All over the blogs, differing views on who won.
I’m trying to imagine a John Pilger or Robert Fisk getting such an introduction.
“Ann Coulter, whose right-wing rants …” Paxo opened. Discussing her new book, of which he’d read one chapter, “Coulter argues – if that’s the right word …” then his first question, “I’ve read it (chapter 1) – does it get any better ?”
Paxman then asked “You also believe there is some sort of liberal hegemony in the media, do you ? … I just don’t see how this argument stacks up.”.
“No, you’re right – with the warm introduction like you just gave me – no – no liberal hegemony there …”
You would almost have thought he was blushing at that point. Make up your own mind – the video is at Youtube.
As someone here remarked the other day, it seemed as if Ms Coulter wasn’t execting such a facile – albeit aggressive – opening as she received from Paxman and so took a while to get her feet moving.
When she did, like her or not, I believe she made him look like the preening pantomime dame he is.
i thought she was superb. i heard on Radio 5 this morning an interview with that idiot Esther Aarmah who made asides like “in your opinion” which led Ann Coulter to take her up on such asides.
It is a pity people in Britain are so wet that they do not cut interviewers – Enoch Powell could destroy them and Thatcher dealt with them too.
Ann Coulter is refreshing.
I still think paxo is a bully. He starts off blustering but is quickly deflated if you fight back.
Michael Howard bested him in the 14 same questions interview. Although it has always been spun as a paxo victory I think that in his heart of hearts paxo knows he was beaten.
What about his performance in the “who do you think you are?” ancestry tracing programme. Started out full of hubris about it all being a waste of time and ended up in tears (to his credit) at the pain of his fairly recent ancestors’ poverty. I wonder if he will do something about that by fighting socialism.
What I like about Coulter is that she is brutally, devastatingly accurate in her analyses of liberal windiness but also quite amusing in the way she puts it. A combination of Lord Tebbit’s intellect and Alan Coren’s wit.
At least, this is how she comes across in her columns but of course since she never gets to finish a sentence, never mind a paragraph, when she is interviewd it’s rather lost on tv.
Watching the Coulter interview I was very aware that the Paxman side of the dialogue was prewritten script honed to get the maximum mileage out of the exchange whereas Coulter’s responses were totaly spontaneous. Think how often we come up with the perfect witty rejoinder half an hour after the conversation’s moved on to other topics and admire.
Coulter showed Paxman up to be the Assistant Resident Relativist Laureate of the BBC.
The Relativist Laureate in Residence is one Andrew Marx who, on his program (Socialism this) Sunday AM (BBC1, 9am) chose to “balance” the views of Lord Tebbit (pbuh) with those of a garrulous female writer of Gonzo Journalism. The premise no doubt being that “They`re all mad, and what jolly good fun we`re having!).
Marx later came over all Meth Amphetimine addled and stated Baying at David Cameron about cheap air travel for all (not just BBC relativists who get us to pay for thier Business Class junkets), “Something has to be taken away” he pleaded as the crystal meth took full effect.
Democracy & Freedom of choice, horrible concepts about which Andrew Marx manages to put his Relativism on hold.
Useless BBC bastards, a danger to us all.
Socialism Is Necrotizing | 25.06.06 – 2:57 pm
Coulter showed Paxman up to be the Assistant Resident Relativist Laureate of the BBC.
I thought paxo showed himself to be an Arrogant Relativist Supercilious Egomaniac, or arse for short.
Coulter “Do you have a question?”
Priceless.
Coulter destroyed Paxman, which is some feat as her opinions on evolution are very silly. She is superbly clear minded about the Islamist threat though and her demolitions of leftism are as entertaining as they are successful.
The excellent PJ O’Rourke got a lot of stick when he started out but, like Ann Coulter, laughed all the way to the bank. Newsnight would be a lot more fun if it was presented by Ann Coulter five nights a week.
