Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter on the cover of her book Slander

Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American author, columnist, and pundit. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public and private events.

Known for her controversial style and conservative views, she has been described by The Observer as "the Republican Michael Moore," and "Rush Limbaugh in a miniskirt." Coulter has described herself as a "polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" and makes no pretense at being "impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do." She is known for her expressed disdain for the Democratic Party and American liberalism.

Background, early life, and education

Ann Coulter was born to John Vincent Coulter (born 1926) and Nell Husbands Martin Coulter (born February 28, 1928, Paducah, Kentucky). Her maternal grandfather Hunter Hart Martin (1897-1954) was originally named Hunter Hart Weissinger, but changed his name.

After her birth in New York City, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers (James M. (born 1957) and John) were raised. She has described her family as "upper middle class" and has termed her attorney father a "union buster". She owns homes in New York and Florida. She is also a fan of the Grateful Dead, and some of her favorite books include The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, most true crime stories about serial killers, or anything by Dave Barry.

As an undergraduate at Cornell, Coulter helped launch a conservative newspaper, The Cornell Review, and was a member of the Delta Gamma national women's fraternity. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984, and received her law degree from the University of Michigan, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of The Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.

After law school, Coulter clerked for Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and was an attorney in the Department of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates. After a short time in private practice in New York City, she worked for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, where she handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. She later became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights.

Media career

Television and films

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Coulter on Hannity & Colmes

Coulter's first national media appearance came after she was hired in 1996 by MSNBC as a legal correspondent. She was fired the next year after an exchange with Bobby Muller, president of the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation who had been paralyzed due to combat wounds. In response to Muller's claim that during the Vietnam War American soldiers had stepped mainly on their own landmines, she infamously said "No wonder you guys lost." Coulter claimed that she did not know Muller was disabled.

She has made frequent guest appearances on television, including The Today Show, Hannity and Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, American Morning, Crossfire, Real Time, Politically Incorrect, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's the fifth estate, a program in which an interviewer inadvertedly exposed Coulter's not knowing that Canada did not send troops into the Vietnam War, a fact which Coulter adamently said was incorrect.

Coulter has appeared in four movies. She made her first movie appearance in 2004, when she appeared in three movies. The first was Feeding the Beast, which was a made for TV documentary on the "24-Hour News Revolution". The other two movies were FahrenHYPE 9/11, a direct to video documentary designed to rebut Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, and Is It True What They Say About Ann?, a documentary on Coulter containing clips of interviews and speeches.

In 2005, Coulter appeared as one of a three person judging panel in The Greatest American, a four-part interactive television event for the Discovery Channel hosted by Matt Lauer. Starting with 100 nominees, each week interactive viewer voting eliminated candidates.

Radio

Ann Coulter has been a frequent guest on many talk radio shows, including Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher, and others. On July 6, 2006 Coulter called The Adam Carolla show an hour and half late. While explaining she had been given the wrong number and was "really tight on time", Carolla hung up on Ann, telling her "alright, well, get lost" [2].

Books

Coulter is the author of five books. All have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her first book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (ISBN 0895261138), was published by Regnery Publishing in 1998. The book details Coulter's case for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Her second book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (ISBN 1400046610), published by Crown Forum in 2002, remained number one on The New York Times Best Seller list for seven weeks. In Slander, Coulter argues that President George W. Bush faced an unfair battle for positive media coverage.

Her third book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (ISBN 1400050308), also published by Crown Forum, defends the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and claims Democratic politicians and the media have treasonously undermined United States foreign policy. She also claims that Annie Lee Moss was correctly identified by Joseph McCarthy as a Communist. Treason was published in 2003, and spent 13 weeks on the Best Seller list.

Crown Forum published a collection of Coulter's columns in 2004 as her fourth book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (ISBN 1400054184).

