I’m fairly certain if I were to submit a manuscript titled, “Ann Coulter Is Destroying America” I’d have a six figure book deal tomorrow; such is the public fascination, or alternatively horror, with the what-will-she-say-next shtick that Coulter’s been playing in the media to promote her new book, ‘Godless’.
David Carr, in The New York Times, looks at the current controversy in light of his previous article on Coulter, noting the transfixing dichotomy between the package and the message.
Coulter’s act, as we’ve previously noted, is the same kind of over-the-top, calculated, “look at me” stuff we’ve seen here previously from Al Franken. I’ve been in close quarters with both on several occasions and witnessed their blow-ups. While Franken tends toward fist pounding and finger pointing, Coulter tends to stick with verbal carpet bombing; both designed to leave the audience questioning whether their eyes and ears are playing tricks on them – they didn’t really say (or do) that, did they?
As professional provocateurs, both are cagey enough to measure the level of shock, outrage, or hysteria, in direct proportion to the quantity (and quality) of cameras and microphones nearby. What good is meltdown without media coverage?
In the world on television punditry sanity and factuality aren’t prerequisites for longevity, case in point Maureen Dowd. Still it is possible to be cast off the talk circuit reservation, though the number of transgressions that would qualify one for banishment seems to be ever shrinking.
That’s where a report from liberal blogger The Rude Pundit comes in. They note that in the first chapter to Coulter’s new book “Godless,” there are two suspicious selections:
- Coulter: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.
Portland Press Herald: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.
Coulter: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.
The History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.
Assuming what The Rude Pundit says about lack of sourcing is correct, the fist selection, on the face of it, sure looks like plagiarism. The second selection is somewhat less convincing, though the use of the word saboteur seems too be a bit too forced in this particular instance to be mere coincidence.
So is Coulter a plagiarist? At this point no, but there’s a whole book to look through, which I suspect the legions of those who despise Coulter are organizing for right this very moment. Were they to put together a formidable collection of cribbed quotes Coulter’s career would be over, since when it comes to publishing plagiarism is the scarlet letter.
With a prize like that you can bet the left side of the blogosphere will working overtime on this…
Cole, it’s “plagiarism”.
You don’t have the same IP address as Dr. Biobrain, do you?
Nah…
Who is Dr Biobrain? I have never commented on this blog – this was a first for me.
Why is this alleged Conservative woman unmarried? Where are her children? She is no Michelle Malkin….
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you guys were parodying stupid conservatives. Like this bobdog person who complains of Rude Pundit’s schtick, ending with:
What an obnoxious maroon.
First off, Rude Pundit’s entire act is based upon the idea that he’s extremely rude and obnoxious. That’s his claim to fame and his name makes that clear. He’s a rude pundit. That’s not really my thing, so I never read his blog. But he is supposed to be openly rude and insulting. That’s the whole point.
And so for someone to attack him for that is a bit silly. That’d be like attacking Sam Kinison for shouting or attacking Bush for always evoking 9/11 every time someone disagrees with him. This is just part of their act. Kinison didn’t need to shout and Bush doesn’t really believe that 9/11 made Congress, the courts, and the voters obsolete. They just do that to get your attention. It’s just basic marketing.
And as long as Rude Pundit is open with his rudeness and doesn’t pretend to be above the fray (as many rude conservatives do), then what’s the problem? Just as if Coulter was open about her insulting hackery and fake footnotes, people would be silly to attack her for it. It’s only because she pretends to be serious that people denounce her. Perhaps if she added “Deceitful Hack” to her book covers, she’d get a free pass for her antics.
And so that makes it all the weirder that bobdog would denounce Rude Pundit for being rude and insulting by…being rude and insulting. There was no substance to bobdog’s comment. Only mockery. Mockery of Rude Pundit’s “towering intellect” and his “gift to the literary world”. And in case we didn’t understand that bobdog was being sarcastic, he ends with the silly insult. Great. Wow. Talk about your towering intellects. He rudely mocks a guy named Rude Pundit for relying heavily on rudeness. Had bobdog’s comment been more concise, it would have been a spot-on parody worthy of myself.
You guys are hilarious.
http://www.gawker.com/news/ann-coulter/possible-plagiarist-ann-coulter-may-have-been-plagiarizing-as-far-back-as-1997-when-she-was-36-180344.php
bobdog: was that first cited graf from Godless lifted verbatim without attribution? It’s a very simple question.
(I have nothing against verbal bomb-throwing on either side. It’s part of the landscape, and it’s certainly not a new thing. That said, bomb-throwing and cries of ‘incivility’ tend to look a little hypocritical when used in the same breath.)
