WE'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'RE BEING CENSORED (Ann Coulter)

Ann Coulter ^ | 7/0903 | Ann Coulter

[ChadGore]

WE'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'RE BEING CENSORED

By Ann Coulter

Earlier this year, the Screen Actors Guild (news - web sites) issued a statement lamenting that "those in the public eye should suffer professionally for having the courage to give voice to their views. Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation." Feeling the lash of a right-wing blacklist, the Dixie Chicks (news - web sites) recently played to an adoring, sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.

Ann Coulter

But earlier this week, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., denounced a radio corporation's decision not to play the Dixie Chicks as similar to Nazism and McCarthyism. The Dixie Chicks lead singer ridiculed President Bush (news - web sites) before a foreign audience. That was constitutionally protected free speech. The decision of radio stations not to play the Dixie Chicks, however, is not a matter of their own free speech.

Conservatives are openly blackballed in all the liberal professions -- publishing, Hollywood, the mainstream media, education and college faculties. Apparently, that's not "blacklisting." It is churlish for conservatives to complain about private censorship. True blacklisting occurs only when someone scowls at a liberal.

Ronald Radosh is one of the nation's pre-eminent historians, but he is blacklisted from American universities because he wrote a book concluding that the Rosenbergs were guilty -- a few years before decrypted Soviet cables were released proving they were guilty.

Inasmuch as Radosh had once been a "progressive" himself, a fatwa was inevitable. Radosh marched for the Rosenbergs. He attended candlelight vigils for the Rosenbergs. He was even personally acquainted with Pete Seeger! But after setting out to write a book proving the Rosenbergs innocent, his research led him to conclude otherwise. He was a liberal who rejected the faith. Under strict fatwa procedures, Radosh had to be banned from academia.

As has been copiously detailed by John Judis in the liberal New Republic magazine, whenever Radosh is on the verge of being hired by a major university, the liberal wolf pack bays and suddenly the position disappears. Anonymous critics were quoted "question(ing) his credentials." One historian told Judis: "I wouldn't hire a red-baiter like Ron." Another said Radosh was "not a historian at all."

Columbia history professor Eric Foner claimed Radosh's book on the Rosenbergs violated the canons of historical scholarship. As any infant knows, one of the canons of historical scholarship is to mindlessly hold as an article of faith the manifestly absurd belief that the Rosenbergs were innocent. It is an affront to good scholarship to suggest otherwise. Most devastatingly, Foner -- once president of the American Historical Association -- accused Radosh of "liberal anti-communism." Other historians have even stooped so low as to call Radosh a "conservative." One editor said he believed Radosh was a CIA (news - web sites) agent.

American college students are learning history from people who believe the Rosenbergs were innocent idealists and Radosh is a CIA agent. (How are the grades for students who write term papers saying the Rosenbergs were guilty?)

Obtaining a teaching position was not so difficult for Joel Kovel, who holds the prestigious "Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies" chair at Bard College. With superb timing, in 1994, just one year before the Venona cables were declassified, Kovel published a book describing anti-communism as a psychiatric condition. Appropriately, Kovel dedicated the book to his chair's namesake, Soviet spy Alger Hiss. Making paranoid accusations based on his own neurotic impulses, Kovel explained that America's anti-communism was a form of anti-Semitism.

He should know. In a 2002 article, Kovel called the West Bank "a huge concentration camp," and demanded to know: "Why does the Zionist community, in raging against terrorism, forget that three of its prime ministers within the last 20 years, Begin, Shamir and Sharon, are openly recognized to have been world-class terrorists and mass murderers?"

But in his book "Red Hunting in the Promised Land" -- dedicated to uber-WASP communist Hiss -- Kovel raved: "The Communist became ... the archaic blood villain of Western civilization -- the Jew who killed Christ, the black Hamitic son of Noah, the howling savage beyond the gates reminding 100 percent Americans of the terrors of the dark." (Now that's serious scholarship.)

When the Venona Project was declassified one year later, it turned out there was another likely explanation for America's anti-communism. To wit: the fact that the government was crawling with Soviet spies feverishly passing atomic technology to America's mortal enemy. But right up until the Soviet cables were declassified, Kovel's lunatic psychological theory was accepted in the journals of mainstream opinion. His book describing anti-communism as a mental defect was one of The Washington Post's recommended books in 1994.

Unlike Radosh, who did not need to read Soviet cables to figure out that Julius Rosenberg was a spy, Kovel has encountered no difficulty in landing any number of teaching positions. In addition to holding the coveted Traitor Chair at Bard College, he has been an anthropology professor at the New School for Social Research; a professor of political science and communications at the University of California, San Diego; a lecturer at San Diego State University; and a professor at the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco.

People who have dedicated their lives to exposing lesbian imagery in "Moby-Dick" are more prevalent on the nation's campuses than serious scholars. The nation's colleges and universities have become a Safe Streets program for traitors and lunatics. At least Tailgunner Joe got them out of government work.

[jla]

True blacklisting occurs only when someone scowls at a liberal.

In her own unique & discriminating way, Ann highlights the hypocrisy, and fear-of-truth, that possesses that ghoulish entity known as a liberal.

[Abogado]

"And why, in the name of all that's Holy, did she have to defend a loud-mouthed alcoholic like McCarthy?"