Coulter's fifth book, published by Crown Forum in 2006, is Godless: The Church of Liberalism (ISBN 1400054206). Coulter argues, first, that liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, and second, that it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. Godless debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Columns

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Portrait of Ann Coulter on the cover of Time Magazine (April, 2005). Coulter claims this image has been manipulated.

Coulter's weekly syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate is printed in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, and linked to by many conservative websites, including Frontpagemag.com and Townhall.com. Her syndicator says "Ann's client newspapers stick with her because she has a loyal fan base of conservative readers who look forward to reading her columns in their local newspapers."

Coulter also writes an occasional legal column in the conservative magazine Human Events, in which she discusses judicial rulings, constitutional issues, and legal matters affecting Congress and the executive branch. Coulter was the subject of a TIME magazine cover story in April 2005.

Generally, her columns are highly critical of the liberal point-of-view. She has argued, for instance, that liberals' insistence on sexual freedoms belies their calls for restrictions in other areas of life, particularly on the issue of health. For example, she asserted that although liberals often lobby for public bans on smoking, they take far less precaution in their sexual health, citing the acts of anal sex and fisting as examples.

Negative reactions from publishers

Coulter's controversial style of writing has occasionally caused her publishers to disassociate themselves from her.

Coulter contracted with USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She wrote one article that began, "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston..." and referred to some unspecified female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons." The newspaper declined to print the article, replacing Coulter with conservative columnist and frequent CNN commentator Jonah Goldberg, and Coulter published it instead on her website.

In 2001, as a contributing editor and syndicated columnist at the National Review Online (NRO), Coulter was asked by editors to make changes to a piece written after the September 11 attacks. On the national television show Politically Incorrect, Coulter accused NRO of censorship and claimed she was paid $5 per article. NRO dropped her column and terminated her. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of NRO, said, "We did not 'fire' Ann for what she wrote ... we ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty."

In August 2005, the Arizona Daily Star dropped Coulter's syndicated column citing reader complaints that, "Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."

Following the publication of her fourth best-selling book Godless: The Church of Liberalism in July 2006, several newspapers replaced her column with those of other conservative columnists. For example:

• The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced that it was replacing Coulter's column with that of David Limbaugh, stating that, "the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers."
• The Augusta Chronicle of Augusta, Georgia explained that they felt that her "stridency" had crossed the line.
• The Shreveport Times announced that they were considering dropping Ann Coulter in favor of another conservative columnist because, "She is more about entertainment and self-promotion," and that they had, "come close," before.
• Yes! Weekly of Greensboro, North Carolina replaced her column with that of William F. Buckley due to the plagiarism allegations as well as her comments on 9/11 widows, with readers' responses to the question running two to one for replacing her. The editor wrote, "Sure, there will be some who bemoan her absence from our pages and others who will question my decision to pull from our ranks a writer whose book currently sits atop the New York Times bestseller list. And they may have a point -- she's sold a lot of books. But I'm not gonna be helping her do it anymore. So goodbye, Ann. It's been a wild ride."

Religious views

Coulter proclaims Christian religious beliefs. At one public lecture she proclaimed her faith in Jesus Christ, saying: "I don't care about anything else: Christ died for my sins and nothing else matters." Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian , she has stated that, "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it." She has also said "...Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy—you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism."

Time magazine's John Cloud reports that he attended a service at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City with Coulter, where she worships and often brings guests.

She also quotes Christian scripture in her work. Godless begins with: "They exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creation rather than the creator.... Therefore, God gave them up to passions of dishonor, for their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature. — Romans 1:25-26"

In her book, Godless, Coulter claims that "there’s no physical evidence for evolution", and goes on to state there's "no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record." Coulter's arguments against evolution do not appear to have any scientific basis [3] [4].

Political activities

In addition to her frequent media appearances and popular writings about politics and political beliefs, Coulter's political activities have included considering a run for Congress and advising a plaintiff suing the president.

The Paula Jones - Bill Clinton case

Coulter debuted as a public figure shortly before becoming an unpaid legal advisor for the attorneys representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton.

