Time to Respond

Editor's note: Read the short interview referred to below, here.

John Cloud doesn’t like me.  Either that, or he doesn’t like being criticized for producing a morally and intellectually indefensible work of journalism and has chosen to respond with a fusillade of personal invective.  You be the judge.

In response to my comments on his admiring profile of Ann Coulter in which he announced that he "didn't find many outright Coulter errors"* based on a casual Google search, available here, Cloud says I:

• am the left-wing equivalent of [...] Ann Coulter
• am trying to out-Coulter Coulter
• am simply insult[ing] him
• am hid[ing] the fact that it also quotes James Wolcott, Andrew Sullivan, Salon, Ronald Radosh, and even Jerry Falwell criticizing Ann Coulter.  She is called everything from an "ideological huckster of hate" in [his] story to a "skank."  [He] say[s] she can be "callous and mouthy," that [he] wants to "shut her up occasionally," that her writing can be "highly amateurish."  She is called a "fascist," a "polemicist," and--by Radosh--a virtual McCarthyite.
• want [...]  people to ignore Coulter, to pretend as though she doesn't exist and isn't one of the most loved--and hated--figures on the public scene
• Made a mistake about a quote of hers in What Liberal Media
• seem most annoyed that [Time] did not use more of [my] personal "sources" on Ann Coulter
• [don't] seem to have done any reporting for his item on [him] whatsoever.

  In his interview with CJR Daily available here, he adds:

  "I think Eric Alterman and Ann Coulter engage in the same kind of debate. They don't often make actual arguments.  Instead, they throw names around. This is the point of my article.”

  And ...

  "I think maybe Eric and Ann are in the same bunch. They also, by the way, use the same language."

  To take these one by one may appear a bit tiresome and self-serving, but there are larger issues involved, including, admittedly, defending my reputation, but more importantly, having to do with defending the tenets of honest journalism and fair-minded media criticism.  So I will, as briefly as I can, engage Cloud on the facts:

  Cloud insists that Coulter and I are peas in a pod, guilty of the same sins, up to the same shenanigans.  OK, let’s compare me with Ann Coulter.  True, we both have B.A.s from Cornell, where we both attended many Dead concerts, (though I don’t pretend I refused to partake in the local customs).  More to the point, I went on to earn an M.A. in international relations from Yale and a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford.  I’ve written six books, two published by university presses, containing many thousands of footnotes.  None of these books have been substantially challenged on the basis of the evidence they employ, even by those who strongly disagree with my arguments.  This is not true of Coulter.

  I am also a professor of journalism at the City University of New York, a senior fellow of two think tanks, a professional blogger for the most trafficked internet news site in the world and the media columnist for oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States.  I am pretty sure none of the above is true of Coulter, either.

  What’s more, Coulter has twice either wished for, or joked about the mass murder of American journalists.  She has called for, or joked about, the assassination of a sitting American president.  She has called for, or joked about, the mass murder of entire populations of Moslem nations.  She has referred to the president of the United States and his wife as “pond scum,” among many other things.  She has called Christie Todd Whitman a "birdbrain" and a "dimwit"; Jim Jeffords a "half-wit"; and Gloria Steinem a "deeply ridiculous figure" who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. magazine--all of which makes her "a termagant."  I have never called publicly for the death of any one, nor joked about anyone’s murder, nor called any president or any senator any names like those listed above, though I admit, not all of them—including the current president—are among my favorite people.

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