Wow, he even managed to bring up the lie that there is a federal ban on stem cell research, which is not true — there is a ban on federal funding of stem cell research but not a ban on stem cell research per se.
Paxman just asked ridiculous questions most of the way through leaving the poor girl dumbfounded! Going after her religious views was a bit of an obvious straw man, deliberately so I believe, to knock the wind out of anything she may say later.
Watching the Coulter interview I was very aware that the Paxman side of the dialogue was prewritten script honed to get the maximum mileage out of the exchange whereas Coulter’s responses were totaly spontaneous.
It didn’t help that he started by slagging of someone whose major argument is that the media are biased against people like her. That gave her enough to get past her silly opinions on evolution.
Paxman, like Jon Snow, can’t handle it when someone they think is below them answers back effectively.
I’m not actually sure why she was even on Newsnight in the first place – it seemed to me to be a totally pointless interview.
“it seemed to me to be a totally pointless interview”
And if the point was just to make her look like an idiot on the TV then surely this would have been easier than taking candy from a baby, yet Paxman still didn’t manage it.
I think Ann Coulter supports Creationism simply because it really winds liberals up, I’m sure she doesn’t really believe that nonsense.
Typical of the BBC that they went for that though – really, who cares about the Creationism vs Evolution debate when terrorists are flying planes into buildings? The BBC thought this was their best way of presenting Ms Coulter as a raving loony given that (a) she is American and (b) she is to the right of John Kerry. Given her performance, I think they got their arse bitten…
On a different topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5056944.stm
“A series of questions”. Indeed. Such as:
1) Why the media, and the BBC in particular, rush to report any news story prejudicial to the British armed forces, regardless of the dubious source or lack of facts. Sadly, this question isn’t asked in this article.
2) A conviction would have “brought shame on their regiments” (as if the BBC gives a shit about that!) and “further eroded public confidence in an already unpopular mission.” (justification please – unpopular with whom? BBC employees?)
3) “The British Army, some argue, is getting away with murder in Iraq – civilian courts should be responsible for getting at the truth.” Name these people. As for civilian courts – the perfect platform for “human rights” (i.e. far left) lawyers and their friends in the BBC to strut their stuff and get some squaddies truly hung, drawn and quartered.
She was very good. That last comment was priceless.
think Ann Coulter supports Creationism simply because it really winds liberals up, I’m sure she doesn’t really believe that nonsense.
I’ve explained this before but here goes again. It is NOT Biology it is Politics. Karl Marx built a secular religion on the basis of Darwin and Hegel – thus coupled with Nietzsche God is dead and there is no morality.
Everything that is done is pre-ordained and Free Will does not exist so everyone acts in accordance with the hard-wired program.
That is the issue – whether it is genetics that is responsible for everything; or moral choice.
This sums the BBC in a nutshell.
Ana Coulter has Paxman bowling bouncers at her head; Polly Toynbee has her own little comfy sofa next to Dermot and Natasha, who toss her gentle leg-stump half-volleys.
The BBC cannot see that Toynbee and her ilk are as loathsome to the political right as Coulter is to the left.
To the BBC, Toynbee represents mainstream opinion; Coulter is a freak. In reality, both are polemicists who should be treated in the same way, but it just does not happen.
I’m sorry… let me get one thing straight here…
You guys actually thought she made sense? She had no arguments other than a couple of anecdotes about how kids are brainwashed by liberals in schools, but what they’re teaching is beyond needing any more proof… Plastic fills landfills? It’s better not to destroy the envionrment?
Guys, sorry, but any thinking person can clearly see she is a money grabbing moron. Are you in a cult or something?
“That is the issue – whether it is genetics that is responsible for everything; or moral choice”
Perhaps in ‘MSM versus the Blogosphere’ world… however in the biological community the ‘issue’ is whether variation, selection & isolation are the best theories to explain speciation.
Nope, Frank. Coulter may well be a complete moonbat but that is not the issue I raised.
