Coulter dodges Spinsanity criticism of Treason (7/11)

By Brendan Nyhan

In an appearance on the syndicated radio program "Fox Live with Alan Colmes" July 2, pundit Ann Coulter, the author of Treason, responded with ad hominem attacks and evasion to the charges we raised in our recent column on her book.

Partway through the interview, Colmes mentioned Spinsanity, and Coulter immediately denigrated us as a "big Democratic website" despite our articles criticizing liberals such as Michael Moore and Robert Scheer, among many others.

COLMES: Before we get to some calls here, Spinacity.org [sic], I don't know if you're familiar with that website. They're pretty non-ideological, they've taken shots at me...

COULTER: Oh, that's a big Democratic website.

COLMES: No, it's not. They take shots at everybody.

COULTER: Yes, it is.

COLMES: They point out what they claim are some factual errors in your book.

Colmes then began to question Coulter about the points we made, beginning with the issue of her false claim that the Taliban existed while the Soviet Union was still occupying Afghanistan. She dismissed the issue without addressing its substance while characterizing us as part of a vaguely defined "they" that is pummelled with a series of charges:

COULTER: Ok, like I said, after fifty years of maligning Joe McCarthy, maligning J. Edgar Hoover, dropping from history the story about President Truman inviting Stalin to give a rebuttal speech to Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, lying about Soviet spies like the Rosenbergs, and Hiss, Alger Hiss, William Remington, scores of others, indeed hundreds of others, they come down to when the Taliban was formed in a single remark in my book. Stipulating that they're even right.

We, of course, have never done any of the things she alleges. Nor did the column "come down" to this single finding, which received two sentence’s worth of attention in a long and detailed column.

When Colmes raised the next error we flagged, her false implication that Democratic Congressmen met with Saddam Hussein himself in a pre-war visit to Iraq, she implicitly conceded the point while trying to change the subject:

COULTER: Oh, then that was his top guys. They were flying over to meet with him.

COLMES: But they didn't. They didn't meet with him. And that's not what happened.

COULTER: Look, the point of that was actually the story I told you before the break, which was even the New York Times implicitly conceding -- I don't have the book in front of me.

COLMES: I have it.

COULTER: You do, but right before it, there's this quote from the New York Times saying, you know, "This left many Republicans upset." And I say, weren't any Democrats upset about this?

Next, Colmes raised our argument about how she deceives through her use of media citations. Coulter claimed that we criticized only distinctions between reporters, but in fact we showed that she refers to quotes from magazine stories and book reviews in Treason as what newspapers "said" or "reported." Of the four articles we cited, three were by outside experts (one was a New York Times magazine piece by a Times reporter).

COULTER: No, that is a different form of citation, and I [unintelligible] disagree with them on how to cite things. When I am quoting a New York Times editorial, I state it's an editorial. When they're news articles, I mean there's precious distinction between one reporter or another. I will say "as the LA Times said" rather than boring people with the name of the particular reporter in these monochromatic party newspapers. That's just a question of how you cite something. If it's an op-ed piece, I'll cite Maureen Dowd, I will not say "the New York Times said." This is a news article and I'm not going to give the reporters' names for these things. The reporters for the New York Times, it's being reported as fact in the New York Times.

Colmes then said, "I'll give you another example" and described how we showed that she mischaracterized a quote by a Reagan administration official as the words of the Times. In her book, she wrote that the New York Times "reminded readers that Reagan was a 'cowboy, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat'" after the invasion of Grenada (p. 179). But the quote is from a Reagan administration official quoted in a Week in Review story who said, ''I suppose our biggest minus from the operation is that there now is a resurgence of the caricature of Ronald Reagan, the cowboy, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat.'' Coulter’s highly tenuous response parses the word "reminded" to claim she wasn't misleading readers. She then again tried to change the subject by claiming the Times was using the Reagan official to remind readers of the former president's cowboy image (despite the official describing it as a "caricature") in a long exchange with Colmes:

COULTER: I didn't say they said it. I said they reminded readers. It was placed in an editorial. And I do love all these quotes from anonymous officials. Yeah, some janitor picks up the phone. It's amazing how the Times can always get precisely the quote they want...

COLMES: You know people talk off the record all the time without for attribution. It wasn't the Times that said it, it was a Reagan official.

COULTER: I can't even believe I'm parsing this with people who have described a great American patriot, as John F. Kennedy called Joe McCarthy...

