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Time Covers Coulter:
Magazine's Cover Story a Sloppy, Inaccurate Tribute to Far-Right Pundit
Action Alert (4/21/05)
A week after she was praised in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" issue (4/18/05), the magazine went a step further by making far-right pundit Ann Coulter the subject of a lengthy April 25 cover story. Readers who might have looked for a critical examination of the overexposed, factually challenged hatemonger found something else: a puff piece that gave Coulter a pass on her many errors and vicious, often bigoted rhetoric.
Throughout the article, Time reporter John Cloud gave Coulter every benefit of the doubt. Her clear, amply documented record of inaccuracy was waved away. Coulter's notoriously vitriolic hate speech was alternately dismissed as a put-on or excused as "from her heart," while the worst Cloud could say about her was that she can "occasionally be coarse." Time readers learned that Coulter is an omnivorous reader (one of exactly two examples of her consumption being the Drudge Report website), and that she regards herself "as a public intellectual." Coulter, who writes a syndicated newspaper column and makes frequent cable news appearances, is dubbed "iconic" by Time because she "epitomizes the way politics is now discussed on the airways."
In reality, there are few who "discuss" politics the Coulter way-- by smearing opponents as traitors, calling for a renewal of McCarthyism and endorsing the killing of reporters.
Coulter's Accuracy
"Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words 'Ann Coulter lies,' you will drown in result," wrote Cloud. "But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."
That would depend on how one defines "many" or "outright." Websites like the Daily Howler, Tapped, Media Matters and Spinsanity have pointed out literally dozens of errors in Coulter's book Slander and other Coulter statements. Coulter directed Cloud to one error she now admits to making, about the New York Times supposedly ignoring the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt (an error she lied about making when she appeared on FAIR's CounterSpin--8/9/02). Coulter managed to make yet another error in her explanation to Cloud, but this didn't seem to lead Cloud to dig any deeper. As Salon's Eric Boehlert pointed out (4/19/05), Slander's publisher made five corrections after its initial printing-- and should have made at least six more.
But it's important to acknowledge that Coulter is, in a sense, hard to "fact check" because she rarely makes arguments based on facts. Appearing on television programs to say that liberals "want there to be lots of 9/11s" (Fox News, 10/13/03) can either be treated as a serious argument for which she has no evidence, or explained away as "opinion." Such cheap and disgusting smears tend to be acceptable by mainstream media standards-- so long as they're coming out of Coulter's mouth.
... & it goes on like that. This is by far the most compendious source of Coulter gaffes I've seen to date, check it out:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2496
(& compare the way "lunatic left" Time mag treated Coulter & Michael Moore)
ps -- this is the same lady who said in 2001 that the US should invade muslim countries, kill ther leaders & convert them to christianity. re: Canada she said "they NEED us, they better hope the US doesn't roll over one night & crush them!" She also told a CBC reporter that back in the day Canada teamed up with the US during the Vietnam war.
Magazine's Cover Story a Sloppy, Inaccurate Tribute to Far-Right Pundit
Action Alert (4/21/05)
A week after she was praised in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" issue (4/18/05), the magazine went a step further by making far-right pundit Ann Coulter the subject of a lengthy April 25 cover story. Readers who might have looked for a critical examination of the overexposed, factually challenged hatemonger found something else: a puff piece that gave Coulter a pass on her many errors and vicious, often bigoted rhetoric.
Throughout the article, Time reporter John Cloud gave Coulter every benefit of the doubt. Her clear, amply documented record of inaccuracy was waved away. Coulter's notoriously vitriolic hate speech was alternately dismissed as a put-on or excused as "from her heart," while the worst Cloud could say about her was that she can "occasionally be coarse." Time readers learned that Coulter is an omnivorous reader (one of exactly two examples of her consumption being the Drudge Report website), and that she regards herself "as a public intellectual." Coulter, who writes a syndicated newspaper column and makes frequent cable news appearances, is dubbed "iconic" by Time because she "epitomizes the way politics is now discussed on the airways."
In reality, there are few who "discuss" politics the Coulter way-- by smearing opponents as traitors, calling for a renewal of McCarthyism and endorsing the killing of reporters.
Coulter's Accuracy
"Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words 'Ann Coulter lies,' you will drown in result," wrote Cloud. "But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."
That would depend on how one defines "many" or "outright." Websites like the Daily Howler, Tapped, Media Matters and Spinsanity have pointed out literally dozens of errors in Coulter's book Slander and other Coulter statements. Coulter directed Cloud to one error she now admits to making, about the New York Times supposedly ignoring the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt (an error she lied about making when she appeared on FAIR's CounterSpin--8/9/02). Coulter managed to make yet another error in her explanation to Cloud, but this didn't seem to lead Cloud to dig any deeper. As Salon's Eric Boehlert pointed out (4/19/05), Slander's publisher made five corrections after its initial printing-- and should have made at least six more.
But it's important to acknowledge that Coulter is, in a sense, hard to "fact check" because she rarely makes arguments based on facts. Appearing on television programs to say that liberals "want there to be lots of 9/11s" (Fox News, 10/13/03) can either be treated as a serious argument for which she has no evidence, or explained away as "opinion." Such cheap and disgusting smears tend to be acceptable by mainstream media standards-- so long as they're coming out of Coulter's mouth.
... & it goes on like that. This is by far the most compendious source of Coulter gaffes I've seen to date, check it out:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2496
(& compare the way "lunatic left" Time mag treated Coulter & Michael Moore)
ps -- this is the same lady who said in 2001 that the US should invade muslim countries, kill ther leaders & convert them to christianity. re: Canada she said "they NEED us, they better hope the US doesn't roll over one night & crush them!" She also told a CBC reporter that back in the day Canada teamed up with the US during the Vietnam war.