Ann Coulter's Gormless

Yesterday I had the distinctly unpleasant misfortune of catching a few moments of one Ms. Ann Coulter yelping at a Fox News Network hair helmet (John Gibson [link NSFW!!!1] I think it was), babbling something about Mike Huckabee, and how he is the liberals' favorite Evangelical Christian or some such similarly supercilious assclownery.

It was alleged that Ann Coulter wrote a book, a full third of which dealt with questions of biological evolution. I recall hearing something about this. And I recall hearing that Ann Coulter had enlisted the likes of William Dembski and Michael Behe, the numeri uno e due crackpots of the so-called “intelligent design movement” to tutor her in the discipline.

So I was a bit surprised yesterday to hear Ann Coulter aver that nobody had even addressed the “arguments” she'd made with respect to biological evolution in said tome. “Godless,” I think it was called. Or maybe “Slander” (which always struck me as more of an FDA warning label than the actual title of the book). Anyway ...

Now I know that the Milwaukee Public Library maintains electronic records of my borrowings, and I'd sooner have the federales find the Unabomber Manifesto, the Qur'an, and The Anarchist's Cookbook therein or, for that matter, my mother discover a CD-R loaded with bukkake .mpegs after my death than anyone unearth evidence that I'd actually cracked the spine of an Ann Coulter product.

Sure enough, a stout yeoman by the name of James Downard had already done the heavy lifting, and the results of his considerable labors are published in three lengthy parts at TalkReason.org:

Secondary Addiction: Part 1
Secondary Addiction: Part 2
Secondary Addiction: Part 3

Nope, nobody had ever even addressed her “arguments.” If anyone has a set of cojones so risibly colossal as to get all up on national teevee and make that statement, it's Ann Coulter.

Downard's verdict:

Her sashay into matters scientific delightfully illustrates a common theme in sloppy thinking. Coulter is a secondary citation addict [and she is a lawyer, may gog help us all].

Like a scholarly lemming, she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true. It never once occurs to her that she might find it prudent to check on the reliability of those sources before accompanying them off the cliff, either by investigating critical takes on those sources, or by actually inspecting the original technical literature directly.

Downard does both, and the results are enlightening and frequently hilarious, as all the finest creationist smackdowns are.