Coulter footnotes draw scrutiny

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday August 8, 2006

A Random House senior vice president and publisher has vigorously defended conservative commentator and writer Ann Coulter against charges of plagiarism, RAW STORY has learned.

After a July 7 inquiry regarding numerous errors in the footnotes of Coulter's latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Media Matters for America received a response from Random House's Steve Ross in which he called charges of plagiarism "trivial" and "irresponsible."

Media Matters outlined what it described as a "plethora of problems" with Coulter's endnotes, among them distorted source statements, omitted refutations, and wholly contrived facts. It also highlighted Coulter's representation of source material almost twenty years old as being contemporary.

Ross did not address the individual charges in his response.

An excerpt of Media Matters' findings is shown below. The full article is available here.

#

...On Page 175, Coulter attacked "liberals" who would "foist" sex education topics such as "[a]nal sex, oral sex, fisting, dental dams, [and] 'birthing games'" on kindergarteners. Citing a November 8, 1987, New York Times article, Coulter wrote:

But in contrast to liberal preachiness about IQ, there would be no moralizing when it came to sex. Anal sex, oral sex, fisting, dental dams, "birthing games" -- all that would be foisted on unsuspecting children in order to protect kindergarteners from the scourge of AIDS. As one heroine of the sex education movement told an approving New York Times reporter, "My job is not to teach one right value system. Parents and churches teach moral values. My job is to say, 'These are the facts,' and to help the students, as adults, decide what is right for them."

To those who find it odd that Coulter would support her claim about "fisting" being taught to kindergarteners by quoting "one heroine of the sex education movement" and referring to students as "adults," there is a very good reason for that. The woman Coulter quoted was Dr. Beverlie Conant Sloane, then-director of health education at Dartmouth College. The Times article cited by Coulter, titled "At Dartmouth, A Helping Candor," (subscription required) was about the sex education programs available to adult students at Dartmouth -- not children in kindergarten. Not only is the article about adult students, but it is from November 1987, close to 20 years old -- hardly what would be considered to be relevant information on current sex education policies.