You Could Look It Up

Ann Coulter is a plagiarist.  Predictably, her publisher only admits she's guilty of having some "minimal matching text" in her book Godless, but hey!  Look at all the footnotes!  (says Crown Publishing).  Footnotes mean it's all attributed and all true, right?

Guess what?

The Rude Pundit and Ron Brynaert of Raw Story pointed out weeks ago that Coulter's endnotes are worse than useless; they are misleading.  Now Media Matters has done a thoroughgoing review of Godless's endnotes, and the results aren't pretty:

Among other things, Coulter:

• misrepresented and distorted the statements of her sources;
• omitted information in those sources that refuted the claims in her book;
• misrepresented news coverage to allege bias;
• relied upon outdated and unreliable sources;
• and invented "facts."

The list  showing Coulter's dishonesty is long, but it's worth a read.  It includes Coulter's citation of opinion pieces that she claims are hard news stories.  It's pretty disgusting.  She even fabricates quotes:

On Page 222, in addressing the Chengjiang fossils of the Cambrian period, Coulter quoted a New York Times article, "Spectacular Fossils Record Early Riot of Creation," (subscription required) as stating that the fossils, appeared "as though they were just planted there." The phrase, "as though they were just planted there," appears nowhere in the Times article. 

At the end of the Media Matters piece, they quote one of Coulter's editors on another of her books, who said: "If a mistake is found in any book, we change it."

We're waiting.

Comments

[actor212]

As we speak, a horde of young intern (sic) are descending on Coulter's book to correct the errors the author will admit to.

However, the publisher is interviewing a mass of temps for the others.

[litbrit]

I'm glad you're staying on this, blogenfreude. Since that 9/11 widows comment, Coultergeist has sort of faded from view for a while. Which is good. But Crown have done nothing about all the lies, fabrications, distortions, and outright acts of plagiarism in Godless, nor have they even responded to a letter or email regarding same.

Just curious: has anyone heard from Crown?

[blogenfreude]

Just curious: has anyone heard from Crown?

So far it's straight denials.

[Wretched Refuse]

Uh, More importantly, has anyone contacted the widows AND THEIR ATTORNEYS. Time for a SLander lawsuit. AND BIG FUCKING ONE AT THAT.

[teh l4m3]

Blogwhoring somewhat, but ahem

[HelenWheels]

I don't think she's faded enough. I keep getting media matters alerts DAILY containing more ignorant assinine things. She must really be trying to distract. Now she's just calling everyone gay or a fag, and I guess getting more venom-filled with each appearance. Maybe she'll just spontaneously combust and that'll be that.

Oh.... if only....