Coulter disagreed with the lead lawyer, Joseph Cammaratta, who advised Jones that her case was weak and to settle it. From the onset, Jones had sought an apology from Clinton at least as eagerly as she sought a settlement. However, Coulter said she believed the case was strong, that Jones was telling the truth, that Clinton should be held publicly accountable for his misconduct, and that a settlement would give the impression that Jones was merely interested in extorting money from the President.

David Daley, who wrote the interview piece for the Hartford Courant recounted what followed:

Coulter played one particularly key role in keeping the Jones case alive. In Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff's new book Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, Coulter is unmasked as the one who leaked word of Clinton's "distinguishing characteristic" — his reportedly bent penis that Jones said she could recognize and describe — to the news media. Her hope was to foster mistrust between the Clinton and Jones camps and forestall a settlement...

'I thought if I leaked the distinguishing characteristic it would show bad faith in negotiations. [Clinton lawyer] Bob Bennett would think Jones had leaked it. Cammaratta would know he himself hadn't leaked it and would get mad at Bennett. It might stall negotiations enough for me to get through to [Jones adviser] Susan Carpenter-McMillan to tell her that I thought settling would hurt Paula, that this would ruin her reputation, and that there were other lawyers working for her. Then 36 hours later, she returned my phone call.

'I just wanted to help Paula. I really think Paula Jones is a hero. I don't think I could have taken the abuse she came under. She's this poor little country girl and she has the most powerful man she's ever met hitting on her sexually, then denying it and smearing her as president. And she never did anything tacky. It's not like she was going on TV or trying to make a buck out of it.'

Coulter also told Isikoff, "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the President."

The case went to court after Jones broke with Coulter and her original legal team, and was summarily dismissed. The judge ruled that even if her allegations proved true, Jones did not show that she had suffered any damages, stating "plaintiff has not demonstrated any tangible job detriment or adverse employment action for her refusal to submit to the governor's alleged advances. The president is therefore entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's claim of quid pro quo sexual harassment", and dismissed the case. Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000 in exchange for not appealing the decision. The Jones lawsuit led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Coulter wrote a book critical of Clinton called High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. Coulter later wrote a very critical column on Paula Jones in 2000, calling her "trailer park trash" and a "fraud", after she revealed that she would pose for nude pictures in an adult magazine. Jones claims to have been victimized by Clinton and Republicans.

Potential congressional run

In 2000, Coulter considered running for Congress from Connecticut on the Libertarian Party ticket to serve as a spoiler in order to throw the seat to the Democratic candidate and see that Republican Congressman Christopher Shays failed to gain re-election, as a punishment for Shays' voting against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The leadership of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut, after meeting with Coulter, declined to endorse her. As a result, her self-described "total sham, media-intensive, third-party Jesse Ventura campaign" did not take place.

Allegations of improper conduct

Registration and voting

Coulter is under investigation by election officials in Florida for filing an inaccurate voter registration form in June 2005. Coulter's voter registration form lists her real estate agent's address instead of her own home address. In March, 2006, elections officials had given Coulter 30 days to explain the inaccuracy.

According to poll worker Jim Whited, Coulter tried to vote in the February 7, 2006, town council election at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, where she should vote based on her actual address. Although Coulter initially tried to vote in the proper location, Coulter left the precinct as soon as Whited inquired about the discrepancy in her address and voting precinct. She then cast her ballot in the precinct down the road, St. Edward's, that matched the address on her registration, which was actually the incorrect location for someone with her actual street address. Willful submission of any false voter registration information is a third degree felony in the state of Florida.

