Biography

Ann Coulter was born in New York City into a Catholic family she describes as "upper middle class". She was born on December 8, 1961 according to the New Canaan voting registration office. Coulter's two older brothers are John and James. Her father, John V. Coulter, a lawyer, represented clients in opposition to labor unions before obtaining a government job as a constable. Her mother, Nell M. Coulter, is a member of the New Canaan Republican Town Committee. As an undergraduate in Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, Coulter helped launch a conservative newspaper, The Cornell Review, with funding from Richard Mellon Scaife's Collegiate Network. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984, and received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of The Michigan Law Review. Coulter often wore a fur coat to class, even in temperate weather. Fellow students interpreted her wearing of fur as a political statement directed at "PETA loving" classmates. Coulter was a member of Delta Gamma, a national women's fraternity, while at Cornell. At law school, Coulter shared an apartment with human and civil rights advocate Cindy Cohn, who is now the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.[3] Coulter practiced corporate law for four years before becoming a congressional aide, in 1994, to Republican Senator Spencer Abraham, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Coulter denies she is a fundamentalist Christian "but only because I'm from Connecticut where the term is not frequently used". She has made statements about the religion of Islam that some consider discriminatory and commonly supports the positions of other Christian conservatives. In June 2005, Coulter purchased a $1.8 million home on Palm Beach Island in Florida. Coulter is under investigation by election officials in Florida for filing an inaccurate voter registration form in June 2005. Government documents indicate she provided her real estate agent's address instead of her own home address. On March 29, 2006 the Palm Beach Post reported that elections officials have given Coulter 30 days to explain the inaccuracy. "In his official incident report released last week, poll worker Jim Whited wrote that Coulter tried to vote in the Feb. 7 town council election at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, the right place for a Seabreeze resident. Coulter left in a hurry when, Whited said, he asked her to correct the record. Later she cast her ballot at the St. Edward's precinct, where real Indian Road residents go." [4]

The newspaper also reported that Coulter "relentlessly made fun of Palm Beach County voters after the botched 2000 presidential election." [edit]

Media Career
Coulter relishes her reputation as a controversial speaker, telling The Sunday Times of London in 2002, "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that. I like to stir up the pot. I don't pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do." She is known for her expressed disdain of the Democratic Party and of liberalism. Coulter attacks individuals, including war veterans, in personal ways, and she's lost at least one job for doing so. MSNBC fired Coulter in 1997 after an exchange with Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, in which she said, "No wonder you guys lost" (MSNBC's NewsChat, October 11, 1997). Critics such as Michael Moore have taken issue with her "shoot-from-the-hip" style of commentary, arguing she is reckless with facts. Coulter is a legal correspondent for the magazine Human Events. Her syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate is carried by, or linked to by, many conservative websites, including Frontpagemag.com and Townhall.com. Coulter was the subject of a TIME magazine cover story in April 2005, and has made frequent guest appearances on national television, most frequently Fox News Channel and syndicated radio programs. In addition to appearing on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's The Fifth Estate, she has appeared on many other talk shows and news programs, including Hannity and Colmes (Fox News Channel), The O'Reilly Factor (hosted by Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel), American Morning, Crossfire (hosted by Tucker Carlson, CNN), The Today Show, Real Time and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Coulter has appeared in FahrenHYPE 9/11, a rebuttal of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. As a contributing editor and syndicated columnist at the National Review Online(NRO) Coulter was asked by editors to make changes to a piece written in 2001 soon after the September 11 attacks in which her friend Barbara Olsen had been killed. On the national television show Politically Incorrect, Coulter accused NRO of censorship and claimed she was paid $5 per article. NRO dropped her column and terminated her.[5] Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of NRO, said, "We did not 'fire' Ann for what she wrote. ... We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty." [6] Coulter contracted with USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention, but was replaced by Jonah Goldberg after an editing disagreement (Memmot, 2004). She wrote one article that began, "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston", and referred to some (unspecified) female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber,

no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons." The newspaper declined to print the article, and Coulter published it instead on her website. On August 28, 2005, Coulter's syndicated column was dropped by the Tucson newspaper Arizona Daily Star. David Stoeffler, the editor and publisher said, "We've decided that syndicated columnist Ann Coulter has worn out her welcome. Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."[7] Coulter is represented by Premiere Speakers Bureau. [8] Coulter's publisher plans to release her next book, Godless. The Church of Liberalism, on June 6, 2006. (Ironically, 6/6/6.) [edit]