LOL… Someone sure stirred up the libtard hornet’s nest!
Zarqawi dead.
Rove not indicted.
Joe Wilson proven a liar (again).
Haditha “massacre” story crumbling.
Kerry re-hash of his “service” re-fisked.
Pat Kennedy guilty of DUI.
Bush surprise visit in Iraq.
Once again, let us dine on your tears, you wastes of skin.
Go Ann!
Dr. Biobrain, it’s “plagiarism”.
Ok, so I’m a lousy speller and didn’t bother editing this in Word to use my normal spellchecker. Your point? And why are you telling me that you’re not a fan of Coulter? I didn’t quote you and wasn’t speaking of you in particular at all. And what’s with the references to masturbation and “Republican a**es”? Have you confused me with someone else?
And why is it that you corrected both me and Cole for misspelling “plagiarism”, but didn’t correct the spelling of the guy I quoted? Or any other conservative? I count the word being misspelled eight times on this commentboard (not including other people’s quotes); including two misspellings by Kevin. And he even spelled it properly in the original post. And yet somehow, the only two misspellers you mention are liberals. Typical.
I’ve generally found that people who focus on misspellings really don’t have much else to talk about.
I quite agree with you Dr Biobrain, they are building snowmen under the palm trees….
Once again, let us dine on your tears, you wastes of skin.
You people are weird.
Oh, and for anyone interested in knowing how upset us liberals are over Zarqawi’s death, I blogged about it here. Needless to say, I’ve gotten over my despair and am once again an America-hating liberal who wants the terrorists to institute their Gay-Loving Feminazi Islamafacism all over the world. Sorry.
Dr. Biobrain, actually, I was trying to be polite, and I think I did OK, although referring to him as an “infantile pig” was probably over the top. It annoys the pigs to be compared in such a way. But I do think that “obnoxious maroon” is arguably appropriate. As you suggest, the “obnoxious” tone of his article is deliberate. “Maroon” is a reference to somebody who doesn’t spend much time in the three dimensional world. Unfair, maybe, but I think accurate.
OK, the truth: I was surprised at Kevin’s reference to an isolated, relatively lucid post from this blog looked at the Rude Pundit website. Put plain, I was disgusted by the vileness and hypocrisy of his June 8 post.
With due respect to Kevin, I’m no fan of flame wars, but bring it on if you just gotta. But before you do, read his June 8 post and tell me that you agree with it, or you think it’s funny, or that it could reasonably be construed as adult thinking.
Let’s take the focus back to the issue at hand – Ann Coulter.
We can all bet she will answer the charges as she answered her felony charges with Alan Combes…
Ha ha, it’s ironic that you dittoheads refer to “the loony left” when discussing the poster girl of right wing insanity. You guys are a riot.
Steve Huff dissesects it all here, her felony charges that it…
Given the left’s track with crime (you know, where conservatives always get accused, but libs ACTUALLY commit them), I’ll pass.
-=Mike
But Steve Huff is 15% Right of Center my friend…
Can you handle it?
Ann Ghoulter’s hands are positively reptilian…
Don’t take my silence to be assent, but I like Wizbang, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome here. I suggest you do the same.
We’re done here, folks.
Put plain, I was disgusted by the vileness and hypocrisy of his June 8 post.
Uh, yeah. Look, as Rude Pundit’s blog clearly states, he is “Proudly lowering the level of political discourse.” So describing him as vile and obnoxious is like complaining about McDonald’s using a clown to sell hamburgers. It’s a gimmick and it clearly works. We’re writing about him while most people ignore my relatively insult-free blog; despite the fact that I’m the smartest person in the world and my blog clearly reflects that fact.
And where is the hypocrisy? I took your advice and read the June 8 post, and while it is vile and obnoxious and not particularly enlightening, I’m missing the hypocrisy. He’s as rude as he says he is, and doesn’t pretend to be anything different. Nor does he attack Coulter for being rude. He attacks her for saying stupidly crazy things to sell books and denounces her for stealing other people’s words without attribution. And does he pretend to be above all this? No, he says “Sometimes you gotta jump in the gutter and have the slap fight with the wh*res.”
So where exactly is the hypocrisy? He does exactly as he says he does and wallows in the fact. And again, as a marketing technique, it’s far better than my schtick. He probably gets more readers in a day than I get in a month. Additionally, you called him a “maroon” but failed to mention what was so maroonish about him. So far, the only accusation you made that sticks is the one that he clearly is proud of.
