The Right Stuff

Ann Coulter may be wrong at times. She may be right at others. Or strident. Even inflammatory. But she is never in doubt. And that, along with her bright writing, sense of irony and outrage, and her relish at finally hitting back at political opponents (especially in the media) is what makes “Slander” such refreshing and provocative reading.

There often seems an invisible virus afoot in America today. Based at times on fact and at others on suspicions, it prompts profound and automatic distrust of some basic institutions, such as government, politics, the church and business, especially if they are big. Now, it seems, it’s the media’s turn to be suspected--of collusion with liberals in promoting their agenda, which includes demeaning and dismissing opponents on the right.

There was Bernard Goldberg’s bestseller “Bias.” Now comes “Slander,” a clever, documented diatribe detailing the media’s alleged liberal orientation with its, at worst, intentional distortions about conservative opponents and, at best, naive incantation of liberal views as gospel. In 205 pages of text and 36 more pages of footnotes citing chapter and verse, Coulter skewers liberal after liberal, TV news division after TV news division and numerous magazines and newspapers, most especially the New York Times. Coulter is an attorney, former congressional press secretary and author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton” who’s become a regular Republican on the cable TV political chat circuit.

To naive news consumers who still think media reporters are merely objective collectors of facts, Coulter declares: “There is no intellectual honesty whatsoever in media descriptions of politicians. Journalism is war by other means.”

Her oft-repeated point is that liberals (and you know who you are) have, in concert with at least compliant and quite likely complicit media, conspired to poison political dialogue to their advantage by avoiding substantive discussions and by demeaning conservatives through stereotypes, name-calling, questioning their intelligence and worse.

A major Coulter point is the media’s ready acceptance of Democrats’ questioning of Republicans’ intelligence. Thus, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have at least two things in common: All were president and all were not too smart. Bush’s failure on a TV interviewer’s pop quiz of world leaders was, according to Coulter, endlessly cited as proof of his intellectual challenge. Bush was asked about it frequently.

In the interests of campaign fairness, Coulter notes sarcastically, Vice President Al Gore also was asked about Bush’s intelligence. However, according to Coulter, Gore’s recorded inability to recognize, during a tour of Monticello, the busts of someone named George Washington and Ben Franklin was noted only in USA Today. Or when Bush’s SAT scores were leaked during the 2000 election campaign and roundly bemoaned, few journalists found space to note they were actually higher than Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley’s.

“Slander” is packed with such examples from recent years, enough to make Republicans cheer and Democrats groan. You need not like Coulter, as many clearly don’t in the ongoing whisper campaign against her best-selling book, to admire the clear prose or be bothered by both the convincing arguments she often presents and the forceful style she uses, often much the same as the one she denounces.

Coulter’s is a familiar face among the Washington blabocracy that fills cable TV’s insatiable need for talking or, rather, arguing heads. In theory, democracy’s debates enlighten citizens, who listen, learn and vote better. That’s the plan anyway. Too often nowadays, given the pervasive media’s structural need for conflict to attract crowds of consumers so they can attract advertising and the political parties’ institutional need to keep their partisan crowds in line so their candidates can win elections, such debates become more like verbal gladiatorial contests.

Everybody chooses favorites beforehand, cheers theirs and never mind what either side says or does. The party’s pre-printed talking points on the day’s hot issue, emailed to supporters around Washington and beyond, are duly spouted in earnest efforts to win one more oratorical skirmish in the never-ending news cycles of endless election seasons. Some call others names. They throw rhetorical chairs. The audience applauds. And now these commercial messages.

Any enlightenment is accidental. The fact that most Americans aren’t really listening and many others turn away from such chatter does not seem to have an effect on the combatants, who move on to the next show, maybe even sharing a cab to get there.

It’s enough to elicit sighs from skeptical unaligned citizens. Skepticism--careful questioning of any political premise--is always healthy in a democracy; cynicism--automatic dismissal of others, especially cynicism for entertainment’s sake--is less so. To the extent “Slander” nurtures more savvy news consumers in the grandstands surrounding our never-ending political tournaments, it’s helpful. To the extent it adds to the mental scarring of cynicism, it’s not.