This is not the first incident of voting irregularity attributed to Coulter; she has consistently failed to explain the disparity in her stated age and the date of her first voter's registration. Her original driver's license, issued in Connecticut, lists her birth date in December, 1961. The driver's license issued to her years later in Washington, D.C., lists the year as 1963. Coulter's own statements regarding her age conform to the date on her D.C. license. Coulter's first voter's registration was completed in 1980. If the date on the D.C. license is correct , she first registered to vote at the age of sixteen, also an incident of voter fraud. If, however, the date on the Connecticut license is correct, she may be guilty of having given false information on her D.C. driver's license application, which is also a felony.

Plagiarism and factual accuracy

Liberal author and political commentator Al Franken has questioned the factual accuracy of her books, and is also critical of her use of endnotes by taking the cited passages out of context. Others have investigated these charges, with equivocal results. Coulter responded to these and similar criticisms in a column called, "Answering my Critics.", where she claims all accusations of her factual inaccuracy are either outright wrong or really just trivial factual errors (e.g. calling "endnotes", "footnotes", or incorrectly identifying Evan Thomas' grandfather, Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, as his father). However, many false and misleading statements do appear. Franken's main issue is Coulter's sloppiness when citing information, which he details is wrong. Many critics state, that while the "mistakes" could be construed as sloppiness, without the manipulation of facts, Coulter has no point to make, thus, making it deliberate.

On page 134 of Coulter's book, Slander, Coulter claims that during Regan's Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan's approval ratings fell five percent, from 80 to 75%. A Christian Science Monitor article is cited from January 7, 1987. In actuality, the article states, Reagan's approval ratings fell from 63 to 47%.

Coulter relies heavily on the LexisNexis search. A program designed to search various newspapers with the use of keywords or phrases. Many of Coulter's claims are that various "left leaning" newspapers did not cover one event or story due to a hidden agenda. However, Coulter's use of keywords and phrases when searching, give her incomplete results. Many of her claims have come to light as false, having the newspapers she claims not covering a certain story, indeed covering it.

In Slander, Coulter alleges The New York Times did not cover NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt's death until two days after he died:

"The day after seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt died in a race at the Daytona 500, almost every newspaper in America carried the story on the front page. Stock-car racing had been the nation's fastest-growing sport for a decade, and NASCAR the second-most-watched sport behind the NFL. More Americans recognize the name Dale Earnhardt than, say, Maureen Dowd. (Manhattan liberals are dumbly blinking at that last sentence.) It took The New York Times two days to deem Earnhardt's death sufficiently important to mention it on the first page. Demonstrating the left's renowned populist touch, the article began, 'His death brought a silence to the Wal-Mart.' The Times went on to report that in vast swaths of the country people watch stock-car racing. Tacky people were mourning Dale Earnhardt all over the South!"

The The New York Times did cover Earnhart's death and covered it on the front page. Earnhardt died on February 18, 2001. Another article appeared in the Times on the front page, on February 19, 2001, one day later, after their intial front-page story, written by sportswriter Robert Lipsyte, making it two days in a row the The New York Times covered Earnhardt's death. Coulter cites an article indeed written two days later, by Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winner who grew up in the South, who wrote a personal piece on Earnhardt and his passing, bringing the total to three times in which the Times covered Earnhardt, three days in a row.

In June 2006, the New York Post reported that John Barrie, CEO of iParadigms and creator of the iThenticate plagiarism detection software, had found at least three examples of what he and his program claim is plagiarism in Coulter's book Godless and other examples in the last 12 months of her syndicated columns. Others have provided further instances of alleged plagiarism, bringing the total number reported to 25.

The examples of alleged plagiarism include:

• Alleged plagiarized passage: "As New Hampshire attorney general in 1977, Souter opposed the repeal of an 1848 state law that made abortion a crime even though Roe v. Wade had made it irrelevant, predicting that if the law were repealed, New Hampshire 'would become the abortion mill of the United States.'"

• Alleged source: "In 1977, Souter as state attorney general spoke out against a proposed repeal of an 1848 state law that made abortion a crime -- even though the measure had been largely invalidated by the Supreme Court in Roe. vs. Wade… 'Quite apart from the fact that I don't think unlimited abortions ought to be allowed . . . I presume we would become the abortion mill of the United States[.]'"