COLMES: Great American patriot. (sarcastically)

COULTER: ... As a virtual Nazi, and we're parsing whether "remind" is the correct word here. I say remind is the correct word, they cited it in an editorial. They were reminding their readers...

COLMES: You gave the impression that it came from the Times when it came was a Reagan person who said it.

COULTER: It did come from the Times! [unintelligible] information that is not necessary. And I repeat again, even stipulating that you were right that this is inelegant phrasing, I can't believe that, you know, parsing allegedly inelegant phrasing in the midst of a book that is disputing historical myths that we've been living with for fifty years.

COLMES: Because, in your attempt to paint the New York Times as a leftist newspaper that's not fair and balanced, you attribute quotes to it when the quotes come from other sources and other people having nothing to do with the Times. And they are simply reporting those quotes. That's what the point is.

COULTER: Wait, just let me say, I think you're confusing this book with the last book. I don't really care if it came from the New York Times, it doesn't add anything except more words to say "reminded readers by quoting an anonymous official." It doesn't add anything here. They reminded their readers, and this isn't the book attacking the Times.

Of course, we raised many other issues regarding Coulter's book, but suffice it to say that her responses to those charges presented by Colmes are neither accurate nor adequate.

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Related links:
-Screed: With Treason, Ann Coulter again defines a new low in America’s political debate (Brendan Nyhan, 6/30/03)
-Spinsanity on Ann Coulter

7/10/2003 10:46:15 PM EST |

Unreliable quotations (7/7)

By Brendan Nyhan

In recent weeks, a series of quotations from prominent figures have been hyped, exaggerated, distorted, misrepresented and taken out of context in yet another demonstration of irresponsibility in public debate.

First, the initial Associated Press story on the Supreme Court's decision in the Texas sodomy case offered an inaccurate quotation of Justice Antonin Scalia: "'The court has taken sides in the culture war,' Scalia said, adding that he has 'nothing against homosexuals.'" In context, however, the phrase "nothing against homosexuals" has a significantly different meaning:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best . . . But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else.

As Opinion Journal's Best of the Web Today pointed out, the phrase, stripped of context, was disseminated widely in news reports drawing on the AP, including MSNBC, the New York Times and a CBSNews.com legal analysis. The initial Times account, which was apparently corrected in the next day's final print edition, falsely specified that Scalia added "that he personally has 'nothing against homosexuals.'" (my italics) Several commentators and editorial boards then attacked Scalia based on the misleading quote, including a Buffalo News editorial on June 28 ("You almost expected the next line to say, 'Some of my best friends are homosexuals.'"), an Albany (N.Y.) Times Union editorial (6/29), John Porter in the Portland (Me.) Press Herald (6/29), syndicated Knight Ridder columnist Leonard Pitts (6/30, corrected 7/4), Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle (7/1), Carol Marin in the Chicago Tribune (7/2) and an editorial by the Aberdeen (S.D.) American News (7/2).

In a similar incident, a statement made by Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential contender John Kerry has similarly been taken out of context. Numerous commentators have recently attacked Kerry for supposedly changing his mind about Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

In fact, according to a June 18 AP story, Kerry stated that President Bush "misled every one of us" about the intelligence presented to justify a war in Iraq. "That's one reason why I'm running to be president of the United States," he continued. In the next paragraph, AP reporter Ron Fournier states that "Kerry said Bush made his case for war based on at least two pieces of U.S. intelligence that now appear to be wrong - that Iraq sought nuclear material from Africa and that Saddam's regime had aerial weapons capable of attacking the United States with biological material." In addition, Fournier reported that Kerry "said it is too early to conclude whether or not war with Iraq was justified" and called for an investigation into the information gathered by US intelligence, saying "I will not let him [Bush] off the hook throughout this campaign with respect to America's credibility and credibility to me because if he lied he lied to me personally."

Pundits omitted the two pieces of evidence that Kerry cited in support of his "misled us" statement, and then attacked him for his previous statements indicating that he believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The two are, of course, not contradictory - there's no direct indication from the AP story that Kerry was stating that Saddam did not have WMDs. But this was no concern to those pundits eager to pummel an ever-mutating straw man.

For example, Washington Times editor-in-chief Wes Pruden wrote on June 20 that "considering what [Kerry] was saying about Saddam Hussein, his weapons of mass destruction and the necessity of going to war only a few election cycles ago, who is misleading whom?" Joe Scarborough went even further the same day on his MSNBC show "Scarborough Country," asking "How in the world does Kerry go from saying there were weapons of mass destruction to now saying there aren't weapons of mass destruction?" This line of attack was repeated by syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker and the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes. And on the June 19 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Opinion Journal's John Fund even more blatantly misrepresented Kerry's statement: "Now he says the war isn't justified."

