Editor's File | Decision to 'fire' Coulter gets worldwide attention

I stumbled into a skirmish line of our national culture war on a lazy Labor Day morning.

It happened during my first cup of coffee about 9 a.m. That's when I signed onto my e-mail account and opened the first of the 364 e-mails that awaited me.

The subject line read: "A letter to Ann Coulter." The message, written by a Judith Brewer, said only, "Mr. Unger, I think I love you."

The second came from Joe Filko, one of this newspaper's community columnists and a staunch, thoughtful conservative.

"You are exactly right, and good for you. Coulter's most recent column was a disgrace, and your 'firing' of her was right on target," he wrote.

The third came from someone named Lou Sander, of Pittsburgh, who had seen my column posted on a right-wing Web site I'd never heard of, but about which others would warn me later. He wrote, "I thought it was sick, and so, probably do many others."

More than 4,000 e-mails, phone calls and letters to the editor arrived in the succeeding days since my Sunday column explained to readers of the Centre Daily Times why we had decided to drop ultraconservative Ann Coulter from our weekly lineup of columnists. We fired her because I believe she has become an apostle of hate and has become hurtful to my country and my community.

What I didn't know is that the column would be posted on Web sites for the right and the left, ultimately finding its way onto several major sites, including www.salon. com and www.editorandpublisher.com.

With each new posting came a torrent of e-mails, some only two or three words long, but most running several paragraphs. They came from Centre County and from across all of Pennsylvania, as well as every state in the union, plus Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark and others. By Tuesday, I had received more than 1,000 e-mails and an invitation to be a guest on a talk show in Salt Lake City. By noon Wednesday, I had more than 2,500 and by Thursday afternoon more than 4,000.

For a while, I answered them, but there were too many to keep up. Finally, it even crashed my e-mail. I apologize, both to those who agreed with me that the country has had enough of Ann Coulter and to those who had decided, in the words of one gentleman, that I was nothing more than a "liberal coward."

A few called me names, some of them not fit for print, or even the Howard Stern show. Others simply labeled me a "liberal" -- and made it sound like a dirty word or racial slur.

But the great majority said that they are fed up with Ann Coulter and sick and tired of what they hear from the barking right and the braying left. They are horrified when they hear their fellow citizens demonized for what they believe.

* "As a lifelong Republican, I wholeheartedly applaud your decision to drop Ann Coulter's column from the Centre Daily Times. There is no longer any room in America for simple, knee-jerk hatred. Our national strength has always derived from our patchwork identity, our 'melting pot' culture. ... It sickens me to see Coulter's extremist palaver masqueraded as populism. Her's (sic) is nothing but a mockery of conservative thought."

* "A copy of your column firing Ann Coulter was forwarded to me today. At first, I started to delete it without reading it, since I am not interested in Ann Coulter. I opened it, skimmed it, then reread it carefully. I admire and respect you for taking the action that you've taken, and for explaining why it is so very in keeping with what makes America great. Ann Coulter, along with many others, has been very successful by spewing hatred ... and supporting the many forces who virulently hate America."

* "Someone once said that all it took for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. You have struck a blow for reason."

* "Thank you for not continuing the Ann Coulter thread-of-hate. I am a 20-year fireman and a 10-year captain in Richmond, Calif., an urban high-crime area. Hate and hate-pandering is wrong. Thank you for drawing a line."

Those comments were typical, representing well over 90 percent of the total that came in, and I have saved them because they reminded me of what is right about my country. My people are a tolerant people, and many of them are just as sick of the vilification they hear from the left as from the right. Most of their anger is directed at television and radio "talk" shows and what passes for debate there. They are as fed up with Paul Begala and James Carville as they are with Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy and Rush Limbaugh -- in short, fed up with all who make their livings by destroying their enemies, carelessly undermining faith in the nation's institutions, and inciting what often feels like tribal warfare.

Marcia Furayter Roberts is a 1973 Penn State graduate and a veteran of the Army Nurse Corps and the Persian Gulf War. Here's what she wrote:

"My father (Joseph P. Furayter) and I are both lifelong Democrats. We are also both veterans of the armed services. We are extremely tired of being demonized by the right. Hatred and intolerance are the root causes of what happened last September. The world, not only America, would be a much better place if we could all learn to respect the basic humanity of those with different viewpoints."

