Lying in Ponds

In Joe Conason’s note earlier this week, he strongly argues that he should not be compared to Ann Coulter:

As you surely know, Ann regularly smears all Democrats and liberals as traitorous, immoral, and hateful.

In the introduction to my book Big Lies, I placed special emphasis on rejecting that kind of ugliness:

“Unlike Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, I also don’t believe that my political adversaries are uniformly no good, or un-American, or greedy, or bigoted, or stupid. I shouldn’t have to say this but I know from personal experience that generosity, compassion, and wisdom cross all partisan and ideological boundaries.”

On this point, I certainly agree with Mr. Conason. Last year I described Ms. Coulter’s commentary as a toxic blend of three elements — partisanship, incivility and dishonesty:

Why do I spend so much time criticizing Ann Coulter? She has intelligence and wit, but her punditry achieves a trifecta which I believe is unprecedented:

1. As Lying in Ponds has documented in painful detail, Ms. Coulter has been the most partisan pundit evaluated for two years running, despite the fact that high partisan scores are more difficult for conservative pundits during this time of Republican-dominated government and a severe Democratic bogeyman shortage.
2. Ann Coulter is the most uncivil of any pundit on our roster — no one else is even close. The Time article mentions some examples of her outrageous statements; I’m still flabbergasted by the time she “joked” that Gray Davis and Al Gore should have been killed in Vietnam. A while back I proposed a civility scale, characterizing the Coulter end of the scale as “My political opponents should be dead, or at least in prison.”
3. Ann Coulter is remarkably manipulative and dishonest, in spite of Mr. Cloud’s statement that he didn’t find many outright Coulter errors. For a serious treatment of Ms. Coulter’s deceptions, one doesn’t have to rely on an ideological outfit like Media Matters — just go to Spinsanity’s Coulter section and start reading.

While Mr. Conason vehemently criticizes Republicans, I’ve seen no evidence of the incivility and dishonesty which makes Ann Coulter so notorious. Partisanship is a separate matter; I’ll discuss that in a future post.

Yesterday I received this interesting e-mail from one of our columnists, Joe Conason:

Your site recently came to my attention. Having checked it out, I find its assessment of my work puzzling at best and highly misleading at worst. You seem to suggest that your method is statistical (meaning “objective”) when it is purely subjective — and in my view highly partisan as well.

Last week in Salon, I urged the Senate to confirm President Bush’s nominee for CIA director. That column was highly critical of Bush but endorsed a Republican nominee who has been attacked by many Democrats and liberals, especially in the blogosphere. The week before, I praised Bush’s position on immigration and gave him full credit for sincerely welcoming Hispanics, but yes, I criticized him and the GOP in that column as well. Last year I wrote a column pointing out that most of the judges who had ruled against the Republican leadership’s position in the Terri Schiavo case happen to be
Republican appointees. Your Procrustean “methodology” doesn’t accommodate those nuances very well.

Of course, I don’t claim to be neutral with regard to party or ideology. I also don’t have any reason to care whether you agree with me or like my writing. But because your site pretends to be nonpartisan, I think I should set the record straight.

Leaving aside the columns and stories I’ve written criticizing Democrats both individually and as a group, I would point out that I’ve praised or defended Republicans on many occasions. Among them, off the top, have been Ronald Reagan, Orrin Hatch, Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Bill
Kristol, William F. Buckley, Jr., Jack Kemp, Bob Barr, John Warner, Lindsey Graham, Harold (Ace) Tyler, Jr., Richard Lugar, Harvey Pitt, Pete Domenici, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Peter King.

In December I wrote the following about the Cunningham and Abramoff affairs:

“Indeed, thoughtful Republicans are well aware that the typical complaints and excuses proffered by their leaders and pundits sound utterly false these days. This swelling tsunami of scandal cannot be attributed to partisan enemies or the ‘liberal media.’

“The Abramoff schemes were aired in public hearings chaired by Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican. The Cunningham scams came to light in a brilliant investigation by the conservative Copley News Service, whose featured columnists include Jack Kemp and Phyllis Schlafly. The criminal prosecutions of Mr. Scanlon, Mr. Cunningham, and many others yet to be indicted are the work of prosecutors answerable to a Republican Attorney General.

“Has the capital been infected by a ‘culture of corruption’? That culture has existed for well over a century, in both parties, at least since Mark Twain described Congress as America’s only native criminal class. Before the Republicans won control of the House in 1994, its Democratic overlords had certainly proved capable of self-dealing and misconduct. A few of them went to jail, too.