My complaint is that the BBC appears to treat left-wing moonbats and right-wing moonbats rather differently.
I am not alleging a massive conspiracy between the BBC and the left-wing moonbat community. Mine is a cry for fairness – treat them equally.
Toynbee, Fisk, Monbiot, Alibhai-Brown et al are just as worthy of contempt as their right-wing counterparts.
One cannot help feeling, however, that Messrs Naughtie, Humphrys and Marr go to the same swingers’ parties as Toynbee, Fisk, Monbiot, Alibhai-Brown et al. It’s all just a little too cosy.
Yes, Coulter is a complete moron.
No 1 on the NYT booklist, the money rolling in for yet another best-seller.
Just a rich, clever moron.
Frank Lansbury writes:
“You guys actually thought she made sense?”
No, “we guys” (bloody Americanisms) didn’t think she made sense. We thought Paxman made her point for her: that there is a Leftist hegemony at work in the MSM. That there is no impartial treatment by the BBC of Left and Right, despite the fact that both sides are forced to pay for it.
Got it, now?
Much as one might find Monbiot and Toynee’s views abhorrent, they do at least, for the most part, express them in a well-reasoned, mature manner.
Coulter is just a comedy act who says things to get a reaction and cause controversy, something even her fans admit (as in `oh, she likes to wind loathsome liberals up, she isn’t REALLY that extreme`…)
It’s also important to realise that in the BRITISH sphere, Coulter IS extreme.
Imagine Coulter, if she was English and had much the same views, trying to get a public photo-op with Dave Cameron – he’d run a bloody mile rather than be associated with her.
Imagine if she’d came along and called that chap who lost in his son in Iraq (the one who stood against Blair, his name escapes me) the equivalent of a `witch` (as she called some 9/11 widows) and said he was `enjoying the celebrity his son’s death gives him`.
I think BRITISH public opinion would have instantly made her public enemy number one.
Overall, I’m surprised Biased BBC is painting this exchange as some kind of victory – I think even an interviewer from the Daily Express would have taken her to task for many of her opinions.
You wouldn’t be an American, would you?
It’s ok – it’s not a crime – but I’m finding it hard to understand how you can so grossly missunderstand the context of this interview.
It wouldn’t have mattered a damn if Ms Coulter had been a waltzing pig, dancing round the set singing the praises of Atilla the Hun and Osama bin Laden in alternating verses.
What matters was Paxman’s treatment of her.
What does one have to do? Beat the concept of even-handedness into people’s skulls?
Billy Corgan
As a matter of fact, we have bleeding heart liberals in the UK and refer to them as such.
Much as one might find Monbiot and Toynee’s views abhorrent, they do at least, for the most part, express them in a well-reasoned, mature manner.
Well-reasoned? Mature?
They are deluded, if not deliberate liars. If it wasn’t for the easy ride they get from beeboid interviewers this would be apparent to all. Their arguments are not rational but emotional outpourings.
For example, Michael Gove wiped the floor with pollyanna and monbiot wouldn’t last 10 secs against Bjorn Lomberg.
Billy Corgan | 26.06.06 – 2:23 am
Imagine if she’d came along and called that chap who lost in his son in Iraq (the one who stood against Blair, his name escapes me) the equivalent of a `witch` (as she called some 9/11 widows) and said he was `enjoying the celebrity his son’s death gives him`.
I think BRITISH public opinion would have instantly made her public enemy number one.
She would be treated here the same way as in the US. Her views would be disdained and dismissed without proper examination by the same sort of lefties who run the media as run it in the US.
Likewise, cindy sheehan et al who make just as nasty, cynical remarks about Bush are lionised by the msm on both sides of the Atlantic. The other difference is that they make it up.
Michael “Matilda” Moore, despite being widely acknowledged as, and proven to be, a deliberate liar, gets little or no serious censure anywhere.
It’s not what you say it’s where you position yourself politically, left or right.
