InsideOut Interview: Ann Coulter

by Owen Lipstein March/April 2009

Making People Crazy: Ann Coulter
on the Liberal Media, Political Dynasties, and Social Woes



Ann Coulter is a political commentator, syndicated columnist and best-selling author. Her latest book, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum, 2009) has already managed to amuse and infuriate her many fans and detractors—a bipolar group that includes, let’s face it, just about everyone. And even though we mostly agreed to disagree, I will say this: Whether the subject of her wrath is the New York Times, Caroline Kennedy, or Hollywood’s treatment of single mothers—when it comes to vivacious conversation, Coulter doesn’t disappoint.



Owen Lipstein: Let me ask you, do you find it amusing that the New York Times, your favorite newspaper, is in so much financial turmoil that a dubious billionaire has been able to buy a huge percentage of it for what formerly would have been chump change?



Ann Coulter: It’s too bad it isn’t a more reputable individual. But yes, on one hand, it’s cause for dancing a jig. On the other hand, part of the reason I bash the New York Times is that it enrages me that what ought to be a great cultural institution, what ought to be the greatest newspaper in the world, and in some ways, still has greatness, is being run into the ground with petty politics. They do have great reporters—I’ve always claimed I want to cut an ad for the New York Times as its most regular reader, to point out it’s the greatest newspaper in the world—as long as you don’t read any of the stories on page one, the op-ed page or the editorial page.



OL: Do you equate their financial weakness with their bias?



AC: Oh definitely, definitely. Even with the new Internet economy, the way things ought to shake out in the end is [that] a lot of the smaller newspapers will fall by the wayside, but a few of the really big ones—the big national newspapers with thousands of reporters—will survive. Think about the New York Times and their resources… and you can read it online. They have really smart reporters; they get really good stories. When they’re good, there’s nobody better. That’s why people, to the extent that people still are reading the New York Times, read the New York Times. It’s not because of their incisive editorial on the war in Iraq.



OL: Very interesting. Given what you say about the [left-leaning] media bias, what do you make of the Patterson-Kennedy-Gillibrand kerfuffle?



AC: It has been quite a soap opera. I’ll try not to blather on too long about it. But one thing is that there is a unique liberal disposition to believe in nepotism, dynasties and DNA. You’d expect to find that sort of monarchical approach to politics in the more primitive states (I’m using New York Times lingo for that). I am sure the citizens of New York and Massachusetts consider themselves the smartest. They’re probably the most highly educated. And yet those are the two states that are the most royalist—you know, the Kennedy family in both states, actually.
And it has been fun to watch the New York Times interview Caroline Kennedy. I think even the New York Times reporters got a little testy with her. [In] one interview she simultaneously was refusing to answer any personal questions and questions about policy: “Oh, I don’t want to get into that.” Things like school choice, where do you differ with the Democratic Party? “Oh, I don’t want to get into that.” Where do you differ with Obama? “I don’t want to get into that.”
And then they asked her kind of a general, “If you’re not answering those questions, then OK, how about a personal interest angle?” So they said, “When did you first start thinking about running for the Senate?”
And she says something like, “Oh, I thought I was with the crack reporters from the New York Times. Why don’t you boys write for a women’s magazine?”



OL: I saw that and I noted that. So what do you make of it?



AC: That she is such a spoiled liberal elitist she can even enrage New York Times reporters.



OL: To me, reporting that back-and-forth seemed churlish. The paper also published the suggestion that Kennedy hadn’t paid her taxes, and that she had problems in her marriage. Given who she is, you would have thought they’d be kinder.



AC: Right. You would think that they would, right? If that were me, they would definitely put in a snippy exchange.



OL: That’s right.



AC: I think even with the going-in bias of the New York Times and wanting to support her, she managed to annoy them enough that they honestly printed the exchange. And the interesting thing with Gillibrand is—besides the fact that she’s a blue dog Democrat—she’s a very impressive candidate. And she’s young. I just watched her press conference an hour ago. She’s a very good speaker. And now it looks even more absurd that they were ever considering Kennedy, just for her DNA.



OL: I think W., in some people’s minds, has soured us on dynasties for the moment.



