ANOTHER ANN COULTER FAUX PAS

[Betsy]

She says Canada sent troops to Viet Nam, and is quickly corrected. Her response? "I'll get back to you on that." But of course, she never did.

LINK

Fixed link --Dar

[Dardedar]

DAR
I was just reading the other day that Canada took in 50,000 people escaping the draft during Vietnam. There are whole towns established by Americans who fled that war. I have been to them.



Coulter is a lying sack of shit. Here is a complete roast of here latest book:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200608070002

Summary:

Endnotes in Coulter's latest book rife with distortions and falsehoods

On July 7, Media Matters for America asked Random House Inc. whether it would investigate charges of plagiarism lodged against right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006). Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of Crown Publishing Group and publisher of the Crown Forum imprint -- divisions of Random House Inc. -- responded to Media Matters by stating that charges of plagiarism against Coulter were "trivial," "meritless," and "irresponsible," and defended Coulter's scholarship by stating that she "knows when attribution is appropriate, as underscored by the nineteen pages of hundreds of endnotes contained in Godless."

This was hardly the first time Coulter and her defenders have offered the large number of footnotes contained in her book as "evidence" of the quality of her scholarship. Also on July 7, Terence Jeffrey, editor of conservative weekly Human Events, defended Coulter's book on CNN's The Situation Room by citing her "19 pages of footnotes." And when similar questions were raised about her 2002 book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (Crown, June 2002), Coulter repeatedly cited her "35 pages of footnotes" as evidence that her claims were accurate.

In response, Media Matters decided to investigate each of the endnotes in Godless. We found a plethora of problems.

Among other things, Coulter:

* misrepresented and distorted the statements of her sources;
* omitted information in those sources that refuted the claims in her book;
* misrepresented news coverage to allege bias;
* relied upon outdated and unreliable sources;
* and invented "facts."

What follows is documentation of some of the most problematic endnotes in Godless.
***

They examine 14 examples.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The "Big Lie" has worked for centuries. Unfortunately, fact checks don't get the same publicity. If I had as much money as the smiley-face god, I'd put a fact check program on MSM right after the news.

[Dardedar]

Wow, check out what happens when Coulter tries her hand at taking some swipes at evolution:

From MediaMatters.

****
Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory"

Executive summary

Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism Evolution Misinformation

In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006), right-wing pundit Ann Coulter devotes two chapters to a bizarre attempt to disprove the theory of evolution. With a mix of misleading claims, pseudo-scientific arguments, distortions of evolutionary theory, and outright falsehoods, Coulter places herself not only outside the mainstream but truly toward the lunatic fringe. After all, no reasonable person argues that one cannot believe in God and simultaneously accept the findings of decades of accumulated research on evolution. Yet, Coulter appears to believe that in order to prove that liberals are "godless," she must attack evolutionary theory itself.

Though she stops short of saying that the earth is 6,000 years old and Adam and Eve rode through the Garden of Eden on the backs of dinosaurs, in her quest to disprove evolutionary theory, Coulter echoes the arguments of the creationists from whom even many religious conservatives distanced themselves long ago.

Among her falsehoods, misinformation, and distortions, Coulter:

* Misstates how fossils demonstrate the evolutionary transition from reptiles and mammals, as well as the fossil record of dinosaurs and mammals.
* Distorts the likelihood that a living creature will be fossilized.
* Distorts the duration of the period known as the Cambrian explosion, omits important information about its significance, and suggests that 10 million years is "sudden."
* On transitional fossils, misrepresents relation of the Archaeopteryx to modern birds.
* Omits information regarding the Piltdown man and Archaeoraptor hoaxes.
* Misrepresents the evolution of the eye and ignores recent research.
* Falsely suggests that "irreducible complexity" disproves evolutionary theory.
* On the drawings and theories of Ernst Haeckel, omits a century of scientific criticism while falsely suggesting that textbooks still use Haeckel.
* Falsely suggests that the Miller-Urey experiment did not accurately reflect early Earth atmosphere.
* Throughout the book, displays her own misunderstandings regarding evolutionary theory (i.e. descent with modification, the evolution of bacteria).
* Offers only classic creationist arguments from discredited, unscientific ideas, despite a claim on the inner jacket sleeve of the book stating that Coulter writes "with a keen appreciation of genuine science."

According to the weblog of William Dembski, a supporter of intelligent design, all of the above-mentioned falsehoods, misinformation, and distortions can be attributed to his "generous tutoring."

The evidence reveals that Coulter's two chapters on the theory of evolution display her own ignorance toward the subject while providing an avenue to make ad hominem attacks against scientists, progressives, and Democrats.

Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory"
Robert Savillo
Media Matters for America
June 2006

Introduction

According to right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, "flatulent raccoon theory" is as valid as Darwinian evolution. On Page 214 of her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she states:

Throw in enough words like imagine, perhaps, and might have -- and you've got yourself a scientific theory! How about this: Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don't accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat. That's basically how the argument for evolution goes [emphasis in original].

