurate (assuming he wants to), but in fact American newspapers, including the Seattle PI and the Los Angeles Times, have run cartoons that have attacked Judaism. There was, not that long ago, a considerable controversy in the PI over a Ted Rall cartoon, for that very reason. And there have been similar cartoons in the Seattle Times, as Stefan Sharkansy notes in a post he finished about an hour before I finished this one. Of course such cartoons are common in most of the world.

Second, Ramsey says that we have other, similar taboos:

Always there are beliefs, opinions and images that are out of bounds. There are images of Jesus — or Martin Luther King, or the pope, or any person — that may not be shown.

In fact, all three have been attacked with cartoons, and in other ways. This very day, the New York Times — which has refused to publish the Danish cartoons — published a picture of Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary", which was, as you may recall, made out of dung. Although few attack Martin Luther King now, he was often attacked during his lifetime, in cartoons, and in print. And if Ramsey will take a moment to search Google images with "Pope + cartoon" he will find almost 400 cartoons, including at least one by David Horsey.

Third, Ramsey says that there are 1.5 Billion Muslims. That's almost certainly way too high. There are no official figures for the number of believers, but a useful site, Adherents, gives this summary estimate on Islam:

Contemporary figures for Islam are usually between 900 million and 1.4 billion, with 1 billion being a figure frequently given in comparative religion texts, probably because it's such a nice, round number.

Besides those factual errors, there is an enormous insult in the column. Ramsey implies that all or nearly all Muslims would be offended by the images. In fact, Muslims, for centuries, have created just such images, by the thousands. You can see a representative collection here, though you may have trouble getting through to the site. To claim that all Muslims would be offended by images which they and their ancestors have been creating for centuries is both absurd and an enormous slur on most Muslims. (The Wahabbi sect, which would be offended, is both rather recent and a very small fraction of the world's Muslims. Wahabbis have offended many other Muslims by their destruction of historical artifacts in Saudi Arabia, some dating to the time of Muhammad, or shortly after.)

The conversation with Carlson did not clarify Ramsey's views. He was surprised when a caller asked him about the Abu Ghraib images, and argued that it was all right to publish those because they undermined President Bush. (He did not discuss whether the difficulties those pictures caused our troops were worth the trouble they caused the president, but I fear he would say they were.) No one asked him whether the false story about Koran desecration put out by Newsweek and carried in the Seattle Times should have been taboo, but someone should have.

Although his views seemed muddier after his time with Carlson, I did hear two possible clues to his thinking. In an earlier job, he had close Muslim friends. And, as he candidly admitted, he knows little about Muhammad. (And presumably about Islam, and its often violent history.) If we put those two together, we have a possible explanation for his views on the cartoons, and perhaps other subjects. Knowing little, he took as fact what his Muslim friends told him about Islam. And he has never bothered to do a little digging to check what they said. If that is the explanation, then it is about time he did.

(If Ramsey wants to learn more about Muhammad, let me immodestly suggest he start with my brief essay, WWMD? And for those who do look at it, let me ask you to look carefully at the last paragraph in which I argue that most Muslims behave far better than the founder of their religion did.

I must apologize for the promise at the end to discuss my sources, which I never got around to. Briefly, what I was going to argue is that many modern sources on Islam and Muhammad have been corrupted by political correctness and fear of Muslims. They are not necessarily wrong, but they leave out some of the more dismaying parts of Muhammad's life and the history of the religion he founded.)

More: I was so annoyed that I forgot to mention this interesting fact.:

While Muslims engaged in violent protests worldwide over caricatures of Muhammad have insisted any image of their prophet is considered blasphemous, a prominent frieze in the U.S. Supreme Court portrays the Islamic leader wielding a sword.

And it dates back to the 1930s. Wonder whether Ramsey is struck, as I am, by the fact that it hasn't caused many riots in all that time. And I would like him to tell us whether he thinks we should redo the building.

Even More: The cartoons were published last October in an Egyptian newspaper — and nothing happened. No riots, no demands for boycotts, nothing.
Posted by Jim Miller at February 08, 2006 06:10 PM

http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/005701.html

[popdonnelly]

Moore is by nature a fat dick.

[labette]

Well, Actually....I have this soft spot in my heart for Libertarians.

Constitution party, I'm attracted to even more.

Since we can't afford to screw up in the short-term, For now, I'm a republican.

[Milhous]

Unless of course, they're talking about a hot dog eating contest....LOL

Speaking of hot dogs, although Noemie Emery's grief-based politics arguably foreshadows Coulter's catchier Doctrine of Infallibility Ann cheerfully serves up fresh Easter eggs any FReeper would love. :)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

. . .

When our troops came under a bloody attack in Somalia in 1993, President Clinton ordered a humiliating retreat - on the advice of John Murtha. Calling on Clinton to pull the troops out, Murtha said, "Our welcome has been worn out" - which I think is the essence of battlefield valor: the ability to know when staying another minute would just be tacky. And sure enough, perhaps out of force of habit, Clinton pulled out before finishing. Our troops emerged from a typically incompetent Clintonian mission with unvarnished heroism. They didn't run, Clinton ordered their retreat - a retreat that was later specifically cited by Osama bin Laden as proving to al Qaeda fighters that America was a "paper tiger." After a few blows, bin Laden said, America would run in defeat, "dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."

[JTN]

Got that from this site, huh? http://blog.stopanncoulter.com/

No, I didn't. Why would you think I did? I posted a link to my source.