• Alleged plagiarized passage: "Between 1982 and 2001, spending on New York City public schools increased by more than 300 percent, clocking in at $11474 per pupil annually."

• Alleged source: "In New York City, funding for public education has more than tripled since 1982, rising to $14.8 billion from $3.8 billion. In terms of per-pupil spending, that's an increase to $11,474 (for 2000-2001) from $4,165."

Lee Salem, editor and president of Universal Press Syndicate, the company that distributes Coulter's column, rejected the allegations, saying a review of the work in question turned up nothing that merited concern. "There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism," he said in a statement.

Crown Publishing Group, the publisher of Godless, also rejected the allegations of plagiarism, characterizing the allegations "as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible." Coulter has been known to use endnotes extensively. For example, in her book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, which incorporates 780 endnotes, she stated that she had to include so many endnotes since she felt that the publisher would, "jump on every single sentence," and, "say it's not true."

In August, 2006, researchers investigating Coulter's use of endnotes claim that they are, "rife with distortions and falsehoods." Coulter's editors have responded stating that they will change any mistakes found.

Notable controversies

While she is in constant demand on the US lecture circuit, Coulter's polemics sometimes start firestorms of controversy, ranging from rowdy uprisings at many of the colleges where she speaks to protracted discussions in the media. Arnold Beichman reviewed her book, Treason in the Washington Times, writing that he, "tried to read Miss Coulter's book and failed. Life is too short to read pages and pages of rant." See: Criticisms of Ann Coulter.

Speeches at college campuses

Coulter has been the subject of several protests when speaking on college campuses.

On one occasion, during an appearance at University of Arizona, a pie was thrown at her, splattering her and causing $1,830 worth of damage to a stage backdrop. The two perpetrators were charged with criminal damage, and one of them later said, "we were throwing pies at her ideas, not at her." Ann notes that she was not hit by the pies, which were thrown by liberals who "throw like girls," and that the College Republican women in attendance "gave them a beating they won't forget."

In another instance, Coulter was heckled while speaking at a crowd of 2,600 at the University of Connecticut to the point that she ended her speech early and began to take questions from the audience, remarking that "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am." A student said of the rowdy crowd, "It really appalled me that we're not able to come together as a group and listen to a different view in a respectful environment."

Speaking at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 26, 2006, Coulter said of United States Supreme Court Justice Stevens, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' crème brûlée. That's just a joke, for you in the media."

At a February 23, 2006 appearance at Indiana University, Bloomington, in a speech entitled, "Liberals Are Wrong About Everything," she claimed, "Liberals hate God and hate America," and that there is no hope for the Democratic party. Her speech was frequently interrupted while protestors were removed. The school's newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, reported that during the Q&A session, a young man asked her if she didn't like Democrats, wouldn't it just be better to have a dictatorship; Coulter replied: "You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?". Shane Kennedy, then president of the IU College Republicans student group, defended her comments, saying "I think the guy could have been more respectful to her."

The 9/11 "Jersey Girls"

In her book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter criticizes the four 9/11 widows known as the "Jersey Girls", writing that they abused their status as widows by acting as partisans to push for the 9/11 Commission, to harshly criticize the G.W. Bush administration and its security policies, and to campaign for presidential candidate John Kerry. The purportedly partisan activities of the "Jersey Girls" have also been commented upon by other observers.

The reaction to Coulter's more recent comments from her book Godless invoked heated responses; In it Coulter wrote:

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. ... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much ... the Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president ... cutting campaign commercials... how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."

These statements were described by U.S. Congressman Rush Holt as "hateful, divisive and ignorant" and reportedly disturbed families of 9/11 attack victims.

Coulter on the cover of her book Godless.

