She is an uncompromising apologist for the right and a hater of all things left. Is there anything she won’t do or say to further her agenda? The answer is no.

Brainless : The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter is an unbridled look at a woman who twists the truth, misleads, plays loose with facts and allusions, and has been accused of plagiarism in hammering home her logic-defying arguments.

Brainless illustrates the dangers, ironies, and hypocrisies of the Mistress of Malice. She spews her venom generously across the spectrum. Democrats and Liberals are just the beginning. If you’re a woman (you shouldn’t vote), gay (you’re going to hell), a 9/11 widow (dancing on your murdered husband’s grave) or Bill Clinton (slurs and charges too numerous to mention here), you will find yourself the object of her ire.

Now it’s time to turn the tables and take a good hard look at the High Priestess of Hypocrisy. Journalist Joe Maguire takes apart her arguments, picks apart her agenda, and gives us a look at the psychology and background of the woman who has reduced public political and cultural debate to browbeating and name-calling.

Diligently researched (with source notes you can verify!), Maguire separates fact from myth and gives us an unvarnished look at the REAL Ann Coulter.

Let’s face it. You don’t ever want to read a book by Ann Coulter. Read this so you don’t have to!

5 Responses to “Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter”

1. AZMThunter says:

   October 3, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Not remotely worth the energy to keep turning the pages. Pooly written, knee jerk reactionary drivel.

   Donate your money to something else and spend your time on something more worthy…. which is almost anything.

   Reply
2. Mike Smith says:

   January 25, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Joe Maguire’s BRAINLESS: THE LIES AND LUNACY OF ANN COULTER comes from a good place, and with good intentions, but it’s really just not as effective, as thorough, as serious, or as well-written as it could have been–as I had hoped it would be.

   Ann Coulter, Logorrhea-sufferer, right-wing hack, and all-around cruel and hateful talking head, certainly deserves people to call her out on her lies and distortions, and a strong case could certainly be made for her being among the most deplorable people on the scene today, but this book doesn’t really make that case. It gives her way too much credit for being a “good” writer, which is a really arguable concession, and it doesn’t excerpt her own writing even close to enough for us to ever get truly informed and outraged about it–in fact some of the harshest things she wrote are only alluded to, addressed obliquely.

   The book’s author quotes from the same sources far too many times–for instance, Michael Shermer’s WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS, which, despite being a favorite book of mine still ought not to have been relied upon so heavily. At other times, the author makes his attacks way too broad–for instance, condemning Ann for believing in a god instead of, say, getting on her case for more specific and horrifying instances of lies and hate speech, of which there are many. I am not in any way a deist, but most of Ann’s readers and sycophants are, and it seems to me that attacking that aspect of her will only alienate the right-leaning people Maguire hopes to reach with his very valid case that Ann’s sort of factless polemics are the sorts of things that divide the country and hurt real national dialogue. This just wasn’t the place for it, is what I’m thinking.

   What should have been addressed more in depth was Ann Coulter’s loudmouthed endorsements of Intelligent Design over real evolutionary science, and though space is given to that, it’s so badly handled, with the author basically accepting the Creationist definition of evolution, as some vague term that covers not only the evolution of species but life’s original abiogenesis, the entire span of cosmology, and the Big Bang. In one offhand example, he mentions that evolution explains the entire existence of the Universe, when it really just has to do with the origins of species; he also agrees with Coulter that panspermia is a “wacky notion,” when amino acids on a comet may have actually played a role in seeding life on Earth, we just don’t know. In short, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in the evolution chapter, and I say this as someone who agrees with him that evolution is of course a reality. (He even refers to it as “Darwinism”! Who does that that’s not a creationist? That’s THEIR dismissive and derogatory term.) And, he apparently hasn’t read THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, because Darwin did deal with the likely evolution of the eye in THAT book–immediately after the quote of his that Ann Coulter took out of context.