AC: I wish it were true, but I don’t think so. There are always two completely different, unrelated standards for Republicans and Democrats. W. was governor of Texas. Here we got Caroline Kennedy—and now I hear [ailing] Sen. Ted] Kennedy from Massachusetts wants his wife to take his seat! You have these family members with no background in politics other than the family name—and they jump in. That is dynasty.



OL: Well, I guess I have to agree. Moving on now to our new president, you make a series of assertions in your book about Obama and sealed divorces; can you talk about the Ryan incident?



AC: Every time Obama has been in a tough election fight, other than his first one, which he lost, the media stepped in and vanquishe[d] his opponents for him. And there wasn’t much vanquishing necessary when he was running against John McCain. What put Obama on the national stage, so that he was in a position to run for president, was becoming a United States senator. And both of his opponents, who probably would have beaten him, were taken out by the media going in and unsealing sealed divorce records—which I must say, as a lawyer, I’m a little confused by. What is the point of sealing records to begin with if all that has to happen is for a reporter to go to a court and say, “Could you unseal these, please?” And they get unsealed.
[Obama’s] first primary opponent, Blair Hull, was way ahead in the polls, and was the odds-on favorite. They unseal his sealed divorce records from his second wife. There was a little domestic disturbance that suddenly consumes the campaign.
And then I think far more shocking and enraging, for a Republican, is what was done to Jack Ryan, this absolutely stellar, stunning, unbelievable candidate, who himself might have run for president. And remember, they were running to replace a Republican. It’s not that crazy that a Republican would have won. This guy Jack Ryan, Dartmouth undergrad, Harvard Law, Harvard business school, stunningly good-looking, went to work for Goldman Sachs, made hundreds of millions of dollars. And in his early 40s, I guess, dropped out to work at inner-city schools in Chicago. And [he’s] from a big Catholic family. He was married to a Hollywood starlet from “Star Trek Voyager,” Jeri Ryan, and they had a divorce, which involved a lot of money and custody of a child.
[Reporters] get those records unsealed. And it was just the custody records—he did release his divorce record—but not the custody records, because their son is autistic and [Ryan] didn’t want all of that coming out into the public view. But what the media fixated on from the custody records was that he had accused his wife of having an affair. And she responded in the filings by saying, “Well, the only reason I had an affair was because you took me to sex clubs in New York and Paris and propositioned me.” So it’s the prototypical Republican sex scandal. No one has sex. He propositioned his own wife. And four days later, Jack Ryan pulls out of the race.
Republicans will not stand by their own no matter how stellar a candidate is. And the more stellar the candidate is, the more he will be attacked by the media. The Republicans’ excuse was, “Oh, he lied to us [about whether there was anything in the custody proceedings that could damage his campaign].”



OL: Do you think candidate Obama was complicit in getting those records unsealed?



AC: Well, that’s a great question. The New York Times definitely thought that yes, the Obama camp—and certainly the Illinois Democrats—were behind this. But then I realized, as I was trying to figure that out, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the media driving the Democratic Party. It’s not the Democratic Party driving the media. And the perfect example of that is this last election where the media dumps the Clintons, the old golden boy, for the new golden boy. And we see who wins.



OL: It’s very interesting that in this particular story, we act as if it were inevitable that Obama went directly from the House of Representatives to the Senate to the presidency. And he could easily have lost his Senate race, which of course would have changed everything.



AC: Yes.



OL: Regarding the left-leaning media and what you call the fawning over Obama’s speeches, tell us what you think about the inaugural coverage.



AC: It is as expected; It’s almost laugh-out-loud funny. It tracks the way I described the media covering JFK: Why does it take us 30 years to find out that he was an amphetamine-addicted whoremonger who nearly got us killed at the Bay of Pigs and blew his first meeting with Khrushchev? It’s the media doing defense for their favored politician.
And one small item—and it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me—but apparently the media, certainly the Washington Post, is overestimating the crowds at the inauguration by about a million. I’m not an expert in how to estimate crowds, but there are experts who do this, who look at satellite photos… and [they] put the crowd at, I think, about a million. One put it at about 800,000. If you include the parade route you might get up to 1.2 million. That was the high estimate. Lower estimates were around 800,000. And so of course the headlines are, “Two Million Come to Obama’s Inauguration.” I’m not sure if I have all the numbers exactly right, but I’m about right that they’re overestimating it by, oh, a factor of approximately one million.
And another little twist that demonstrates, clearly demonstrates the double standard: the booing of President Bush during the Inauguration. There was no booing for President Carter when Reagan came in in 1981. And I think that’s probably not attributable to President Carter’s magnificent handling of the presidency. Republicans are just capable of gazing upon a president they didn’t care for without instantly screaming out boos.



