Ann Coulter RIP
Right-wing attack columnist’s April 1 death leaves behind a vicious legacy.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
>>FORUM
Ann Coulter, the outspoken conservative columnist and best-selling polemical author, was found dead this week in her Connecticut home.
She was 63. Local authorities listed the cause of death as “self-inflicted wounds.” She is survived by her pit bull, Pius XII. She had no known friends or parents.
Coulter was the author of five New York Times bestsellers—Godless: The Church of Liberalism (2006); How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (2004); Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003); Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002); and High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (1998).
Her incendiary quotes (such as, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building”) and an intense delivery made her a sought-after guest on many national TV shows, including “Hannity and Colmes,” “Scarborough Country” and “The O’Reilly Factor,” and internationally on programs such as “Good Morning Guantanamo,” “Rhodesia Today” and “Hallo! Kro-magnons.”
Coulter, who established herself as a darling in conservative corridors with her tireless baiting of liberals, advocates of human rights and men who throw a baseball like John Edwards, was best-known for her aggressive debating style and ready command of fictional statistics. Coulter was also the champion of previously debunked theories and discredited political movements, reviving creationism, segregationism, isolationism and McCarthyism and blending them into a philosophical smoothie she dubbed “Americanism.”
Post 9-11, Coulter departed from her years-long fascination with the Inter-office relationship between a sitting president and a kneeling intern. The publication of Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, broadened her reading public to include religious snake-handlers, skinheads, Florida Cubans and the late Roy Cohn. In her final book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter was subjected to criticism for her castigation of the widows of 9/11, having written: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”
Coulter later apologized for her statement, explaining that she had never met Candy Spelling.
Godless was also found by literary critics to contain “textbook plagiarism.” Coulter was accused of lifting numerous passages from the San Francisco Chronicle, a Planned Parenthood publication, and a newspaper in Portland, Maine—each approximately the length of a television sound bite. Coulter defended herself against these charges on national television, in a statement she borrowed liberally from an early Josef Goebbels speech.
Coulter’s last public appearance was as a pallbearer at the funeral of Generalissimo Alfredo Strossner, the former dictator of Paraguay.
The terms of Coulter’s will leaves a portion of her estate to the Anti-Islamo-Fascist Boys Club. The remainder will go to “that hunky moneylender in the big black hat, the only Jew who ever put America first,” Jack Abramoff, to be used expressly on behalf of his criminal defense.
In accordance with the will of the people, Coulter will be buried ten feet deep in a locked and bound coffin.
STANLEY MIESES is a regular contributor to Time Out New York. This article first appeared in Old Trout, a journal “on media matters and the collapse of any distinction between fact and fiction.”




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