Lying for Jesus: Ann Coulter

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars, Media Matters has investigated the footnotes to Ann Coulter's latest tome Godless, concluding that she:

routinely misrepresented the information of her sources, as well as omitted inconvenient information within those same sources that refuted her claims. Coulter relied upon secondary sources to support many of her claims, as well as unreliable or outdated information.

In addition to demonstrating her poor scholarship, this analysis also made clear Coulter's lack of respect for her readers, who she clearly assumed would believe anything she wrote, as long as there was a citation attached to it.

The gory details of each falsehood and misrepresentation can be found in the same article. It all makes for a good laugh. Proof positive that running off at the mouth, at high volume, and with one's foot buried somewhere deep within, gets you very far in the US. The science website Talk Reason explores some of the blind alleys into which Coulter's polemic is led by her reliance upon secondary sources.

Godless, Coulter's war on secular democracy, is particularly notorious for its attack on September 11 widows who dared to be critical of President Bush: "And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy. . . ." Reason editor and fellow conservative Cathy Young takes her to task here.