Ann Coulter is having a bit of a rough time lately. First, one of her recent columns pissed off a lot of socalled social conservatices who believed George Bush’s claim that John Roberts was sent straight from heaven on their behalf. Coulter was pretty tepid—
http://anncoulter.org/cgi-local/prin...cgi?article=66
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we don't know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever.
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After making this point, which might be correct, she really got going, managing to slash both Roberts and Bush with a single thrust of her rapier.
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Roberts decided early on that he wanted to be on the Supreme Court and that the way to do that was not to express a personal opinion on anything to anybody ever. It's as if he is from some space alien sleeper cell. Maybe the space aliens are trying to help us, but I wish we knew that.
If the Senate were in Democrat hands, Roberts would be perfect. But why on earth would Bush waste a nomination on a person who is a complete blank slate when we have a majority in the Senate!
We also have a majority in the House, state legislatures, state governorships, and have won five of the last seven presidential elections — seven of the last 10!
We're the Harlem Globetrotters now — why do we have to play the Washington Generals every week?
Conservatism is sweeping the nation, we have a fully functioning alternative media, we're ticked off and ready to avenge Robert Bork ... and Bush nominates a Rorschach blot.
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But there’s more. A story by John Byrne in Raw Story reveals that some of Coulter’s writing is...err...less tthan original. It sems that her June 29 column “Thou Shall Not Commit Religion,” has some, shall we say unacknowledged sources? Coulter describes several works of art allegedly funded by liberals in the government, and her descriptions are almost surely taken from an article published in 1993 in an old periodical called The Flummery Digest.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/coulte...ing_column_720
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Coulter : "A photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open titled to suggest the infant was available for oral sex."
The Flummery Digest: "The title of a photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open suggested that the infant was available for oral sex."
Coulter: "A photo of a woman breastfeeding an infant, titled ' Jesus Sucks.'"
The Flummery Digest: "… photograph of a woman breastfeeding an infant was titled 'Jesus Sucks.'"
Coulter: "A show titled 'DEGENERATE WITH A CAPITAL D' featuring a display of the remains of the artist's own aborted baby."
The Flummery Digest: "'Degenerate with a Capital D'...included 'Alchemy Cabinet' by Shawn Eichman, featuring the remains of the artist's own aborted baby."
Coulter: "Performance of giant bloody tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot feces and vibrators."
The Flummery Digest: "[T]he performance art of Johanna Went...relies upon props such as giant body tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot turds, and dildos."
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The Raw Story piece foes on to showa a couple of similar “ convegences” between Coulter’s column and a 1995 Boston Globe story by Jeff Jacoby, as well as others with a piece in Counterpoint, a magazine from MIT--
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Coulter: "A photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open titled to suggest the infant was available for oral sex."
Counterpoint: 3. (1984) "The title of a photo of a newborn infant suggested the infant was available for oral sex."
Coulter: "A show titled 'DEGENERATE WITH A CAPITAL D' featuring a display of the remains of the artist's own aborted baby."
Counterpoint: 7. (1990) "...a show called Degenerate With a Capital D...featuring the remains of the artist's own baby."
Coulter: "A novel depicting the sexual molestation of a group of 10 children in a pedophile's garage, including acts of bestiality, with the children commenting on how much they enjoyed the pedophilia."
Counterpoint: 4. (1985) "...a novel titled Saturday Night at San Marcos relates the sexual molestation of 10 children in a pedophile's garage, including acts of bestiality, and how much they enjoyed the pedophile's games."
Coulter: "A female performer inserting a speculum into her vagina and inviting audience members on stage to view her cervix with a flashlight."
Counterpoint: 6. (1989-1990) "Annie Sprinkle...inserting a speculum into her vagina, invites members on stage to view her cervix with a flashlight."
Out of seven examples listed in “Counterpoint,” Coulter snapped up four.
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The Raw Story article then sums up Coulter’s career--
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Coulter caught the public eye after allegations that she had carried the Linda Tripp tapes between Tripp and Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the Clinton impeachment. Coulter, who admitted to having heard the tapes before Starr was even aware of them, was also implicated in several other controversies involving the Clintons ', including the Paula Jones case.
The right-wing pundit was fired in 1997 from MSNBC for verbally attacking a Vietnam vet on air. She was dropped from The National Review in 2002 for slandering the publication on the national talk show circuit. Coulter went on to write a book titled Slander.
Coulter has drawn fire lately from both conservatives and liberals for her verbal attacks on victims of 9/11, women's groups and Muslims. On Wednesday, she savaged President Bush's Supreme Court pick John Roberts.
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The story is more complex than I have suggested, in that some of the sources from which Coulter freely borrowed without attribution were themselves plagiarized. It may be that Coulter plagiarized from x who had plagiarized from y; or that Coulter and x both plagiarized from y.
Does it matter, after all? It may not matter to dittoheads and wiseasses, who think they have plumbed the depths of wisdom in repeating some nasty but meaningless phrases they heard someplace and utter without the slightest thought in their heads.
But it ought to matter to a writer who writes pieces with "by" in front of her name If every word following her name is not her own original thought, or else attributed to its source, we see a case of intellectual theft. It may be hard in this day of computers and cut and paste to teach college freshmen about the differences between paraphrase and quotation, but it can be done--and college students who plagiarize are guilty of an intellectual crime. Ann Coulter-and her editors at Regnery--ought to know better.
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