"Those on the right who aren't too crazy about liberals will find plenty to cheer in this aggressive assault on the left by national political pundit Ann Coulter." BN.com
"For those who don't know Ann Coulter, she is one of those blond, right-wing, talking heads who pop up on cable--the most outspoken one. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," she remarked after the terrorist attacks. She is no easier on liberals, on whom she blames, well, just about everything..." Booklist
lice in half with their teeth. ?Margaret Mead
Political "debate" in this country is insufferable. Whether conducted in Congress, on the political talk shows, or played out at dinners and cocktail parties, politics is a nasty sport. At the risk of giving away the ending: It's all liberals' fault.
As there is less to dispute, liberals have become more bitter and angry. The Soviet threat has been vaporized, women are not prevented from doing even things they should be, and the gravest danger facing most black Americans today is the risk of being patronized to death.
And yet still, somehow, Tom DeLay (Republican congressman from Texas) poses a monumental threat to democracy as we know it. The left expresses disagreement with DeLay's governing philosophy by calling him "the Meanest Man in Congress," "Dangerous," "the Hammer," "the Exterminator," and the "Torquemada of Texas." For his evident belief in a Higher Being, DeLay is compared to savage murderers and genocidal lunatics on the pages of the New York Times. ("History teaches that when religion is injected into politics-the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo-disaster follows.")
Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals. Progress cannot be made on serious issues because one side is making arguments and the other side is throwing eggs-both figuratively and literally. Prevarication and denigration are the hallmarks of liberal argument. Logic is not their metier. Blind religious faith is.
The liberal catechism includes a hatred of Christians, guns, the profit motive, and political speech and an infatuation with abortion, the environment, and race discrimination (or in the favored parlance of liberals, "affirmative action"). Heresy on any of these subjects is, well, heresy. The most crazed religious fanatic argues in more calm and reasoned tones than liberals responding to statistics on concealed-carry permits.
Perhaps if conservatives had had total control over every major means of news dissemination for a quarter century, they would have forgotten how to debate, too, and would just call liberals stupid and mean. But that's an alternative universe. In this universe, the public square is wall-to-wall liberal propaganda.
Americans wake up in the morning to "America's Sweetheart," the Today show's Katie Couric, berating Arlen Specter about Anita Hill ten years after the hearings. Or haranguing Charlton Heston on the need for gun control to stop school shootings. Her co-host, Matt Lauer, wonders casually why the federal government has not passed a law on national vacation time. The New York Times breathlessly announces "Communism Still Looms as Evil to Miami Cubans" and Time magazine columnist Barbara Ehrenreich gives two thumbs up to "The Communist Manifesto" ("100 million massacred!").
We read letters to the editor of the New York Times from pathetic little parakeet males and grim, quivering, angry women on the Upper West Side of Manhattan hoping to be chosen as that day's purveyor of hate. These letters are about one step above Tiger Beat magazine in intellectual engagement. They are never responsive, they never include clever ripostes or attacks; they merely restate the position of the Times with greater venom: I was reminded by your editorial that Bush wasn't even your average politically...
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"The immutable fact of politics in America is this: liberals hate conservatives." Ann Coulter, whose examination of the Clinton impeachment was a major national bestseller and earned widespread praise, now takes on an even tougher issue. At a time when Democrats and Republicans should be overwhelmingly congenial, American political debate has become increasingly hostile, overly personal, and insufferably trivial. Whether conducted in Congress or on the political talk shows, played out at dinners or cocktail parties, politics is a nasty sport. At the risk of giving away the ending: It's all liberals' fault. Perhaps if conservatives had had total control over every major means of news dissemination for a quarter century, they would have forgotten how to debate, too, and would just call liberals stupid and mean. But that's an alternative universe. In this universe, the public square is wall-to-wall liberal propaganda. Refreshingly honest and unerringly timely, Slander continues where Bernard Goldberg's number one bestselling Bias left off.
