He Said, She Said

For those of us at LRC who have followed, with some amusement, the very public "he said, she said" exchange between conservative pundit Ann Coulter and the editors of the National Review Online during the last several days, the most recent posting has shown a rather ugly side of the position taken by Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, and, one must assume, his fellows at the National Review.

For those who have not been following the saga of Ms. Coulter’s departure from the NRO stable, it began with an article that she had written for that e-zine, in which she stated the following in reference to our government’s response to the attacks of September 11:

"All of our lives" don't need to change, as they keep prattling on TV. Every single time there is a terrorist attack – or a plane crashes because of pilot error – Americans allow their rights to be contracted for no purpose whatsoever.

The airport kabuki theater of magnetometers, asinine questions about whether passengers "packed their own bags," and the hostile, lumpen mesomorphs ripping open our luggage somehow allowed over a dozen armed hijackers to board four American planes almost simultaneously on Bloody Tuesday. (Did those fabulous security procedures stop a single hijacker anyplace in America that day?)

Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Needless to say, the first sentence of the final paragraph drew considerable criticism, although it appears that the offensive portion of the remark is the reference to converting Muslims to Christianity, and not invading countries and killing people. The result was a fusillade of mail to Ms. Coulter and, presumably, the folks at NRO. Compelled to defend her position, Coulter wrote a subsequent follow-up, which the NRO editors refused to publish.

Feeling that she had been unfairly censored for her decidedly un-PC position, Coulter took her case to the public through such venues as Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, and an interview with Howard Kurtz for an article that he wrote in the Washington Post on the Coulter-NRO conflict that was published October 2. It was in the Post article that Coulter made the claim that National Review Editor Rich Lowry and his deputies "are just girly-boys".

Apparently, this last barb was too much for NRO editor Jonah Goldberg to tolerate, and in his commentary "L’Affaire Coulter: Goodbye to All That", published on October 3, he takes the official NRO position to the public. It is here that the exchange takes its ugly turn, and shows the true colors of the NRO staff.

Writes Goldberg:

"In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent. She's a smart and funny person, but this was Ann at her worst – emoting rather than thinking, and badly needing editing and some self-censorship, or what is commonly referred to as ‘judgment.’"

Later, in the same piece, he states:

"To be honest, even though there's a lot more that could be said, I have no desire to get any deeper into this because, like with a Fellini movie, the deeper you get, the less sense Ann makes."

At the risk of appearing hypersensitive, it seems to me that the NRO is falling back to the old Communist trick of questioning the sanity of those who have fallen from favor, or who have become enemies of the current regime. With the "emoting rather than thinking" remark, I’m surprised that Goldberg didn’t just come right out and accuse Coulter of writing the column under the influence of PMS. One can almost hear the staff commenting, in hushed tones, of course, "We still love Ann, mind you, but she has, well, you know, ‘gone 'round the bend’. It's a shame, really. We did all that we could."

This issue is not about taking outrageous positions. To quote Mr. Goldberg from two of his most recent columns:

"…Americans believe we have to be assertive internationally, if only in order to bomb the Taliban forward into the Stone Age."

"No, I'm beginning to believe that the central source of animus from the Arab world is, quite simply, envy."

Clearly, the NRO has no trouble taking outspoken or controversial positions. They just need to be the correct positions, approved by the sanctioning body for neo-conservatives, the National Review. Ann Coulter just happened to find herself on the wrong side of that policy.

Again, to quote Mr. Goldberg from a recent column:

"It was inevitable. Like antibodies released before the disease even sets in, journalists, activists, and civil-libertarian worrywarts in general started right in fretting over the loss of freedom that would come as a result of this disaster. To date, I can't really figure out what the vast majority of them are talking about. Longer lines at airports do not a police state make. And the prospect that the roughly 100 or 200 wiretaps currently in place might – dear God, no! – double, is not a very slippery slope from my point of view. Meanwhile, no one's been rounded up. No one's been subjected to unreasonable searches or seizures. And, no one's been told they can't publish or print whatever they want."

Since the FBI has detained hundreds since the September 11 incident, one is left to assume that “no one’s been rounded up” must refer to Mr. Goldberg’s immediate circle of acquaintances. It is also quite disturbing that Mr. Goldberg appears to be flacking for the expansion of federal power, when it has been reported that he recently married the chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Just how dispassionate can one’s opinion be, when the family income is impacted by the man currently requesting Congress expand the power and authority of the Department of Justice?

Now, read Coulter on the same topic:

Just as I predicted, the new "security procedures" adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation in response to the most deadly hijackings in history will be incredibly burdensome for millions of American travelers but, at the same time, will do absolutely nothing to deter hijackers.

The government's logical calculus on flight security has long been: Really Annoying equals Safe Plane. (Say you were a tribesman from a distant island and had never in your entire life seen a seat belt before. Don't you think you could figure it out?)

The FAA's new hijacker repellant is this: Passengers will now have to show boarding passes to get to the gates. This wily stratagem will stop cold any hijackers on suicide missions who forgot to buy airline tickets.

It's times like this that I get down on my knees and thank God we have a federal Department of Transportation.

The genius security procedures laboriously implemented by the government over the past decade certainly served this country well on Bloody Tuesday. The real puzzler is how the hijackers managed to evade the "Did you pack your own bags?" trap. Only further investigation will solve that mystery.

Here is where Ms. Coulter ran afoul of the NRO staff. She failed to show the proper deference to the wisdom of our government officials. Remember, according the National Review, government isn’t the problem. It’s Democrats in control of government that’s the problem. Obviously, Ann Coulter lost sight of this fact, and she had to pay the price.

Regardless of whether he felt compelled to end NRO’s relationship with Ms. Coulter, Mr. Goldberg could have just left well enough alone and taken the high road. He could have claimed that there were irreconcilable differences that led to the publication parting ways with Coulter, wished her well in future endeavors, and left it at that. However, that path was apparently unacceptable to the NRO. They could only leave the topic by counter-attacking Coulter in the most personal manner. In so doing, they have exposed themselves for the petty individuals that they truly are. You are either with them, or against them, and if you are against them, you must be (nudge – nudge, wink – wink) "crazy".

Ann Coulter, always an outspoken firebrand, has landed at David Horowitz’ Frontpage e-zine, as well as Townhall.com. Given Horowitz’ brash and confrontational style, it is likely that Coulter has found herself a kindred spirit, and a more appropriate venue for her writing.

October 6, 2001

Jef Allen [send him mail] is a technology professional in Georgia. As a reformed Yankee, who has lived in the South for roughly twenty years, he has very little tolerance for Northern sanctimony, or the erosion of individual liberty.

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