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By Root 686 0

bureau chief Evan Thomas “is the son of Norman Thomas, a four-time Socialist candidate for president.” Actually, Norman Thomas was the Socialist candidate six times, running first in 1928 with a radical proposal for something called “Social Security.” It’s odd that Coulter understates the number of times that Thomas was the Socialist party nominee, because that would make her argument that much stronger. If Norman Thomas had been Evan Thomas’s father. Which he was not.

Now, in fairness to Coulter, this kind of research is tough to do. I asked TeamFranken how someone might be able to find out something like that. There were a number of suggestions. Google search. Nexis search. Go into The New York Times archives for the obit. Then one of the kids hit on a simple, yet quite brilliant idea. Why not call Evan Thomas?

Just for future reference, Ann, here’s a transcript of my call with Evan Thomas:

ME: Evan, thank you for taking my call.

EVAN THOMAS: No problem, Al. What’s up?

ME: Was Norman Thomas your father?

EVAN: No.

That sounds simple enough. But to protect my reputation for thoroughness, I didn’t let Evan off the hook quite so fast.

ME: Are you sure?

EVAN: Yes.

ME: And your father? What was his name?

EVAN: Evan Thomas, Sr. I’m a junior.

ME: Uh-huh? And your father, Evan Thomas, Sr., did he ever run for president?

EVAN: No. He was in publishing.

ME: And you’re sure?

EVAN: Yes. Al, is this about that Ann Coulter thing?

ME: Yeah.

EVAN: I heard about that. Is there something wrong with her?

Yes, there is. Particularly considering that when going after the book publishing industry, Coulter complains that “liberal jeremiads make it to print without the most cursory fact-checking.” (Which reminds me, I really should be fact-checking this thing as I go along.)i

Actually, I do take great pains in my research. In my last book of this nature, a little number one New York Times best-seller entitled Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, only one claim was arguably inaccurate, and I am pleased to be the first person to point it out publicly. In writing the book, I cited preliminary findings from a study by Kathleen Hall Jamieson regarding the political literacy of radio talk show listeners. In the final version of the study, the findings showed that people who listened regularly to political talk radio were able to identify the President more frequently than I had given them credit for. I regret the error.

Even John Fund, Limbaugh’s ghostwriter on The Way Things Ought to Be, acknowledged to me, a bit grudgingly, that I had done an honest, though thoroughly vicious, job on his guy.

Coulter, however, has spawned a cottage industry of Slander debunkers, some of whom—dailyhowler.com, spinsanity.org, and Salon.com—I am cribbing from.

Coulter’s defense, heard in countless appearances on talk shows, is “I have footnotes,” or “There are thirty-five pages of footnotes,” or “I have 780 footnotes,” or “It’s in the footnotes.” There’s a big emphasis on footnotes. Which brings me to:

How to Lie with Footnotes

HOW TO LIE WITH FOOTNOTES #1:

• DON'T HAVE FOOTNOTES

Ann Coulter doesn’t have 780 footnotes in Slander. She has zero footnotes. None. Not one footnote. She does have thirty-five pages of endnotes. Footnotes are easy to reference. They’re at the bottom, or the “foot,” of the page.2

Endnotes are much harder to reference.ii If you are using your “footnotes” to lie, make them endnotes.

HOW TO LIE WITH FOOTNOTES #2:

• HAVE 780 OF THEM

Coulter knows that her readers, the ones who buy her books out of an obsessive need to read stuff that reconfirms everything they already know or think they know, are probably not going to check one, let alone 780, of her endnotes.

Let me illustrate how Coulter exploits this simple principle of lying with footnotes (endnotes) from page 12 of Slander. This is a good one, and in a way, sort of sums up everything you need to know. (Just so there’s no confusion, the endnote numbers are hers.)

After Supreme Court