Sciolism 101

I haven't written about the "controversy" (somehow I feel the need for quotations marks there) concerning Ann Coulter's new book Godless because I wanted to read the book before commenting on it.

Well, now I've read it.

The most interesting thing about Coulter's book is that it inspired a feeling in me that I haven't had before while reading her books: tedium. I was actively bored while plowing through this one, and found myself mentally counting the pages until it was over. I can pretty much guarantee you that out of all the thousands of Coulter's knuckle-dragging acolytes who have purchased this book, only a tiny fraction will make it to the end.

It's typical Coulter: snide invective laced with what some people who should know better believe to be wit. But it's all been done before and the gag is starting to get old. Will Coulter ever tire of making obnoxious cracks about the Kennedys in general and Chappaquiddick in particular? Apparently not -- because whenever she runs out of things to say, she just launches into another envy-laced diatribe about the Kennedys.

Coulter has been complaining of late that no one is discussing the thesis of her book: that liberalism is in effect a atheistical state religion. They're not discussing it for a very good reason: her thesis is so stupid that only one of her brain-dead followers could possibly take it seriously. And in effect her "thesis" is only a pretext for her usual attacks on liberals, which are really getting old. The fact is that Coulter has nothing new to say here -- she's just repackaging the same old snotty insults. Old wine in new skins, as the saying goes.

Coulter ends the book with a discussion of Darwin and why evolution is just a liberal conspiracy to deny the existence of God. I will leave a systematic refutation of her arguments to others who are more knowledgable than I am in science (unlike Coulter, when I don't know something about a given discipline I keep my mouth shut about it). I will make a few comments, however:

1) If you look at the last three chapters of Coulter's book, you will notice one glaring absence: nowhere in her attack on Darwin's theory of evolution does Coulter quote Darwin directly. She only quotes his critics, and the only times when she quotes Darwin's words it's in the form of quoting someone else who is quoting Darwin. Is it possible that she hasn't even bothered to read The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man? Based on her previous track record, I'm inclined to believe that she has not. Now imagine if I were to write a book attacking Christianity without bothering to read the Bible. How seriously would or should my arguments be taken?

2) At one point she attacks Wall Street Journal science writer Sharon Begley, calling her an "ignoramus." Well, the fact is that I know Sharon Begley from the days when we both worked at Newsweek in the 1990s, and I can tell you from personal experience that Sharon Begley has forgotten more about science than Ann Coulter will ever know.

Coulter's book is basically sciolism, or the art of pretending that you know more about a given subject than you really do. I was constantly reminded while reading her final chapters that Coulter is a lawyer, and her book is a good example of how a lawyer can distort the facts in order to make the weaker case seem stronger. It's what the Greeks called sophistry: persuasion by emotion rather than reason -- and it's exactly what she accuses John Edwards (a far more succesful lawyer than Coulter ever was) of doing in her book.

But the only interesting aspect of the book is how it illustrates the near-schizophrenic conflict in Coulter's nature. On the one hand, she is desperate for attention and will do anything to be noticed (hence the skirts that cry out for a speculum). On the other hand, she's just as desperate to be taken seriously as a serious intellectual (hence the mention on the book jacket that she is considered one of America's most prominent "public intellectuals" while neglecting to point out that it only counted the number of times she'd been on television).

These two desires cancel each other out in a way that is self-defeating. The more Coulter goes into her fire-bombing "let's frag Murtha" mode, the less seriously anyone takes her but the more attention she gets. And the more she tries to be the serious intellectual she wants to be the less seriously people take her because all they see is a middle-aged spinster with a big mouth who dresses like a teenaged slut. And the most ironic thing of all, of course, is Coulter presuming to be a Defender of the Faith, because if there's a worse Christian out there than Ann Coulter I can't think of one. Charles Manson is a better Christian than Ann Coulter.

So don't bother to read Godless, unless you want to be annoyed and bored, in about equal measure.

Tom Moran