Oddly enough, your point seems to be that Wizbang shouldn’t have mentioned him, because he is normally so rude. Which is typical of conservatives, who believe that denouncing a source is the equivalent of denouncing what that source says. As if the messege is only as good as the messenger delivering it. So if Rude Pundit is normally excessively rude, then we don’t need to consider his accusations of plagiarism. Right.
As for “flame wars” I don’t really know what you’re talking about. I haven’t flamed you at all. I haven’t even insulted you. But then again, I’m arguing with someone who actually mentions Ward Churchill; an act reserved for liberal-bashers who are desperate to find evidence of anti-Americanism in liberals. As if this unknown professor is somehow our ideological leader. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh make millions feeding rightwingers their own feel-good anti-lib horse dooky back to them, and you guys scour to find this one loser professor that most liberals denounced and/or laughed at.
Remember: You guys made Ward Churchill famous, not us. You pretend he represents our movement, but are desperate to find anyone like him. There are millions and millions of liberals, and you guys still mention Ward Churchill. Pathetic.
Ah, the wasted energy. Liberals obsess with a sweet thing like Ann Coulter when they could be pitching in to solve the world’s problems. Don’t they know that the stock market is down?
My original comment to you was based on the apparent fact that you hadn’t read the article in question. Sorry to point it out, but you just confirmed it. I don’t think badly of you for it.
The Rude Pundit certainly succeeded in achieving his goal. I think we’re all agreed that “obnoxious” is accurate. And it looks like we’ve pretty well covered the “vile” part as well.
The “hypocrisy” I referred to was his revelation that Coulter was shrill and rude, when the tone of the very same article went way beyond anything she has ever written. I may be the only guy on the planet that doesn’t get the “schtick”, who knows? But to me, the June 8 article went beyond the pale of adult…uh…intercourse. That’s what I meant by hypocrisy.
“Maroon” was a reference to his apparent disconnect from the adult world, as in “Robinson Crusoe”. Ben Gunn. Or, Bugs Bunny, if you prefer. Same-same. Adults don’t talk that way.
It’s not up to me to decide what Kevin posts here. We’re both guests here. My comment was that the article Kevin quoted purported to be a serious article from a serious writer. An honest reading of the June 8 article takes you to a completely different conclusion, and I stand by that.
You’re right. I do actually mention the good Professor — because he still has a job. Point of fact, it was a peer review committee at his own university that judged him a plagiarist.
And I don’t know how “desperate” I am to find anyone else like him. I’m not even looking. I simply regret that he’s still teaching and still has tenure, but that’s the way universities work. I can’t change that, but I can regret it.
Speaking of jobs, I’ve got one I have to get back to. Nice chatting with you. Very stimulating.
Make that “Treasure Island”, Friday.
Whatever the outcome of this, Coulter’s popularity amongst rightwing Americans is good news for the Republican GLBT community. Who’da thought the most visible face of Conservative hatred would be a woman with an Adam’s apple?
Ann Who?
Charges, felonies, suits…
Of course, of course. And if I am not mistaken, I believe it was Abraham Lincoln that first used the word “Godless” in an inaugral address. I think. Anyway, time’s wasting, we’d better have some nation-saving lefty get nose-down on the plagerism trail — before it’s too late!
And before legal Twister goes full throttle, can I criticize Saddam for his actions? I mean, he did lose a couple “Baghdad Boys” in a deliberate attack.
I didn’t plagerize with “Baghdad Boys”. I swear.
You conservative wing-nuts see today’s Rude Pundit. There’s more plagiarism from Mr. Coulter. And yes, it’s Mr. Coulter. That’s a trannie. The adam’s apple is a dead giveaway.
“We’re done here, folks.”
Really? Unable to make a judgement on whether two paragraphs are 99% identical? Stuck with changing the subject and empty ad hominems? Ah well. It’s hard not to conclude that some people would give Ann Coulter a pass if she broke into their house and left a puddle of pee on the rug.
No, ahem, I have a job and had to leave. You had nothing to do with it. Sorry.
But since you asked, I did reply at the time that I didn’t care. I was, and am, unconvinced that once sentence proves anything. The second sentence is nothng in a legal sense. I also volunteered that probably nobody else cared either. If it does turn out that Coulter committed plagiarism, the grown-ups will figure it out, not you and your wishful thinking.
I also volunteered that I’m not one of her acolytes, and I turn away from her sometimes. I’m not defending Coulter, I’m playing with trolls apparently.
I liked your “Nothing but ad hominem attacks…and you’re icky” reply. Nice reasoning.