Coulter uses this "theory" that she has concocted throughout the book to suggest that Darwinian evolution is similarly questionable once one has all the facts. Coulter appears to be trying to develop a parody of evolution analogous to Bobby Henderson's parody religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- created in response to the Kansas School Board's decision to require the teaching of "intelligent design" as an "alternative" to the theory of evolution. Henderson's Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster serves as an alternate version of "intelligent design" because of the obvious parallels. But while the satirists who created the Flying Spaghetti Monster use its similarities with intelligent design to comic effect, Coulter identified no comparable parallels between "flatulent raccoon theory" and the theory of evolution. Furthermore, Coulter's analogy makes a mistake common to many creationists who confuse Darwinian evolution, the explanation of how different species develop, with theories about the origin of life.

Coulter devotes two whole chapters to the discussion of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Throughout, she offers falsehoods, misleading statements, and distortions of evolutionary theory, all packaged with smears of prominent progressive and Democratic figures as well as news reporters and media personalities. Coulter doesn't actually present new evidence to make her case against evolutionary theory; she only uses the space to criticize evolution, which is a tired tactic of creationists. Page after page, the reader is bombarded with classic creationist arguments. But evolution is a scientific theory that has the support of the National Academy of Sciences; it has no relation to beliefs that cannot be tested, thus the suggestion that "liberals think evolution disproves God" is completely illogical.

***
This is about 1/3 of it. Lots more roast of her HERE.

[Savonarola]

Wow, check out what happens when Coulter tries her hand at taking some swipes at evolution:

Pretty old news by now, not that it's not worth a mention.

This pretty much sums up what needs to be said:

On his blog Pharyngula, biology professor PZ Myers presented the following challenge:

Like I said, I'm not going to take this trip apart sentence by sentence, even though I could, given enough time and interest. I will suggest instead that if anyone reading this thinks some particular paragraph anywhere in chapters 8-11 is at all competent or accurate in its description of science, send it to me. I couldn't find one. That's where the obligation lies: show me one supportable claim in Coulter's farrago of lies and misleading statements and out-of-context quotes, and we'll discuss it. [emphasis added]

How many Coulter-defenders responded? Plenty. But none substantively. In fact, Myers was forced to post "a clarification" explaining that he's looking for defense of her arguments, not belligerent babble about Coulter getting "liberal panties in a twist." (Check the link, I'm not making this up.)

How many Coulter-defenders responded to Myers discussing the points that Coulter made? None. He had a hypothesis for this, though:

Maybe I just haven't given them enough time. It takes a while to read a book when you have to slowly sound out each word, and when you're constantly tempted to close it so you can gaze rapturously at the cover, drooling.

For what it's worth, there are a good number of threads on IIDB ripping Coulter a new one for her evolution remarks alone. I highly recommend the bolded link above.

[Betsy]

it's so frustrating that she is making millions off of this horrible nonsense, and that so many ignorant people believe whatever she says....

[Hogeye]

Ann Coulter is the flip side of Molly Ivans. Both are political panderers, supporting the statist quo by catering to the booboise's fetish for petty partisan bickering. Anything to avoid actual ideas. As the left engages in braindead Bush-bashing and the right denounces cut-and-run bedwetters, any cogent discussion of alternatives to the welfare-warfare State is conspicuously absent.

In fifty years people will read Coulter's book and think it was satire.

[Dardedar]

Ann Coulter is the flip side of Molly Ivans.

DAR
That's just disgusting. There is no flip side to Coulter. Her ignorance is indefensible and incomparable. This latest effort of her's to speak and inform people about evolution has shown that in a way I have never seen before from someone who gets so much mainstream press coverage. Hogeye likes to try to defend the indefensible and stick up for nutcases. I doubt that it persuades anyone.

[Hogeye]

I didn't defend Coulter; I merely pointed out that she's rabidly partisan, just like Ivans. I think both are frothing-mouthed statists. I also regret that the booboise is caught up in this Tweedledee-Tweedledum nonsense.

[Betsy]

I don't think that's fair to Molly Ivins, who doesn't go anywhere near out the fringe as far as Ann Coulter does. As far as I know, Ivins doesn't spew hate, doesn't do things like suggest killing people she doesn't agree with, doesn't say things like "those 9/11 widows sure are happy their husbands died" and grossly offensive things like that. Ivins doesn't write or say utterly false nonsense such as the Canadians sent troops to Viet Nam or the stuff Coulter says about evolution and try to pass it off as fact. She may have extremely left viewpoints and think the right-wing are ignorant asses, but she handles herself completely differently than Ann Coulter.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Actually, Molly is pretty good at supporting her claims. She has a jaundiced view at times, but then she's covered the Texas Lege for over 25 years. She also periodically puts in pieces about just how great the average American/Texan is (usually at Christmas and the 4th of July) - she thinks highly of people in general. It's the paid "convincers" and the corrupt pols that get her ire.

[Hogeye]

Molly appeals to fringe left; Ann to the fringe right. Both come off as totally ridiculous to the other side. Both are rabidly partisan, laying blame on the other faction of the Welfare-Warfare Party, perpetuating the forced choice electoral con game.

IOW, they both agree that the State is the solution to virtually all human ills, but play up minor differences (who to plunder and who to benefit) in their respective authoritarian programs, villifying the kettle for its blackness. From my libertarian perspective, they are two sides of the same statist coin.

I agree that Ann is more outrageous ... and funnier.