Another troubling case came in a recent email to supporters from Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe (196K PDF). Running under the headline "George Bush Thinks You Are Unpatriotic," the email states that, "[a]ccording to Bush and the GOP, you aren't a patriot" if you "[t]hink eroding our civil liberties is a cause for concern," "[d]on't support massive tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of working families," "[b]elieve the American people deserve to know whether President Bush misled them about Iraq's threat to our nation" or "[c]are about protecting our environment."

The only evidence provided for this sweeping assertion are five quotes from Republican and White House officials, several of which were clearly intended to silence dissent. We have criticized those statements and many like them in the past. But none of the five demonstrate that the White House or GOP question the patriotism of opponents of tax cuts or Republican environmental policy, nor do any of the statements pertain to the debate over whether the President deceived the public about Iraq - two are statements about public debate and civil liberties in the wake of September 11, one pertains to Democratic demands for an investigation of what the White House knew before the attacks and two are responses to Democratic comments in the days before the beginning of the war in Iraq.

In addition, a bizarre case has cropped up in which a tendentious quote attributed to President Bush has made the rounds of left-of-center websites, including those of two prominent commentators. An article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz stated that, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush said during their meeting in Aqaba, Jordan that "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

When Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler investigated the claim (as reported June 27 by his colleague Al Kamen, a Post columnist), he found that the quote was taken from minutes of the meeting written by Abbas in Arabic (perhaps from an account he heard from a translator if he does not speak English), which was then provided to a reporter in Arabic. It was subsequently translated back into English for the final report. Moreover, Abbas is neither a transcriber nor a disinterested source, and there are no corroborating accounts. Nonetheless, Josh Marshall credulously touted the quote on his Talking Points Memo blog on June 30 without any disclaimers as to its accuracy, as did Eric Alterman in greater length on his Altercation blog on MSNBC.com. (The White House flatly denies the account according to a July 1 report by Fox News Channel White House correspondent Wendell Goler, who stated that spokesperson Ari Fleischer told him the story was "an invention.")

Finally, a dispute has arisen over a quote from Vice President Dick Cheney, who said on the March 16 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press" that "we believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." To date, the assertion remains unproven, and has drawn heavy criticism in the dispute over statements made by the administration in arguing on behalf of a potential war with Iraq. However, as UCLA law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh points out in an article on National Review Online (echoing a point made by a several bloggers), commentators such as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Slate's Tim Noah and Salon's Joe Conason have neglected to point out the context of Cheney's statement. Specifically, Cheney said four times in the same interview that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons, not that he already possesses them, and the phrase "reconstituted nuclear weapons" makes little sense on its own (why would Saddam give up nuclear weapons if he possessed them?). Volokh argues that Cheney likely misspoke and that he meant to say "reconstituted nuclear weapons programs" or something similar, which is exactly what his aides told the Washington Post's Dana Milbank (see his May 20 White House Notebook column). Cheney's critics may believe his statement was intentional, but they owe their readers a clearer picture of the context in which he said it, as do too many other journalists and pundits of late, it seems.

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Related links:
-The Gore-ing of John Kerry (Ben Fritz, 5/7/03) [Published on Salon.com -- readers must have a Salon Premium subscription or view an advertisement.]
-A spate of misquotes and misattributions (Brendan Nyhan, 4/9/03)
-Closing Down Debate: Ashcroft's Attack on Dissent (Bryan Keefer, 12/10/01)

7/7/2003 08:45:33 PM EST |

Just when you thought discourse had fallen as far as it could (7/6)

By Brendan Nyhan
Published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

With her new book, syndicated pundit Ann Coulter has driven the national discourse to a new low. No longer content to merely call liberals "terrorists" or a "cult" who "hate democracy," she has now upped the ante, accusing the entire Democratic Party as well as liberals and leftists nationwide of treason. But, as in her syndicated columns (many of which are adapted in the book) and her previous book, "Slander: Liberal Lies Against the American Right," Coulter's case relies in large part on irrational rhetoric and pervasive factual errors and deceptions.

(Note: This article is an adapted version of Nyhan's column on Ann Coulter's book Treason, which was first published on this site on June 30.)

7/6/2003 10:02:44 AM EST |

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