But nobody’s talking too much about the finer points of Miss Coulter’s argument …

He really gave the ozone hole as an example? That’s some funny stuff.

Maclean’s seems to be sullying their reputation right, left and center these days…

http://tinyurl.com/eraqu

A close relative of mine once said that liberalism was a church, and abortion was its highest sacrament. This was before Coulter got big, so it seems possible that he preempted and exceeded her.

He really needs a toadying sidekick for the full effect. It’s not as good when he’s his own toadying sidekick.

What he needs is a toad for a sidekick. Though it would also be OK if he were turned into his own toad.

“If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we’re allowed to respond to?”

How laughable. This from the side of politics that always ropes God, Justice and Freedom in to push the Wal-Mart trolley of its policies.

Ann Coulter’s […] very tightly reasoned and hard to argue with…

He fantasizes about her. Sexually.

Mark Steyn is a moron. “Why”, you may ask? I say he’s a moron because Godless, the book he’s favorably reviewed, is a product of large-scale, copy-and-paste plagiarism. I would expect they columnist to be aware of the allegations, at least: they were broadcast on NBC.

Oh, and what ogged at #8 said.

Would it be fair to describe Mark Steyn as a self-loathing Canadian?

I actually read a sample of Godless, ignoring the warning that it would make me more stupid. It did; I wasted a large fraction of my mental bandwidth the next day fulminating over the idiocy of it. So, yeah: stupidity can be contagious. There is such a thing as negative knowledge.

The one thing that made me laugh was, roughly, “We shouldn’t teach kids to recycle. We should teach them to litter safely.” But if it wasn’t intended ironically, where’s the fun in it?

The favored form of argument was to present some person A, a liberal or at least somewhere on the left, who believes X, as evidence that liberals believe X. Then do it again with B and belief Y, and again with C and Z. It’s hard to believe that anyone could graduate law school with so vast a logical deficit. Did Coulter ever pass a bar exam?

I saw her on the Tonight Show when she appeared after George Carlin. She has a really nice voice. Her legs, however, reminded me of a former junky I used to know (who could walk miles despite her spindliness, and who, after she took up running, eventually developed visible thighs and calves).

The icing on the cake, or, if you will, the stink on the shit, is Coulter’s proof that liberals don’t believe in science, because they accept evolution.

But perhaps biology isn’t a real science, because it has too many women working in it.

Walt: No, no, no. Don’t give them bad news. Give them good news. Like, say, Osama bin Laden and his followers have announced their conversion to Christianity.

Gregory Djerejian comes up with an alternative.

Is that Steyn can’t spell ‘blonde’ or that’s he’s fighting some covert engagement against the French or that he’s asserting Coulter is really XY rather than XX? Because I doubt, as he uses ‘Miss’ and ‘comentatrix,’ that he’s in favour of gender-neutral nouns and adjectives.

‘… hard to argue with …’ Couldn’t he at least try before giving up and confessing his stupidity?

go up to an environmental activist

Yeah, and you’d, like, go up to him, and say to him the things Coulter writes in her book and he’d be, like “huh”, and he’d be real confused, and then you’d say to him that other thing, and he’d be even more confused, omigod, and that would show that librulism is a cult.

Yeah, that’d show them dumb libruls. And then Ann would notice that and take her with you on her white pony.

“Hey, how about that ozone hole closing up?”

“Isn’t it great? What do you know, international environmental treaties that force industriest to change their behavior actually work? Bummer about those HCFCs turning out to be a greenhouse gas, though.”

Is Ann Coulter plagiarizing any more than, say, Al Franken? And, more importantly, do those from whom she plagiarizes mind it?

And what is it with you people and Ann Coulter’s body? Even Jerry Coyne, who used to be a scientist of some sort but now operates as the American Dawkins-Lite, takes a shot at the fact that she’s thin in The New Republic. Get over it! Stick to her arguments if you have a problem.

I find her extremely funny and telling, even though I disagree with most of what she says. I hate to say it, but a big problem that you — I gather mostly men — have with Ann Coulter is that she breaks your stereotype of what a self-assured biting person should look like. You probably also resent that she knows how to get her point across.

If you want to attack her, you should go after her sincerity, especially on religious matters: My guess is that she’s more part of the right-libertarian brigade than the right-religious brigade. Perhaps since a lot of you guys are more or less libertarians, you end up being ideologically conflicted about her: i.e. you really want to get into her pants! LOL!

I think there’s a point here, though it’s vastly exagerated. Go up to a liberal concerned with global warming, who says it’s a wildly important threat to all of humanity, and try suggesting nuclear power as a solution.