“What has happened since then seems unprecedented, however–at least during the postwar era. The sale of influence has been institutionalized in ways that earlier generations of politicians never imagined. Friends of Newt Gingrich–not a morally squeamish man–say he is dismayed. Members of the generation he brought to power are not revolutionaries but grifters, who have made a bad situation much worse.”

That viewpoint scarcely differs from those expressed by the Weekly Standard editors, David Brooks, Matthew Continetti, and other Republican and conservative commentators.

By contrast, I doubt that you could compile a list of Democrats defended or praised by Ann Coulter — or for that matter find any column or remark that praises a Democrat for anything, supports a Democratic nominee or official, or credits any Democrat for sincere motives. As you surely know, Ann regularly smears all Democrats and liberals as traitorous, immoral, and hateful.

In the introduction to my book Big Lies, I placed special emphasis on rejecting that kind of ugliness:

“Unlike Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, I also don’t believe that my political adversaries are uniformly ‘no good,’ or un-American, or greedy, or bigoted, or stupid. I shouldn’t have to say this but I know from personal experience that generosity, compassion, and wisdom cross all partisan and ideological boundaries.”

Yet your site rates me as far more partisan than Coulter! Obviously I’m much less partisan than she is, and certainly no more partisan than Goldberg, Steyn, Krauthammer, or any of the other hardline conservatives whose “ratings” on your site are better.

In short, your purported “system” sucks.

If for any reason you wish to post this letter on your site, I hope you will be honorable enough to post it in full rather than quoting it selectively. Based on what I’ve seen on the site so far, however, my expectations are realistically low.

I’ll respond to Mr. Conason’s comments over the next few days, as time allows.

You know that lightning has to hit somewhere, sometime, but it’s still a shock when it strikes nearby. Paul Krugman’s 593rd New York Times column yesterday was his very first “crossover”. Here at Lying in Ponds, we’ve defined a crossover as a substantive column (at least five non-neutral partisan references) which leans toward the pundit’s least favorite political party. “Talk Show Joe” contains 16 negative references to Joe Lieberman, but only 12 negative Republican and 1 positive Democratic references. That may not sound like much of a tilt, but in his small handful of previous close calls, a modest amount of criticism of Democrats had always been exceeded by more criticism of Republicans (e.g. “The $600 Billion Man” in 2005).

But this anti-Lieberman column is a huge departure for Mr. Krugman. He has very carefully limited criticism of Democrats for over six years, for example by completely avoiding the use of inconvenient words such as “Marc Rich”, “Sharpton” and “Torricelli”. The 16 negative Lieberman references in this one column compare to yearly totals of only 21, 16, 21, 13, 18 and 18 negative references to all Democrats in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, respectively. Remember also that Mr. Krugman made only three individual negative references to Bill Clinton during the entire last year of his presidency. So what does it mean? I have no idea, but it’s been an unusual year. Molly Ivins wrote her first crossover earlier this year, and crossovers by Ann Coulter, once the gold standard of extreme partisanship, have become almost routine.

From referrer logs, I see that our Lying in Ponds partisanship rankings were invoked in a comment thread at Ann Althouse’s blog. One of the commenters noted the fact that Democratic partisanship scores are far higher than the Republican scores, interpreting it to mean that the Democratic pundits are actually more partisan. But last year I split the list into Democratic and Republican “divisions” because it became apparent that the very lopsided current political situation (complete Republican control of the White House and Congress), coupled with the very controversial Bush administration, has resulted in an uneven playing field. I’m confident that the rankings are meaningful when comparing the partisanship of Molly Ivins to Richard Cohen, or of Mark Steyn to David Brooks, but I don’t think we can legitimately draw a conclusion about whether Joe Conason or Ann Coulter are more partisan, because I don’t have data on a political era which was tilted in the other direction.

In yesterday’s column ($) on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, Paul Krugman seems to come up a couple of paragraphs short; he recycles two concepts from earlier columns. From yesterday:

And that’s why when it comes to actual policy as opposed to politics, the Bush administration has turned out to have the reverse Midas touch. Everything it gets its hands on, from the reconstruction of Iraq to the rescue of New Orleans, from the drug benefit to the reform of the C.I.A., turns to crud.

Compare that to his column last October ($):

The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse: everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief, from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to crud.

Another golden oldie is his “never, ever” formulation:

And Mr. Bush never, ever admits mistakes.

It was used in April 2002:

In case you haven’t noticed, this administration never, ever admits making a mistake . .

And in June 2002:

As I’ve noted before, the Bush administration has an infallibility complex: it never, ever, admits making a mistake.

And in July 2002:

Another is Mr. Bush’s infallibility complex: to back off on privatization would be to admit, at least implicitly, to a mistake — and this administration never, ever does that.