Friday, April 02, 2004
Coulter transgenderizes into Archie Bunker
I was wondering, "Maybe this preoccupation with scrutinizing Ann Coulter's writings is out of order?" "Perhaps she is just a very solidly-entrenched conservative, who has a weakness in providing factual arguments?" This would not, of course, validate her arguments, which are prone to the most basic of errors of logic, but it could excuse her apparent inability to rationally explain her positions and beliefs, without resorting to sarcasm, exaggeration, or her favored "straw man" argument fashion.
Then she published her latest opinion piece on her site, "How 9-11 Happened" and convinced me she isn't just an ignorant-but-misguided blonde harpy. She uses the venom of deception; not the fire of passion, to fuel her arguments. She intends to mislead, in support of her arguments; in fact, the majority of her arguments cannot stand alone without the use of misleading or outright fallacious supporting points.
How did she open my eyes? By copying large portions of a disproven internet chain email, circulating since early 2002, and representing it as her latest legitimate writing. Yes, it's full of half-truths, no-truths, and made-up propaganda, like most of her essays, but if she is going to ladle that simmering spoonful of witches brew into our bowls, she should at least have a columnist's decency to credit the sources of the writings that she represents as her own original work.
That Coulter uses others' works and claims them as her own should be no surprise. Heck, her idols in the current Administration have been known to grab the unpublished thesis of a grad student without him knowing it, and claim the document as the intelligence work of the CIA. No- to be surprised at plagiarism by the radical Right is to be naive.
What is really surprising is the grade of content she has chosen to claim as hers. As mentioned, nothing written in her column is new, and it has been painstakingly disproven before. She states that, in response to the following:
- The 1993 World Trade center bombing,
- The 1996 bombing U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia,
- The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
- The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole,
...Clinton and his administration invariably did nothing.
Wouldn't it be sad if this was true? A President who did nothing in all these situations would surely be derelict in his duties. The facts of these situations, however, speak a totally different story.
The perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade center bombing were brought to trial, convicted, and imprisoned. Five months following the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing, the US, working with the Saudi Arabian security forces, had arrested 40 Shiite Muslims belonging to a group known as the Saudi Hezbollah, believed responsible for the attack. In response to the 1998 bombings of our embassies, the US struck a terrorism training complex in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Khartoum, Sudan, that reportedly produced nerve gas. Both targets were believed to have been assets of Osama bin Laden. With the help of Yemen police forces, ten men accused of the Cole bombing were imprisoned in Yemen,awaiting trial. After escaping prison last year, eight of the ten have now been recaptured.
It's easy to try to forget anything worthwhile a past president has accomplished. What did Herbert Hoover ever do for us, for example? It's easy to become outraged when presented with lies about a president's actions, if one fails to validate them. What's not easy is to swallow the hook, line and sinker of Coulter's fish tale, and above all, it has to be difficult for her to live with herself when the lack of journalistic integrity on her purported original website is so blatantly apparent.
I was wondering, "Maybe this preoccupation with scrutinizing Ann Coulter's writings is out of order?" "Perhaps she is just a very solidly-entrenched conservative, who has a weakness in providing factual arguments?" This would not, of course, validate her arguments, which are prone to the most basic of errors of logic, but it could excuse her apparent inability to rationally explain her positions and beliefs, without resorting to sarcasm, exaggeration, or her favored "straw man" argument fashion.
Then she published her latest opinion piece on her site, "How 9-11 Happened" and convinced me she isn't just an ignorant-but-misguided blonde harpy. She uses the venom of deception; not the fire of passion, to fuel her arguments. She intends to mislead, in support of her arguments; in fact, the majority of her arguments cannot stand alone without the use of misleading or outright fallacious supporting points.
How did she open my eyes? By copying large portions of a disproven internet chain email, circulating since early 2002, and representing it as her latest legitimate writing. Yes, it's full of half-truths, no-truths, and made-up propaganda, like most of her essays, but if she is going to ladle that simmering spoonful of witches brew into our bowls, she should at least have a columnist's decency to credit the sources of the writings that she represents as her own original work.
That Coulter uses others' works and claims them as her own should be no surprise. Heck, her idols in the current Administration have been known to grab the unpublished thesis of a grad student without him knowing it, and claim the document as the intelligence work of the CIA. No- to be surprised at plagiarism by the radical Right is to be naive.
What is really surprising is the grade of content she has chosen to claim as hers. As mentioned, nothing written in her column is new, and it has been painstakingly disproven before. She states that, in response to the following:
- The 1993 World Trade center bombing,
- The 1996 bombing U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia,
- The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
- The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole,
...Clinton and his administration invariably did nothing.
Wouldn't it be sad if this was true? A President who did nothing in all these situations would surely be derelict in his duties. The facts of these situations, however, speak a totally different story.
The perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade center bombing were brought to trial, convicted, and imprisoned. Five months following the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing, the US, working with the Saudi Arabian security forces, had arrested 40 Shiite Muslims belonging to a group known as the Saudi Hezbollah, believed responsible for the attack. In response to the 1998 bombings of our embassies, the US struck a terrorism training complex in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Khartoum, Sudan, that reportedly produced nerve gas. Both targets were believed to have been assets of Osama bin Laden. With the help of Yemen police forces, ten men accused of the Cole bombing were imprisoned in Yemen,awaiting trial. After escaping prison last year, eight of the ten have now been recaptured.
It's easy to try to forget anything worthwhile a past president has accomplished. What did Herbert Hoover ever do for us, for example? It's easy to become outraged when presented with lies about a president's actions, if one fails to validate them. What's not easy is to swallow the hook, line and sinker of Coulter's fish tale, and above all, it has to be difficult for her to live with herself when the lack of journalistic integrity on her purported original website is so blatantly apparent.
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