OL: You also discuss Sarah Palin in your book. Just start, if you would, with the sealed divorce papers of the unrelated person in Palin’s life…



AC: Yes, that’s one of the most amazing little items, this business partner of Todd Palin’s. [The partner’s] wife is having an affair on him with the man who works for Sarah Palin. And by the way, to the credit of the couple, the man being cuckolded and the woman cuckolding him came out and told the Wall Street Journal, “I am 1,000 percent sure Sarah Palin is not having an affair.” This is when the National Inquirer is billboarding rumors of an affair.
Sarah Palin, to her credit, fired him. She fires him. And he gave a quote to the Wall Street Journal saying, “Well, I was fired for having an affair. And I am all for moral rules in public office, and actually in any office.” He said, “Oh yeah, no, she did the right thing. I was not being upfront with her.” So he was fired for having an affair, and he totally understands and agrees with Sarah Palin’s decision.
Anyway, in the New York Times description of this, the Times said, “Sarah Palin fired the man because he was involved with a friend of hers.” No indications that both parties involved were married, and that this was an extramarital affair. It’s just the Grinch, Sarah Palin, the evil governor, upset that the man was in a happy relationship, fired him. Now that is journalistic malpractice.



OL: For those who haven’t read your new book, you have a few choice things to say about single mothers as well.



AC: Yes. In fact I’m doing a Dr. Phil show on that in a couple of weeks, which I’m delighted about. But I realize he’s setting it up [to be confrontational], and I guess this is the only way you can do a TV show, so I’m not complaining about it… Of course, the whole idea of the book is how we have all these fake victims who are creating real victims out there. This is a beautiful example of it, single motherhood, which is exalted and celebrated and people talk about—I have [read] a string of books about unsung heroes and the sisters [who] are doing it for themselves.
And then contrast that with all the data on what it’s like to be raised fatherless, compared to the real heroes in these stories, who are people who have shotgun marriages, people who stay together through tough times and marriages for the sake of the children, and women who get pregnant out of wedlock and give the children up for adoption. Interestingly enough, adopted kids turn out better than non-adopted kids. I thought that was a funny little item I came across in my research.
But so many of our social problems trace directly back to unwed mothers; Something like 80 percent of prison inmates were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage runaways… juvenile delinquents… child murderers: They were all raised by single mothers. And in fact, if you take out the factor of single motherhood, the difference between blacks and whites, and everything else, is the same. You know, place of residency, income, socioeconomic status—the difference between black and white crime rates disappears. So this is a major social problem.
And yet single mothers, unlike single or unwed fathers who go around impregnating women without marrying them—nobody holds them up as heroes. But single mothers, as I think I document pretty extensively, are glamorized. It is treated as not only an alternative lifestyle by Hollywood, but perhaps a preferable lifestyle choice.
And to get [back to] the Dr. Phil show, I realized that to really set up what I’m saying in this chapter properly, it wouldn’t be me vs. single mothers angry at me. It would be me vs. the writers for the TV sitcom “Friends,” or me vs. the New York Times reporter writing chirpy articles about women getting artificially inseminated: “And oh, isn’t this great? She doesn’t have to wait for Mr. Right.”
That’s really my complaint with it. There will be single mothers, and I wish them and their children the best, obviously. What makes me want to bang my head against the wall is how television and newspapers and the culture and the courts and the government glamorize and encourage single motherhood.



OL: Does it amuse you to make people crazy?



AC: Why, yes it does. What’s funny is the things that drive them crazy. I mean I’ve been noticing what is described as provocative and controversial is usually just me, you know, stating timeless moral principals. I quote [G. K.] Chesterton in the book: “These days dissenting any of the cardinal virtues has all the exhilaration of a vice.”