There’s definately a faction in the global warming crowd, that views global warming as a club with which to beat down industrial civilization, and opposes any solution to it that doesn’t involve dramatic reductions in energy consumption. And judging by some of the CO2 reduction strategies Kyoto ruled inadmissable, it’s an influential faction.

Brett Bellmore: except that wasn’t even anywhere near the point that Steyn was making. The point’s more that librulz are using global warming as an excuse to impose Stalinist rule. Or something.

Speaking of tightness of reasoning and white ponies, maybe Steyn, Coulter, and Malkin will make a good threesome?

Backword Dave, I doubt Steyn is responsible for the spelling of “blond”. Authors rarely have control over spelling when they’re published. Presumably Maclean’s has copyeditors.

Believing in God, man-made Global Warming, or the wisdom of invading Iraq all seem to me to be foolish in much the same way.

This is jibberish.

The planet is a dynamical system. It, like any other dynamical system, can be perturbed from it’s current state. There is no debate about if man made global warming is possible, it is all if it is plausable. The planet is a large non-linear choatic system. (if you are mathy at all look up lorentz attractors). We do not know alot about the phase space it is in, we don’t know how much of a purtebation is needed ect ect. Hence there is a pluasable debate here and interesting science to be done.

The invasion of Iraq as costs and benifits. These can be tallied and weighed. There is an intersting debate about how to weight them so again there is something interesting to talk about.

Beliveing in God is faith alone.

Why shouldn’t Liberalism be a religion? It’s just Puritanism — the state herding the people to virtue at bayonet’s point — in another guise.

Re #12, Steyn has his own issues with plagarism

Steyn: I was honoured to receive an email the other day from Deena Gilbey, a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center and remained in the building to help evacuate his colleagues. A few days later, U.S. Immigration sent Mrs. Gilbey a letter informing her that, as she was now a widow, her residence status had changed and they were enclosing a deportation order. Having legally admitted to the country the men who killed her husband, the U.S. government’s first act after having enabled his murder is to further traumatize the bereaved. The heartless brain-dead bonehead penpusher who sent out that letter is far more “mean-spirited” than Miss Coulter at full throttle.

Why does Mark Steyn hate the U.S. government? He’s basically blaming 9/11 on the U.S. Immigration Service.

This in addition to the fact that he seems to be rambling incoherently about whatever he receives in his mail.

He fantasizes about her. Sexually.

Conrad Black will be jealous.

I’ve only read ‘Treason’, but found it enjoyable and factual.

I take ‘only’ to mean that you have read no other books, ever. In which case, my sympathies.

The penalty should never be two drinks when reading Coulter. The human liver is not built to withstand that kind of damage. One drink per penalty will be enough to put you in a coma in short order.

Steyn is correct that liberal activists tend to be uninterested in good news, but the same is just as true of conservative and libertarian activists. This is the nature of “activism”. People get “active” because they want to make the world better through their efforts. If the world is getting better on its own, there’s no role for them. Nothing to get people excited about and work to change.

So there’s an incentive to focus on bad news and ignore good news for your cause, whatever it might be. Which is why bad news sells newspapers and good news is at best a niche market.

[Incidentally, the news about the ozone layer is that it recovered much faster than anybody expected it to. The rate of recovery cannot be accounted for by regulatory changes alone; half of the change is as-yet unexplained.]

Is Ann Coulter plagiarizing any more than, say, Al Franken?

Yes. Al Franken doesn’t plagiarize.

And, more importantly, do those from whom she plagiarizes mind it?

Probably not, but the point is that she’s a no-talent hack, not that she’s infringing on the rights of others.

Also, by Ann Coulter’s own logic, she’s expressed a political view in public, thus legitimizing all ad hominem attacks on her. If she can attack the Jersey Girls on her assessment of their personality, I can talk about how, in all likelihood Ann Coulter spends most of her day coked off her ass, copy-pasting random pithy paragraphs into a word document and filing it as a new book. A book which conservatives eat up like swines on so much tripe, growing fat on the biological waste of their bretheren.

But to answer the question so often asked on this thread, liberals attack people like Coulter personally because the ‘ideas’ people like her spout don’t merit consideration, much less any kind of response. Literally she isn’t saying anything worth listening to, so the only worthwhile response is to talk directly about her.

And what is it with you people and Ann Coulter’s body? […] Get over it! Stick to her arguments if you have a problem.

Long response: Not long ago, Coulter appeared on Hardball and, in passing, referred to Michael Dukakis as a “Greek midget.” Chris Matthews, in a rare flash of integrity, asked her why she felt compelled to refer to Dukakis’ ethnicity and height when her objection was to his politics. Coulter responded by simply shouting over Matthews, talking ever faster and more loudly until Matthews (hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners type that he is) gave up and wrapped up the interview with the usual “Always fun to have you here, Ann.”