Responding to a similar post from the unfortunately named Mr. Ferguson, as long as I’m at it, I fail to see why Coulter’s sexuality should be of any more interest here than your own. You keep bringing it up like it ought to be on CNN as a Breaking Story, but who cares? A person’s private sex life is just that: private. It’s also irrelevant in this discussion. Besides, Rude Pundit has already declared her heterosexual on an industrial level. Get your story straight, boys.
You guys are a hoot. Greetings to all in your dimension. I’ve got a puddle of pee to clean up.
“but who cares? A person’s private sex life is just that: private.”
Exactly. So, why is this such a hard concept for your party to understand?
Question/statement:
Neo-cons like Coulter; only the privledged have the option of choosing such a stance?
I would say so.
“But since you asked, I did reply at the time that I didn’t care.”
My point is proven. Thanks.
The Apostle John stated that God is love (1 John 4:8,16). It is odd, then, that a book full of hateful and demeaning invective should point to others as being godless. More distressing than one venom-spewing individual is the gleeful chorus happy to share in disrespectful characterizations of their fellow Americans. It saddens me that any book, liberal or conservative, should attack and demean whole groups. Our world would be better if we all made a greater attempt to understand and fully appreciate other people’s points of view.
“Zarqawi dead.”
But he would not have come to power in the first place if we had not reverse engineered a war in Iraq.
“Rove not indicted.”
As opposed to Libby, Duke Cunningham, Delay, Abramoff ad nauseum…yes, a real win for the Bush administration.
“Joe Wilson proven a liar (again).”
Right, does that somehow erase the fact that undercover agents were compromised, regardless of the how and why?
“Haditha “massacre” story crumbling.”
Unfortunately, it is not. I wish that one was true. Several buddies in the service have shared stories that belie the real situation over there: unprepared, understaffed is just the beginning of it.
“Kerry re-hash of his “service” re-fisked.”
So it would have been safer to not serve in the military, then there would be no service to ‘frisk’?
“Pat Kennedy guilty of DUI.”
Yes, a drunk Irishman. Shocker. And so relevant to people being beheaded.
“Bush surprise visit in Iraq.”
The last flailings of a drowning puppet? 😉
We should all be working together, rather than pull each other down. You can attack the extremists on both sides, or you can focus on productive action.
If you can’t think of a way to cogently respond to a grieving widow demanding an end to a war you believe is just and necessary, that says a lot more about your stupidity than it does about the “infallibility” of the widow or the Democrats you claim have propped her up.
Although I abhor Ann O’Recksick Ghoulter, in all fairness I must point out that her apparently enlarged adam’s apple is probably an enlarged thyroid gland (which lies just below the place where the addam’s apple is situated), a kind of small goitre. Indeed, she does display all the symptoms of hyperthyroidism which changes the character of people, making them agressive, nasty, unpleasant, hyperactive, excitable, very thin, and sometimes gives them exophtalmia which makes their eyes look very large. She might even have a full-blown Graves Disease. Just being fair and balanced.
I don’t think the media ought to ignore her, after all, she is the poster-child for Republicanism (or should one say the poster-ho?), so the more this horror is bandied about and praised by the right-wing, the more their reputation is sullied, the less they will be elected.
Before you accuse a person of spewing hatered,just listen to yourself. Get over loosing the first and second elections,and stop being cry babies,we are tired of hearing your whining because things don’t go your way….
Uh. What does election fraud have to do with Ann Coulter being a psychohosebeast?
You are all cracked out, militia loving, cousin fucking retards. Do something with yourself besides jerking off to pictures of Ann Coulter. There are multiple other examples of her plagarizing. It’s cut and dry and it’s wrong. Good luck trying to spin your way out of this one.
If Coulter is indeed proven to having plagarized material, she should be denounced for it. It is unacceptable, and yes, her career would be over and rightly so… it’s tantamount to stealing in the writing world.
Whether this is uncoveredy by the left, or the right (somehow doubtful), is the facts line up to prove plagarism, whether you are left or right shouldn’t matter.
I do not care what any one else says about her, I do NOT think that Ms. Coulter IS an intellectually insane, hateful, lying, manipulative, destructive, nasty, and hard-up ho.
She merely behaves like one.
http:www.e-merges.com
Ann Coulter’s science chapters are extremely bad, any high school student adhering to her science views would flunk. Either she is very stupid or she thinks her readers are stupid.
ejoy the reviews of her science:
part 1
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/coulter1.cfm
part 2
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/coulter2.cfm
As another very astute poster already pointed out, she clearly has Graves Disease.