Bob Unger is executive editor of the CDT. He can be reached by e-mail at runger@centredaily.com or by phone at 231-4640.

Ann Coulter: Laughing at the Left
By Richard Poe

September 6, 2002

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon," writes leftist agitator Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals "… it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
Super-pundit Ann Coulter has turned the left’s own tactics against them. Her new book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right makes laughingstocks of the media. It is paralyzingly funny.

Predictably, the media have attacked like rabid wolverines – proving, with each snap of their drooling jaws, that they are every inch the totalitarian fiends Coulter says they are.

Even before the book was published, leftist editors tried to strangle it in its cradle.

When her editor died of cancer, HarperCollins deep-sixed the book. Coulter’s agent shopped it around for two months, getting rejection after rejection.

"This book does not move the national dialogue forward," sniffed one Doubleday editor.

"That’s funny," Coulter responded. "I thought book publishers made money on the basis of how many books they sold."

Crown Publishing finally picked it up. With over 400,000 copies sold, Slander has topped the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list for eight weeks straight.

"The American people like me; editors don’t…" Coulter remarks to The New York Observer. "If I were Rupert Murdoch, I think I’d fire some of the people at HarperCollins for turning down the No. 1 best-selling book of the summer for purely ideological reasons."

When Coulter hit the talk-show circuit, the talking hairstyles pulled their usual tricks. They fought with Coulter instead of interviewing her. Some forced her to share airtime with belligerent leftwing zealots who mocked, interrupted, misquoted and belittled her.

Yet Coulter’s sales kept soaring – even as public disgust with the media grew.

"Why Do Many Readers Hate Us Again?" asks a plaintive headline in the influential trade journal Editor & Publisher. The question refers to a recent Pew Research poll showing that public contempt for the media – which had decreased after 9-11 – has now skyrocketed back to its usual stratospheric heights.

No mystery there. If the folks at Editor & Publisher want to know why middle America hates their profession, they need look no farther than their own pages.

On September 1, a newspaper editor in a small, Pennsylvania college town publicly "fired" Coulter in an open letter – accusing her of being a "hater" and likening her to the 9-11 terrorists. It was an obvious publicity stunt.

Nothing happened, so Bob Unger of the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA tried a different gambit. He claimed that an avalanche of reader e-mails supported his action.

Editor & Publisher leaped on this non-event as if it were news.

"Paper Backed After Canceling Coulter," trumpeted the headline in E&P’s September 3 online edition. "Editor Reports 97% Support."

According to E&P, "of the more than 500 e-mails that poured in, about 485 supported the paper's decision." That would leave only about fifteen e-mails supporting Coulter.

Fifteen pro-Coulter e-mails in two days. Hmmm.

"Funny, since I and conservative friends of mine sent in way more than fifteen on our own," commented "republicanman" on the conservative message board FreeRepublic.com.

In fact, FreeRepublic.com had posted Unger’s open letter two days earlier, on September 1 – with his e-mail address prominently displayed. Activity was intense, with 106 messages posted that day.

"Based on my experience with similar efforts on FreeRepublic.com, I would wager [Unger] received hundreds and hundreds of e-mails in support of Ann," comments Gene McDonald, President of the Florida Chapter of Free Republic.

By September 5, the number would likely have been in the thousands. One pro-Coulter correspondent received the following auto-responder message from Unger that day:

"Executive Editor Bob Unger has received thousands of e-mail messages concerning his column about columnist Ann Coulter. He apologizes that he is unable to answer each."

Thousands.

Of course, conservatives are not the only people who employ e-mail campaigns. Islamic activists use them too. And Islamists hate Coulter for her stand against Muslim terror.

The radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has sent out an e-bulletin, urging supporters to "Send a note of thanks to Bob Unger at runger@centredaily.com."

Interestingly, Unger told E&P that his 500 e-mails were "local, national, and international in origin."

Now what sort of national and international readers would be sitting around watching a small-town news site in Pennsylvania, just waiting to zap e-mails to it?

If indeed Unger ever received as many as 485 anti-Coulter e-mails, I wonder how many came from Muslim activists. Editor & Publisher should investigate. It would make a perfect 9-11 anniversary story.

How about it, guys?

http://www.richardpoe.com/column.cgi?story=114

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