MATILDA
by: Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
WHO TOLD LIES, AND WAS BURNED TO DEATH
MATILDA told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not She
Discovered this Infirmity.
All good points, Billy C. But I stress again that the BBC – by its use of attack-dog interviewers and aggressive interview techniques – is tacitly treating Coulter as a moonbat whose every word should be challenged.
This is a good thing, of course. Coulter is a tough woman and can cope with Paxo easily, I am sure.
But its reporters do not submit some of the more colourful ‘liberal’ or ‘left-wing’ journalists and talking-heads (who may or may not be moonbats) to the same degree of interrogation.
Indeed, Polly T appears to have her very own BBC comfy chair.
Tom Paulin, for example
“What matters was Paxman’s treatment of her.
What does one have to do? Beat the concept of even-handedness into people’s skulls?”
I find it embarassing, as an Englishmen, to watch Paxman being nothing more than a lout, a thug, an offensive and rude yob.
“money grabbing moron”
Only one party on the Coulter V Paxman interview was money grabbing.
That party is Paxman, as his pay comes from threatening TV owners.
“I find it embarassing, as an Englishmen”
As a supporter of America,t and the American nation, I just find Ann Coulter embarrassing.
lets face it – she is a bit of a fascist nutjob, out for self publicity.
If i want to find out whats *really* going on in American right wing thinking, I check out the CATO institute and similar think tanks.
CATO unbound is quite a good read:
http://www.catounbound.org/
I thought Paxman was wholly rude and obnoxious. What happened to the ‘give ’em enough rope’ school of interviewing if all he wanted to do was humiliate her?
Also they could have done with getting her into the BBC canteen for a good feed rather than setting up a satellite link. I’d happily donate part of my TV tax to sub her a few pies the poor skinny thing. She looks worryingly like ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith.
Cockney, the day Paxman subscribes to that school of interviewing is the day Hell freezes over and Satan skates to work.
In the interests of political correctness, I should use the term “Straw Woman”…..
archduke | Homepage | 26.06.06 – 2:33 pm | #
As a supporter of America,t and the American nation, I just find Ann Coulter embarrassing.
lets face it – she is a bit of a fascist nutjob, out for self publicity.
Cut her some slack, archie.
Dont forget the environment in which she has to operate – you have to shout loud to get heard in the left-wing msm when you are capitalist.
I dont think she is as much a nutjob as a contrast to the liberal msm smooching up to shits like hillary and bill and al gore and letting them off the hook.
Where are the feminists when it comes to censuring the White House rapist? How can it be right that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was blamed for the clinton’s misdeeds and they got away with it?
The liberals work by personal defamation and Coulter fights back.
Furthermore (to the rest of the whingers), surely in this day and age a woman ought to be able to operate without her appearance being criticised. Shame on you. And notice that only right-wing women are singled out like this, ie Anne Widdecombe but not Gwyneth or Claire from the left. And of course doubly not Anne Begg.
Hypocrites.
Any way you slice it Coulter is a bit… abrasive.
That being said, she is excellent at identifying and talking about stereotypes which are almost always true. This, morethan anything, upsets the bed-wetting, obsessively PC liberals to no end and amuses conservatives every bit as much to watch them squirm.
Certainly she is no spokesman for the right, but she is a lot of fun and almost always has a very legitimate point after you scrape away the layers of saracsm and obligatory “shock” commentary (sex sells).
Hope you don’t mind (actually I don’t care if you do) but I threw up a link to yours from mine. http://www.supersexypictures.blogspot.com
Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Cheeseburgers:
Any way you slice it Coulter is a bit… abrasive.
What’s wrong with “abrasive” ? So is John Reid. Nothing wrong with squeezing some of these snotty interviewers instead of sitting there like a wet lettuce being sprayed with manure
archduke | Homepage | 26.06.06 – 2:33 pm | #
As a supporter of America,t and the American nation, I just find Ann Coulter embarrassing.
lets face it – she is a bit of a fascist nutjob, out for self publicity.