Well golly gee whiz, it does kind of look like Bruce Ramsey is saying she is innocent. I would have read it that way too. Maybe he didn't intend it, but it sure does look that way.

Not if you read the whole review. If you don't want to sit throught the whole thing, then you can check out the excerpt I posted in #28.

Where is the lie again???

As I've said already, it's in portraying the words of a conservative writer who is favorably reviewing a book that exposes a communist spy as "Liberal refusal to accept any evidence that any person ever spied for the Soviet Union..." He flatly asserted that she was a spy. What would you call that, if not a lie?

[Sam Hill]

Coulter: “Canada used to be one of our 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 interrupts: “Canada didn’t send troops to Vietnam.”

Coulter: “I don’t think that’s right.”

McKeown: “Canada did not send troops to Vietnam.”

Coulter (looking desperate): “Indochina?”

McKeown: “Uh no. Canada …second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No.”

Coulter: “I think you’re wrong.”

McKeown: “No, took a pass on Vietnam.”

Coulter: “I think you’re wrong.”

McKeown: “No, Australia was there, not Canada.”

Coulter: “I think Canada sent troops.”

McKeown: “No.”

Coulter: “Well. I’ll get back to you on that.”

[i_dont_chat]

He didn't accept the evidence. He called it circumstantial. That was the point of Ann's comment. She confronted him about NOT accepting the evidence.

Why can't you see that?

[Sam Hill]

Coulter Claim: The New York Times columnist Frank Rich "demanded that Ashcroft stop monkeying around with Muslim terrorists and concentrate on anti-abortion extremists." (p. 5)

Footnote: She cites an October 27, 2001 column in which Rich makes no such demands. He does chastise Ashcroft for not meeting with Planned Parenthood, which sought to offer tips on combating anthrax scares, based on its own experience with them.

[karnage]

Moore is a liar and charlatan. Coulter is a provocateur who often uses exaggerated rhetoric - but she's not a liar. It's easy to tell the difference.

[Zman516]

"It would be nice if we could just send Coulter and Moore off to some island where they can be alone with each other. Then they can lie and smear each other all they want and leave the rest of us alone".

How can you possibly lump Ann and Fatass together like that? I've read your tortured logic about Ann's "lie", and find it unconvincing. Ann may have been inaccurate or made a mistake about something or another in her books, but a lie is a deliberate attempt to decieve.

Michael Moore lies every time he opens his fat face. He and Ann are not remotely comparable.

[ChessExpert]

I saw Katie Couric interview David Horowitz. Out of the blue, for no reason, she gave him a severe, very severe, look and asked "Are you a racist?" He tried to prove his innocence, while she looked at him as though he were a bug that deserved to be squashed. Sorry, but the airhead comment is completely believable.

There is a lot of hatred on the left. Perhaps not surprising when you think that Communists murdered more than 100 million in the 20th century. Perhaps overlooked, those who are willing to murder, are (surprise, surprise) willing to lie. They know this, but imagine that they have the inside track. They actually think the lies are for others, not themselves; LOL.

[Tanniker Smith]

Okay, so Ann has to eat a sandwich first.

[JTN]

He didn't accept the evidence. He called it circumstantial. That was the point of Ann's comment. She confronted him about NOT accepting the evidence.

He accepted the evidence. What he did was point out that the legal case presented against Coplon at the time was circumstantial. That evidence presented in court did not include the cables, although Ann Coulter, in order to score points, leads her reader to believe that it did. IOW, she lied.

[sageb1]

Canada's involvement in the Vietnam War

Larry Semeniuk of Windsor, Ontario, joined the US Army in January 1967. In December, he was deployed as a paratrooper of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 187th regiment, 101st Airborne Division to Vietnam. In January 1968, Semeniuk saved the life of an officer at the risk of his own. A few days later, he was killed in action. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.

Gary Butt was born May 9, 1951 in Montreal, Quebec. He enlisted in the US military at Plattsburg, New York in 1968. Since Butt had superior skills in marksmanship, the US Army gave him the position of rifleman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Butt volunteered for duty in Vietnam and served from July 1970, to April 1971. He was killed on April 3rd. At the time of his death, Butt held the position of sergeant with the 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade.

[JTN]

I suspect JTN is a liberal druggie.

Yep, that's me. A pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-God, liberal druggie. That's me down to a T.

[norton]

"I apologize for taking nearly 9 minutes to reply. I trust you will find #13 to your satisfaction."

You are excused, and
Nope!

[ChessExpert]

My last post shouldn't have been sent to Sam Hill. My apologies.

Please consider the content in it's own right, not as a response.

:)

[BillyBoy]

You guys are exactly like the Michael Moore fanclub. He spews some blantantly false crap and they find a way to spin it so it remotely relates to something factual.

Moore makes up headlines showing Gore won the recount and some Moore-on "proves" his point by finding some independant study shows in one of 534 scenarios Gore could have hypothetically won Florida under the stricted recount standard Gore wanted. Therefore, the Mooreon asserts, Moore was telling the truth that studies have proven Gore is the "real" winner.

Coulter makes up crap off the top of her head that Canada supported sent troops to Vietnam, you find an example of one Canadian who signed up for the U.S. army, therefore, you assert, Coulter was correct that 'Canada' was on our side.

[labette]

I always enjoyed a game with the GOOD chess players.

Not the clobbering I would receive, but rather the lessons in strategy.