Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter

no time to mention the media exemption when there are important stories to be run on courageous politicians like Senator John McCain, who champion the media’s utterly self-interested demand for campaign finance restrictions. Carrying water for the media is known as “fighting powerful interests”—powerful interests that are not quite powerful enough to prevent the entire media from erupting in joy at the mere mention of McCain’s name. The sinister, powerful interests McCain confronted were little old ladies sending $20 checks to the Christian Coalition. Even if the little old lady is Imelda Marcos, in politics power is information, and no special interest group in the history of the universe has wielded the power of the modern media in America.
    Despite all the hysterical news accounts of money corrupting politics, what liberals really believe is that the power to influence elections by persuading voters should reside exclusively with the media. Thus, complaining of the campaign fundraising by Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton in early 2000, Neal Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group told the Washington Post: “Hillary and Rudy are already in the paper every day.” 56 The media should be the sole purveyors of information about political campaigns.
    In the left’s doomsday scenario, the campaign finance laws would permit political speech by people who worry about taxes and crime, don’t have $200 million or a position with the elite media, or—God help us—have traveled overseas only three times. Liberals malign such people as “the rich.” Only the mind-boggling resources of the left could persuade so many people that these elitist snobs speak for the little guy.
     
     
    THREE
    How to Go from being a “jut-jawed maverick” to
    a “clueless neanderthal” in one easy step
     
    E xcerpt from a deposition of a staffer in Senator Bob Packwood’s office, 1975-1976:
    [I] entered his office....
    Senator Packwood was alone, and he immediately closed the door and did not say anything to me, but grabbed me and had me pinned backwards with my back to the wall. And before I could say anything—I was very shocked—he stuck his tongue in my mouth and was French kissing me, without ever asking me or saying anything, without any warning.
    He grabbed and embraced me and kissed me against my will. And I could not remove him from me for quite a while... - 1
    Senator Bob Packwood had been madly chasing, groping, and slobber-kissing female staff and lobbyists since at least 1969. 2 By his own heavy-breathing account, there were “22 staff members I’ve made love to and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.” 3
    All this was well known to Packwood’s feminist supporters for decades, but he was never exposed. Packwood was “good on women’s issues,” which consisted primarily of his enthusiasm for killing off anything that might result from one of his successful sexual conquests. 4 But things changed dramatically when feminists didn’t need him anymore.
    Back when the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League wanted Packwood’s pro-abortion vote, the establishment media could not produce enough luminous adjectives about the man. Invoking the blabocracy’s favorite words for utterly typecast tax-and-spend liberals, Pack-wood was called a “maverick” or a “gadfly.” He had “courage” and “political savvy.” There are literally hundreds of news items using these words in connection with Bob Packwood.
    With the searing insight and novelty of expression that makes the New York Times a giant among giants, that paper dubbed Packwood a “jut-jawed iconoclast.” Indeed, the Times blew through the whole arsenal of fawning adjectives on Packwood: “Audacity, individualism and political savvy have become Packwood trademarks.” 5 In fact his trademark was: Voting the editorial position of the New York Times. In the watchdog media’s typical