Controversies
Ann Coulter has made a career of controversial arguments, inviting much criticism. Many claim that Coulter's polemical comments are extremely "nasty" and that they are intended to incite hysterical hatred toward liberals, people who object to the encroachment of religion into politics, and certain minorities (particularly Muslims). Her style is not universally admired among those who share her political philosophy. Arnold Beichman reviewed Treason in the conservative Washington Times, and wrote that he'd "tried to read Miss Coulter's book and failed. Life is too short to read pages and pages of rant." [9] Many find her presentations, both published and spoken, to be both highly offensive and inflammatory. Critics also accuse her of hypocrisy and double standards, and argue that, since she has such strong conservative bias in her comments and writing, she is willing to misrepresent sources and facts to support her case. This criticism mirrors the argument that she herself uses in her criticism of liberal politicians, interest groups, and the news media, particularly The New York Times. Coulter has been the subject of frequent protests, especially when speaking on college campuses. On one occasion, during an appearance at University of Arizona, a pie was thrown at her which missed. [10] While speaking at the University of Connecticut, she was shouted off stage to the chant of "you suck" by protestors. In retaliation, she told the crowd of 2,600, "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am". [11] The controversy at the University of Connecticut also concerned $16,000 in speaking fees paid out of student funds to Coulter by a bitterly divided Undergraduate Student Government.[12]

At a February 23, 2006 appearance at Indiana University, Bloomington, in a speech entitled "Liberals Are Wrong About Everything", she told the extremely divided audience, "Liberals hate both God and America," and referred to a man with an effeminate voice who was asking questions as a "gay boy." Audience members supporting and opposing Coulter repeatedly broke out into altercations during the speech and had to be removed by ushers, whom she also mocked. [13] The Washington Post reported that Coulter had obtained a Washington D.C. driver's license with her birthdate listed as December 8, 1963, two years after the birthdate listed on her Connecticut license.[14] Coulter on Black People

Coulter supported the apartheid regime in South Africa and has called belligerent and lawless black people "savages."

"In response to a question on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Miss Coulter said she supported the government of Israel for the same reason she supported apartheid in South Africa, because they were surrounded by 'savages.'" (Source: Daily Bruin, University of California at Los Angeles)[15].

In The New York Times book review published October 31, 2004, Liesl Schillinger wrote that Coulter's How To Talk To A Liberal "is soiled with a gratuitous smear of American blacks who, by wearing kinte cloth and choosing to call themselves African-Americans, Coulter says, express pride in their slavetrading ancestors back in Africa."[16] Supporters contend that in context, Coulter's remarks were accurate, in that she was saying that liberals are hypocrites for calling for the elimination of the Confederate flag (which many liberals call racist), while celebrating the "diversity" of Kwanzaa:

"And why does native African kinte cloth get a free pass[from liberals]? It is a historical fact that American slaves were purchased from their slave masters in Africa, where slavery exists in some parts to this day. Indeed, slavery is the only African institution America has ever adopted. But while some Americans express pride in their slave-trading ancestors by calling themselves "African-Americans" and donning African garb, pride in Confederate ancestors is deemed a hate crime. Perhaps, in a bid for the Catholic vote, Democrats could demand that those Masonic symbols be removed from the Great Seal of the United States. And how about the American eagle? The eagle is a bird of prey and hence offensive to rodents, a key Democrat constituency. " Coulter on a Religious Cult, White Separatists, and Domestic Terrorists Coulter has frequently criticized the government's handling of radical separatists. She described members of the Branch Davidians at the Waco compound as "harmless American citizens" [17] after the bulk of the group was immolated in the fire started during the FBI raid (the cause of the fire is in dispute). Likewise, she berates what she calls the "unprovoked government assault" and "murder" at Ruby Ridge. [18]

In an interview with George Gurley, Coulter said, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." (Coulter, August 26, 2002) Melik Kayan of The Wall Street Journal described the statement and others she has made as "tongue-in-cheek agitprop". [19] When later asked by John Hawkins if she regretted that statement, Coulter replied: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters'." [20] However, Eric Alterman of The Nation and MSNBC.com, and many other critics were not amused. While acknowledging that "Coulter jokes about McVeigh blowing up the Times", Alterman still found the comment offensive, calling Coulter a "terrorist apologist" and "ideological comrade" of McVeigh due to their similar statements about the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents. [21]