   And some of the other concessions that Maguire makes are just absurd–for instance, that the Ten Commandments are “something you might want to hold onto no matter which side of the deistic divide you fall into.” That’s got to just be sloppy writing, right? Because I find it hard to see how “Do not have any other gods before me,” “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” and “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God” have much secular value to anyone at all, or anything at all to say about actual morals. Elsewhere, when Coulter’s one-time pastor is quoted as saying that one’s heart should be “melted by the sense of God’s grace because of what He did on the cross for you,” Maguire responds “Seems like pretty good advice, whether or not you believe it was divinely inspired.” WTF? The guy comes across almost as lazily hypocritical and of two minds as Coulter herself does.

   Maguire is also too breezy at times, joking about the occasional incompleteness of his notes section for instance, which is unforgivable in a book meant to be a factual retort to a genuinely harmful and slanderous individual. He also lapses too frequently into barely funny insults that just get in the way of the argument–what does Ann Coulter’s Adam’s apple have to do with her politics and meanness, for instance?–things that might have been allowable had they been funnier, but as they are are, adorning his less-than-substance-filled case, they just come across as lazy and low. Also: no index, which I say is criminal in nonfiction–AND the guy has a tendency toward Freudian psychoanalysis which just seems unnecessary.

   The book certainly did help inform my opinion on Coulter, however, giving enough evidence for me to draw a conclusion of my own that Coulter is in actuality an opportunistic nihilist, who, although she holds a number of very bigoted biases, has her most major bias in favor of herself, with self-interest as her primary concern. She holds far-right-wing convictions, but none so deeply that she won’t abandon them to have sex; date the son of the founder of PENTHOUSE magazine; date Bill Maher, atheist/agnostic filmmaker of RELIGULOUS; et cetera. She reminds me of the punks in 1970s New York City, though she’s not making good music to begin to justify her actions–not even any enjoyable sounds at all. She has no particular respect for her audience or for the truth, and would probably turn right around and yell for the opposite side if the money was there for her. A total opportunist, whose beliefs are ultimately just meaningless and interchangeable and convenient, a total nihilist.

   Three stars to BRAINLESS for having its heart in the right place. But I do wish it were better–better-written, better-researched, more thorough, less prone to digression and pettiness, and more concerned with Coulter’s worst offenses instead of nitpicking her less-egregious ones. (Coulter has said so much horrific stuff there should be no need to parse single lines from old columns of hers.) I might recommend this book, and I plan to keep it, but I would recommend Al Franken’s more substantial and much funnier two chapters on Coulter in LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM, much more highly. Also: Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid podcast about her, “Ann Coulter, Scientist.”

   Reply
3. N. Feldman says:

   December 24, 2009 at 12:00 am

   *yawn*

   What a piece of crap

   Thank god I had it on lone as opposed to lining the pockets of the dreary hack that patched together this particularly nasty screed.

   After about 10 minutes I got the creeping feeling I get when, on occasion, I read youtube talkbacks. This was probably no coincidence as the rhetoric (and even spelling) was about on par with the denizens of youtube commentary.

   I felt that having this book in my possession temporarily cancelled out the fact that I own a library card.

   Neither intelligent nor entertaining. Of no value whatsoever.

   The only uses I can think of for this book are making paper angels with the pages or evening out tilted lawn furniture.

   Reply
4. Scott D. Kristensen says:

   May 11, 2009 at 12:00 am

   I am amused by the sleazy attacks of lefty liberals and pretend Christians who purport to read this drivel and consider it anything more than a cheap hit piece. Just because you cannot attack her views because liberals and leftist do not think, I would at least expect an attempt at fairness. But, alas liberals are incapable of anything else but Damn Lies. How can you haters go through life with any dignity?

   Reply
5. Unabobber says:

   March 13, 2009 at 12:00 am

   This is an easy to read book that exposes the real Ann Coulter. The sad part of the book relates to the fact that Ann is a well educated person who is capable of much better political analysis than she delivers. After all, she is an attorney who completed her undergraduate work at Cornell. She should have a little more pride in her work and not rely so much on Ad Hominem attacks.

   The latest tiff with Keith Obermann is an expample of Ann appealing to the information challeged individual. Ann claims that she graduated from the real Cornell, not the Ag school that Keith attended. Ann, does the schools you attended really matter when you are approaching fifty? At a time when you should be reaching the peak of your career, the quality of your work is much more important.

   Ann has turned this sort of attack into a cottage industry and it’s time someone called her on it. Kudos to the author for doing so.

   Reply