In a long chapter titled, "Liberal Doctrine of Infallibility: Sobbing Hysterical Women," Coulter argues that one of liberalism's proselytizing techniques is to choose, "people with 'absolute moral authority' - Democrats with a dead husband, a dead child, a wife who works at the CIA, a war record, [or] a terminal illness..." as spokespersons to advance political goals. Doing so stifles a rational debate of the policy being advanced, according to Coulter, since, "you can't respond to them because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering."

She lists a catalogue of such persons as Cindy Sheehan, gun-control activist Carolyn McCarthy, paralyzed actor and embryonic stem-cell activist Christopher Reeve, disabled Vietnam veteran and anti-Iraq-war activist Max Cleland, and the four Jersey Girls.

Coulter's description of these women has garnered criticism, some of it invoking the memory of the women's tragically deceased husbands. The book was released on June 6, 2006, and that morning, Matt Lauer of NBC's The Today Show interviewed Coulter. He questioned the propriety of several of its statements about the Jersey Girls, including "They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process." She defended the challenged statements and remarked that Lauer was "getting testy" with her.

The next day, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called Coulter's charge a "vicious, mean-spirited attack", suggesting that Coulter's book should have been titled Heartless.

Coulter later responded to Senator Clinton: "Before criticizing others for being 'mean' to women, perhaps Hillary should talk to her husband who was accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick and was groping Kathleen Willey at the very moment Willey's husband was committing suicide."

On the same day, Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) called Coulter a, "hatemonger" on the floor of the House and urged his Republican colleagues to denounce her as well. Later, Tim Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission and a former Democratic Congressman, urged Americans not to buy Coulter's book.

She has consistently defended her words and makes no apologies, even goading her critics by repeating her criticism of the Jersey Girls in subsequent columns, "If you're upset about what I said about the Witches of East Brunswick, try turning the page. Surely, I must have offended more than those four harpies."

Comments about bombing The New York Times

When asked by John Hawkins if she regretted a statement she made implying that she wished Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times instead of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, Coulter replied: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'" Lee Salem, the president of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's column, later defended Coulter by saying that she was a brilliant satirist who does not mean it when she periodically wishes violence or even death on liberals and other, "traitors." The subject came up again when she appeared on the Fox News program Hannity & Colmes. Alan Colmes mentioned Salem's claim, and asked her if she wanted to take back the earlier statement that Timothy McVeigh should have bombed The New York Times office, especially if reporters were inside. She responded, "No, I think the Timothy McVeigh line was merely prescient after The New York Times has leapt beyond -- beyond nonsense straight into treason, last week," Coulter replied (referring to a Times report that revealed classified information about anti-terrorism surveillance of private financial transactions by the U.S. government). E&P staff reported Alan Colmes as sarcastically calling her remarks, "great humor," and that it "belongs on Saturday Night Live. It belongs on The Daily Show."

Coulter on Arabs and Muslims

Particularly in response to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Coulter has been notably critical of Arabs and Muslims. For example, in a column written on September 12, 2001, she wrote,

"Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

Later, she advocated the use of racial profiling by airlines as a means to further target Arabs and Muslims in particular.

She wrote in her column that she had reviewed the civil rights lawsuits against certain airlines to determine which airlines had subjected Arabs to the most, "egregious discrimination," so that she could fly only that airline. She also said that the airline should be bragging instead of denying any of the charges of discrimination brought against them. In an interview with the British Guardian newspaper, she quipped, "I think airlines ought to start advertising: 'We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'" When asked what Muslims should do for travel, she responded that they, "could use flying carpets."

One comment that drew particularly harsh criticism, both from college student bloggers as well as fellow conservatives, was at a Conservative Political Action Conference, where she stated, "I think our motto should be, post-9-11: raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences."

External links

• Official website
• IMDB Profile
• NNDB Profile
• Profile by Media Matters for America

Column archives

• Column Archive at AnnCoulter.Com
• Column Archive at Jewish World Review
• Column Archive at National Review (2000-2001)