Projection 101

You would think that I would get tired of writing about Ann Coulter -- after all, how much fun can it be to pick on the insane? But Miss Coulter's column is the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think she can't say anything dumber or more inane, she manages to sink even lower into the ooze.

But this week's column is particularly interesting, because without knowing it she has managed to shed a little light into her thought processes and -- dare I say it? -- her psyche.

How does she do that, you ask?

Let me elucidate:

Miss Coulter's column concerns a review by Ronald Radosh of a new book by M. Stanton Evans on Senator Joe McCarthy, a book that Coulter, with her usual restraint, calls (and no, I'm not making this up) "the greatest book since the Bible," which probably means that it's the only book other than the Bible that Miss Coulter has actually read.

But I digress.

Radosh, as Miss Coulter points out, co-wrote a book about the Rosenbergs some years ago, which, in editor logic, makes him a perfect candidate to review a book about McCarthy. Now I must admit that I have read neither Evans' book (although I plan to shortly) nor Radosh's review (which, as far as I know, is not available online).

But it's not the book or the review that is at issue here. It's Miss Coulter's very revealing reaction to the review that is.

The review makes it comically obvious that Radosh didn't so much as glance through the pages of Evans' book. (Please forgive me, Eric Foner!) At least Kelly Ripa skims the summary cards written by her assistants who actually read the books when she interviews an author. Radosh doesn't even manage that.

Why is this revealing? Let's keep going with Miss Coulter's column and the point will be made:

But Radosh is not about to let the first book to render a full and honest historical account of Joe McCarthy ruin his blissful ignorance. Radosh knows less about McCarthy than I know about fly-fishing. He gets cases wrong, sources wrong, hearings wrong. He's been pulling this nonsense for 25 years now. The sole point of his current cliche-ridden ramblings in National Review is to make yet one more special pleading to liberals.

You have no idea how tempted I was to insert "Darwin" for "fly-fishing" in that last paragraph. Because Miss Coulter is accusing Radosh of doing exactly what Coulter herself did in her book Godless -- write about a subject about which she knew absolutely nothing. As I made clear in this very blog, Coulter wrote a book denouncing Darwin when she made it pretty obvious that she had never bothered to read Darwin herself -- and here she is attacking Radosh for arguably doing the same thing.

Projection is a wonderful thing. Don't you think?

Tom Moran