You obviously find Michael Moore a better role-model. Ah well, different strokes for different folks as they say
Rick, there’s a whole spectrum of reason between Moore and Coulter you know.
Cockney | 27.06.06 – 10:18 am
Moore is a deliberate liar, Coulter tells the truth.
I’ve even seen Moore torn apart in a movie review in IMDB – that’s how obvious his lying is.
“To The People Of Islam: Just think: If we’d invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity YOU’D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Merry Christmas.”
Ann Coulter: Moonbat
theghostofredken | Homepage | 27.06.06 – 10:57 am
Isn’t Anne simply holding up a mirror to the widely expressed but rarely condemned aspirations of the scarcely civilised Islamists, whose objective is a world-wide caliphate gained by violence?
What gets me is the arrogance. And the fact that they know that they will need to use force shows how unattractive their lifestyle actually is. Bombing us back to the Stone Age, indeed.
Her use of the word “raghead” to describe Muslims or calling an effeminately voiced man “gay boy” suggests the only thing she is holding a mirror up to is her own prejudices. She’s a nutjob. End of.
theghostoffredken writes:
“Her use of the word “raghead” to describe Muslims or calling an effeminately voiced man “gay boy” suggests the only thing she is holding a mirror up to is her own prejudices. She’s a nutjob. End of.”
To which I would make two observations.
The first is that she is simply using the sort of demotic language you can hear in almost any bar. While this might offend those who have had the PC implant, most grown-ups know how to react. And it’s not with po-faced (inevitably faked) condescension.
The second is that, whatever her choice of language, it isn’t Jeremy Paxman’s job to act as judge, jury and executioner of her views. Not while we are forced to pay the bill.
theghostofredken | Homepage | 27.06.06 – 11:54 am
No chance of you grappling with an actual argument, is there.
Geg Dyke said the BBC was “horrendously white” that’s much more insultingly racist than “raghead”. Especially when due to active racism (AA) non-indiginous groups are over-represented at the ‘B’BC.
Sorry. That’s “Greg”.
I must clean the crisp crumbs off my keyboard!
GCooper: “While this might offend those who have had the PC implant, most grown-ups know how to react”
I’m not sure a PC thing here, if I’d started this reply “Look here you tw*t…” you would rightly give less credence to my argument than if I approached the subject in a civilised manner. Using deliberately inflammatory language with the intent of offending invalidates one’s argument in rational discourse. True, it’s no worse than what’s said in a bar on any given evening, but there is a distinction between public and private discourse, is there not?
gordon-bennett:
“No chance of you grappling with an actual argument, is there.”
Gisa chance, guv’nor! My argument was that Coulter is a sensationalist, she may well have been making the point you imply she is, but equally she might have just being venting some bile. I suspect the latter is more likely.
i would agree with theghostofredken above – to me , Coulter is just a mirror image of Michael Moore.
i have no time for people who thrive on rabble rousing inflammatory language – no matter what their political persuasion.
“You obviously find Michael Moore a better role-model. Ah well, different strokes for different folks as they say”
Rick – i never said anything about Moore. who is also a self-publicising loud mouth nutjob, as bad as Coulter in my view.
there’s a huge sea of, reasoned, argued, intellectual opinion in America between those two you know.
theghostofredken | Homepage | 27.06.06 – 1:16 pm
Your argument was exactly this. She uses the term raghead. Therefore she is a racist. Therefore she can be dismissed and is a nutjob.
Now you say maybe she was making an intelligent observation, maybe she wasn’t but my prejudice leads me to believe it’s the latter.
Why not accept that she is intelligent and articulate but you cannot agree with her?
Or is it your opinion that unless one holds PC lefty views one is a nutjob?
“Dont forget the environment in which she has to operate – you have to shout loud to get heard in the left-wing msm when you are capitalist.”
i take your point gordon – American politics does seem to be conducted sometimes with the volume at plus 11.