MONDAY'S LETTERS: Readers Slam and Praise Coulter, TimesSelect Not Worth It, 'Wash Post' Scoop

By: E&P Staff In today's letters: outrage and cheers for Ann Coulter, readers think TimesSelect isn't worth $50, and a reader points out another Washington Post "cable" from last month.


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Everyone Has an Opinion on Coulter

[Ann] Coulter said that Jack Murtha was why fragging was invented. Let's see, an ex-Marine, a self-proclaimed supporter of the military, asserts that Marines are guilty, without knowing all the facts. That sort of leader gets you killed in combat, and troops know it, so Coulter was right.

As for the Jersey Girls, Coulter was quite harsh, but those four women, sanctified by the liberal annointment of their grief, played a large part in stampeding a panicked Congress into following the recommendations of the idiotic 9/11 Commission and creating a huge cumbersome security bureaucracy. For that alone they deserve every bit of criticism which comes their way.

Mary McLemore



What I don't understand about slander in the law is, that when Coulter says something euphemistically for instance, paraphrasing "Murtha is the reason soldiers in Vietnam invented fragging." You know anyone reading such hyperbolic hate speech gets Coulter's meaning, her real intent, so why then if anyone and everyone can see what the hell she is doing, then why doesn't the law see the same thing. A court of law can tie together the messy, convoluted, twisting trail of facts, and lies, that was the ENRON case. You had Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay casting a smoke screen in front of their culpability and that was aside from the fact that circumstantial evidence is how that case was built, then subsequently won by the prosecution, but those horrible remarks made by Coulter to defame those 9-11 widows whose children have NO father's to love them.

Tell me how a complicated case like Enron can get justice in our Court system, but Coulter saying the most horrible things one can imagine about another human being seems like a shaky proposition under the 1st amendment? If ever there were a case to use the slander statute's in this would the one, but if not Ann Coulter can go straight to hell.

Martin
Fort Worth, Texas



I notice every time Ann says something you girly boys don't agree with you run to your keyboards to whine and complain. What a joke. Keep crying in your beers, boys, because, like it or not, WE'RE HERE, WE'RE CONSERVATIVES AND WE'RE IN YOUR FACE!

H. Noval
Hialeah, Fla.



Your column is a normal way liberals try to condemn Ann Coulter. You say two things that are false about what she says in her column or in her book. You figure it out, but if you don't then Ann is again right about you liberals.

Cecil Stinemetz
Urbandale, Iowa



I just read your article about newspaper clients sticking with Coulter. I think the bottom line here is that the owners of capital, the owners of big business (like Murdoch of Fox) want to dictate and socially engineer what we read and think to increase their profits. For many years now there has been a massive push by big business to attack liberals in the most vicious ways. Their attacks are ever more extreme, as we see with Coulter getting away with increasingly toxic hate speech.

Why does big business and their shills such as Fox News and Coulter hate liberals so much? I think it is because liberal values of peace, tolerance, and social welfare are seen as a threat to their profits. For example, the military industrial complex which is spiraling out of control obviously does not want anti-war protestors to gain more influence. Wars are far too profitable for big business to not keep creating more wars.

It reflects very poorly on our country (which is in serious decline intellectually, socially and economically) when hate speech shills such as Coulter are given such an expansive media platform to attack so many people with such rhetoric. ...

Stephen Hitchcock
Portland, Ore.



... As it stands, you've misquoted several of Ann [Coulter's] more controversial statements and put words in her mouth that she never said. Par for the course for liberals who attack her but never read what she's actually written.

And, the reason she's lost no customers is because the vast base of common sense Americans AGREE with Ann and love to see her lampooning the puffed up elites with their own words and thoughts. That's why she's [number one]. She's telling the truth in an unvarnished, sharply pointed way that gets the point across. ...

The next time you write about Ann, why don't you read her book first, or listen to some interviews she gives so you can accurately quote her. It would certainly look better for your publication.

Mary Moylan
Michigan


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Thank you, David Hirschman. I too refuse to pay extortion money to read selected items from the Times on line. I miss some of my favorite columnists but just have too many routine expenses to add $50 a month for the privilege of reading certain columns and articles in the Times.

Maybe the greedy folks over there will change their policy?

Dory Green
Sr. Book Editor
Law Journal Press



I am a lawyer in San Diego and could easily afford the $50 for TimesSelect if I chose to. I get the NYT daily and would not pay for the "pay" feature if it wasn't included in the subscription. They are sponsoring some lectures, etc., but obviously I can't take advantage of being there live (until I find a reason to move back to that place from whence my forbearers came -- the Upper West Side). It's all quite elitist, if you ask me, to ask people to pay to read the usual stuff as you mention in your article. When they quit bashing Israel and crying tears of ink over the poor, poor Palestinians, I will voluntarily give a donation to the Jewish National Fund for a grove of trees in honor of the New York Times. Until then, I will satisfy myself with what they give me for my basic subscription. (Alas, it beats the hell out of any of the fish wrap that is printed here or anywhere on the Left Coast.)

Randy Shiner
San Diego, Calif.


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It seems the WaPo got one of those cables last month too. ... How does this administration defend itself?

Susan Doerr