Because for all his personal flaws, he was dead on correct.

[FreedomPoster]

I love Horowitz, too, but at least some of his comments are way off base, directly contradictable from the text of Treason.

hoosiermama summed up Ann and Treason as well as I've seen it done, and I quote her here:

Ann doesn't claim to be the "utmost authority". She's a polemicist, who researches her wisecracks! She's a cartoon. Like Madonna, Dolly Parton, she is aware of her attributes and markets it. She's getting the message out to the less studious American.

[xm177e2]

It's not acceptable that someone who wants to participate in intellectual discourse should be "a cartoon" who exaggerates wildly etc. That's exactly how Michael Moore describes himself (he says his work is comedy or parody, so it can't be held to scrutiny).

[FreedomPoster]

I don't have a problem with it. Sorry you don't like the hyperbole, but no one is listening to studious university professors. It keeps the Left off base. Their attack dogs are too busy trying to figure out what to do with Ann, and attacking her, to attack Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, etc. This is A Good Thing in my book.

Think of her as a Carville on our side. With more facts. Not to mention infinitely better looking.

[FreedomPoster]

And by the way, her facts hold up well. Have you read the criticisms of Rabinowitz and Horowitz here?

[xm177e2]

When she sticks to the facts, she is devastating. When she says things like "Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason" (on page one of the book!) she does more harm than good. When she holds up McCarthy as a great man, instead of showing how he was a flawed individual who latched himself on to a good, important cause, that's absurd. That's similar to leftists saying nice things about Castro, the reasoning behind it is the same--he's our guy, so we shouldn't criticize. (of course, Castro was much worse than McCarthy)

[gcruse]

Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated

Absence of blacklist does not guarantee absence of backlash.

[xm177e2]

(and I should also say: she stuck to the facts in this article, I found it to be excellent)

[hoosiermama]

My first reaction to TREASON was: "Boy, is Ann pushing some buttons!"

After reading Horowitz and Dorothy Rabinowitz's comments, I realized just how sacred the cows were that Ann exposed.
If I'm correct Horowitz family members were involved in the 'socialist movement' and many of the spies were Jewish. I believe that both Horwitz and Rabinowitz "reacted" to Ann's button pushing, much like a person in denial reacts to facts and truth. They became defensive.....Give them time to get use to reality and realize Ann was not attacking them.

[DPB101]

That is my feeling too. On page 101 of Treason, Ann says that, much to Roy Cohn's "annoyance and bewilderment...Jews opposed McCarthy by 82 to 3 percent."

Among the general public his approval rating was 63%.

Jules Rosenberg's alma mater, City College, was ground zero of the McCarthy investigation. The school was one of the intellectual centers of Jewish life in NYC. His hearings were seen as an attack. And still are. I guess.

[billbears]

I don't care if he read it or not. I just find it funny the neocons are starting to fight amongst their own. And all I can say it's about time. Coulter is shrill and annoying. Horowitz, well at least he's not quoting rote from National Review like most of the talking heads, that's one thing he's got going for him

[annyokie]

Factual analyses hurt, don't they? Preaching to the chior is SOOOOOOOOO much easier.

Go Dave and Go Dorothy. Reasoned disagreement, without hateful as homenim is my friend.

[ladyinred]

Boxers speech was a real barfer! Made me so sick. Liberals are just nuts I tell you!

[hoosiermama]

For Ann to say McCathy was right about communist in the government might be equivalent to someone saying Hitler was right about a particular matter. Hitler did many evil things, and was wrong in most but I'm sure we could find one item in his life that he was correct about.

Reaction of most people, but particularly someone with a Jewish background would be, "NO NEVER! How could you betray us!"

[annyokie]

Read "Radical Son", my FRiend and learn about David Horowitz.

His parents were Communists, not Socialists, he was a Red Diaper Baby. He reacted to the murder of his friend by the Black Panthers (for whom he had raised many thousands of dollars to begin a school) by denouncing the "cause" that many of his fellow travelers still ebrace.

Read "Radical Son" and learn.

[DPB101]

Go Dave and Go Dorothy. Reasoned disagreement, without hateful as homenim is my friend.

Why did Dorothy Rabinowitz claim Phillip Loeb was a victim of McCarthyism? He wasn't. Why did Horowitz claim Coulter did not credit Humphrey for being anticommunist. She did.

[reformed_democrat]

Reasoned disagreement, without hateful as homenim is my friend.

Geeeeezzzz, anny. You're no fun.

Liberals and dems have been shrieking loud enough to wake the dead for close to a century. Republicans and Conservatives have tried, reputedly, to reason calmly with them. This only causes libs and dems to shriek all the louder.

Personally, I enjoy a good diatribe coming from the Right. I spent many (too many) years being required by my politics to shout "AMEN BROTHER" every time one of the leftist loonies decided to spout off. Listening to them getting browbeaten by Coulter is great fun for reformed_democrat(s).

Not every book put out by Conservatives has to be a trial to read. Coulter's are downright fun.

[hoosiermama]

Thanks for the title. WIll read. (Even more reason for him to be defensive.)

[annyokie]

Ann Coulter and Michael Moore have been compared before. And rightly ( no pun intended) so.