Ann Coulter: America's fiery, blond commentatrix [MARK STEYN on ANN COULTER!]

www.macleans.ca ^ | June 21, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[Lead Moderator]

Please, let's stick to the topic at hand. Thank you.

[VadeRetro]

I agree with you, not Steyn and Ann. But I knew Steyn was a creationist. Maybe that's his achilles heel of reasoning.

Ann Coulter's new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism is a rollicking read very tightly reasoned and hard to argue with.

Can't even agree with his first sentence. I've posted my problems with Ann on enough other threads. I'll just say Steyn is proving nobody can make creationism sound sane. Nobody.

[RonDog]

Re Max Cleland: I seem to recall hearing -- and I may be wrong -- that his disability was the result of something having to do with beer when he was in the service, and nothing to do with combat...

You recall CORRECTLY. :o)

**I** even winced when Ann's FIRST column about this came out -- she was BRUTAL -- until I read what she wrote in her SECOND column, documented as always by FACTS.

See also, from:

File under: 'Omission Accomplished'
(Ann Coulter exposes truth about Sen. Cleland, answers critics)
WND.com ^ | February 18, 2004 | Ann Coulter

Posted on 02/18/2004 4:21:18 PM PST by perfect stranger

Liberals are hopping mad about last week's column. Amid angry insinuations that I "lied" about Sen. Max Cleland, I was attacked on the Senate floor by Sen. Jack Reed, Molly Ivins called my column "error-ridden," and Al Hunt called it a "lie." Joe Klein said I was the reason liberals were being hysterical about George Bush's National Guard service.

I would have left it at one column, but apparently Democrats want to go another round. With their Clintonesque formulations, my detractors make it a little difficult to know what "lie" I'm supposed to be contesting, but they are clearly implying – without stating – that Cleland lost his limbs in combat.

It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam. He was not in combat, he was not – as Al Hunt claimed – on a reconnaissance mission, and he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others have implied. He picked up an American grenade on a routine noncombat mission and the grenade exploded.

In Cleland's own words: "I didn't see any heroism in all that. It wasn't an act of heroism. I didn't know the grenade was live. It was an act of fate." That is why Cleland didn't win a Purple Heart, which is given to those wounded in combat. Liberals are not angry because I "lied"; they're angry because I told the truth.

I wouldn't press the point except that Democrats have deliberately "sexed up" the circumstances of Cleland's accident in the service of slandering the people of Georgia, the National Guard and George Bush. Cleland has questioned Bush's fitness for office because he served in the National Guard but did not go to Vietnam.

And yet the poignant truth of Cleland's own accident demonstrates the commitment and bravery of all members of the military who come into contact with ordnance. Cleland's injury was of the routine variety that occurs whenever young men and weapons are put in close proximity – including in the National Guard.

But it is a vastly more glorious story to claim that Cleland was injured by enemy fire rather than in a freak accident. So after Saxby Chambliss beat Cleland in the 2002 Georgia Senate race, liberals set to work developing a carefully crafted myth about Cleland's accident. Among many other examples, last November, Eric Boehlert wrote in Salon: "[D]uring the siege of Khe Sanh, Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet Cong grenade."

Sadly for them, dozens and dozens of newspapers have already printed the truth. Liberals simply can't grasp the problem Lexis-Nexis poses to their incessant lying. They ought to stick to their specialty – hysterical overreaction. The truth is not their forte.

One of the most detailed accounts of Cleland's life...

CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread

[Toby06]

Sorry, I will not participate in this anymore:

[Lead Moderator]

Thanks.

[VadeRetro]

But nobody's talking too much about the finer points of Miss Coulter's argument. Instead, everyone -- from Hillary Rodham Clinton down -- is going bananas about a couple of paragraphs on page 103 and 112 in which the author savages the 9/11 widows. Not all of them.

Actually, I can't stand the Jersey Guerillas (Gorillas?) either. However, Ann spends three chapters trying to spray-paint the walls of modern biology. I've read a lot from that part and she gets it all wrong. I mean everything.

[Toby06]

My pleasure. Have a great day!

[EveningStar]

I never saw that before! LOL! :)

[Toby06]

I keep it handy for such occasions.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Those lines jumped out at me, too. Especially the last one. How true: "Having legally admitted to the country the men who killed her husband, the U.S. government's first act after having enabled his murder is to further traumatize the bereaved."

[x]

Some people respond to her ideologically on the basis of whether or not they agree with her. Other respond more personally in terms of whether or not they like her as a person.

There is some overlap of the two responses -- if you strongly agree with her you're more apt to like her and if you don't agree you're less likely to find her an appealing person -- but the two aren't quite identical.

It seems like fans and foes are talking right past each other. Her fans see her as a kind of attack dog to sic on the left. The critics, if they aren't on the left and simply responding automatically, ask if you'd really want to live or work with someone that unstable and strange, whatever their political views.

My attack dog isn't going to be somebody else's cuddly puppy. She may be my cuddly puppy. But such affection isn't going to be universal. Even if you're not the one snarled at, if it's not your Rottweiler or Pit Bull, you're not likely to see the cute puppy in it if it's not you're dog.

[King Prout]

had they, the answer would have been "food, if you are lucky"

[M. Thatcher]

I knew Steyn was a creationist. Maybe that's his achilles heel of reasoning.

Right. That must be it.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Christian4Bush]

Re Max Cleland: I seem to recall hearing -- and I may be wrong -- that his disability was the result of something having to do with beer when he was in the service, and nothing to do with combat. (Apologies if I'm mixing him up with someone else.)

bump

you got the right one.

[decal]

Everyone here, pro and anti alike, seems to be overlooking this from Mr Steyn:

"...I might add that, in rendering their "human shield" strategy more problematic, she may be doing Democrats a favour. There's no evidence the American people fall for this shtick: in 2002, the party's star Senate candidates all ran on biography -- Max Cleland, Jean Carnahan (the widow of a deceased governor), and Walter Mondale (the old lion pressed into service after Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash). All lost."

HERE'S the money quote, folks - let sleeping Jersey Girls lie.

[Larry Lucido]

Carlin has lost his edge, but I don't think he's a weenie like the typical leftie. He can be a gentleman when called upon, and he can also take a little ribbing. Wouldn't mind having a beer with him sometime.

[MadLibDisease]

You have the right to be wrong, so carry on.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

... U.S. Immigration sent Mrs. Gilbey a letter informing her that, as she was now a widow, her residence status had changed and they were enclosing a deportation order.

Your government at work.

[HitmanLV]

Ping! Steyn comments on Ann Coulter! It doesn't get any better! ;-)