Short reponse: The day that Ann Coulter actually presents an “argument,” I (and I think many others here) will be happy to address it. After all these years, all the books, and all the TV appearances, we’re still waiting.

My favorite part is “the global warming”. What, it’s a Chinese meal in Toronto now?

Franken commits neither assault and battery nor plagiarism. Coulter commits plagiarism, libel, slander, demagogy, race-baiting, disinformation, and various other lesser offenses all the time. She seldom or never commit assault and battery because she’s a skinny, middleaged lady, but she incites violence often enough. She is very rarely funny, which is a significant point because she often claims that her nastiness as “humor”.

Glad to be of service, Brettbot.

Matt: Shh! I think Brett Bellmore also has a crush on “Miss Coulter”.

“go up to an environmental activist and say “Hey, how about that ozone hole closing up?” or “Wow! The global warming peaked in 1998 and it’s been getting cooler for almost a decade. Isn’t that great?” and then look at the faces.”

In my face, he would indeed see a somewhat disappointed expression – for meeting someone who actually believes those old punchlines.

James Wimberley, the source for this particular denialist meme is Bob Carter, more specifically a paper he wrote in 2005. Here‘s the scoop at deltoid at the time.

Notice how quicly the denialist memes get picked up and trumpeted, how quickly they are exposed, and how long they stay in circulation. It’s worse than creationism, it’s like creationism with billion-dollar companies supporting them.

So many the commentors on this site agree on so many of the issues. I find Coulter to be poorly reasoned. The premiss that many topics of legitimate debate trigger an automatic agressive response from both liberals and conservatives is true. Since most of the posters are liberal on many issues, you have not seen this response from the liberal side.

James Wimberley: According to Harvard standards, its suggestive that Franklin plagarised from FAIR when writing ‘Lies and the Lying Liars’. Example:

FAIR, July/August 2001: “The Most Biased Name in News” by Seth Ackerman, writing about Hannity & Colmes:

Even Fox’s “left-right” debate show, Hannity & Colmes–whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and “liberals”–can’t shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game …

FRANKEN, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (Dutton, 2003, hardcover 1st edition), page 63:

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it’s a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.

According to Harvard standards, its suggestive that Franklin plagarised from FAIR

Wow, stretch that one any further and you’ll be part of the Fantastic Four.

Thanks ann philly, I just threw up a little in my mouth.

I hate to break up the fun, but I read these comments after reading the post on homosexual marriage below where someone suggests looking at Mary Douglas’ great book “Purity and Danger”. Steyn is obviously an idiot (as is Coulter). However, here’s a genuine question (suggested by the debate on offer here) which ocurred to me: imagine Steyn’s facts were true, would the environmental lobby accept them?

If Douglas is right, then groups like the environmental lobby maintain their identity precisely by taking various sorts of positions which are (broadly) evidence-proof. The case of nuclear power mentioned somewhere above being a nice example of a totmeic issue which seems evidence-proof. (I’m paraphrasing badly here as my Douglas books are elsewhere, but you see the point.) Douglas’ analysis of the Sierra Club and other environmentalist groups sets out nicely how such movements require a kind of evidence-denial. So, maybe Steyn is right?

Before someone kills me, two points:
a. Global warming is happening and it’s bad and we ought to stop it. However, holding this view as a part of a web of political commitments in which it is a fact, but not central to the entire web, seems very different to holding it is a central part of one’s world-view. I’m assuming that it’s the latter kind of position Steyn is talking about (which, I know, is hyper-charitable).
b. All of the comments above could be rewritten to make the same kinds of anthropological points about US right-wingers, who really do seem to need to view themselves as on “the border”, defined by opposition to the liberalism of “the centre”, in the face of all of the facts.

So, we can all agree: Steyn is a loser. A real loser. But his predictions might, in some sense, be right. The problem is that the same underlying theories which would explain why his claims are right would also show that he is involved in an extremely similar pattern of denial. (Try telling him that the NY Times has printed lots of pro-administration articles recently). Surely the name-calling of this thread – fun as it is – simply helps reinforce his clique?

Steve: There’s still a little snag. The “comments above” — most of them at least — try to make some “anthropological points” by bringing up some real facts which are actually true in this world we live in. Steyn’s comments try to make “anthropological points” by pulling hypotheticals out of his butt and running thought experiments.

rich: Um… the point of contention is whether “blonde” can be used as an adjective.

Personally, I find it interesting that Steyn addresses Coulter as “Miss Coulter”, and Bush just as (!) Bush. Hmm, brad the impaler, maybe Steyn and Coulter really have a top-secret plan to…?