Recent Evidence that Horowitz Has Lost It

David Horowitz is getting weirder and weirder. First, on the August 19th Crossfire, DH said, “Ten percent of a slave’s wages were unpaid labor because the slave, after all, got food, clothing, and housing.” Ugh. Thanks to Jim Capozzola for alerting me to this.

I’m also flummoxed by the fact that DH would link to the recent profile of Ann Coulter in the New York Observer. The teaser line for the link is a quote by Coulter: "It is a good thing, not a bad thing, to be attacked by the enemy." The quotation actually starts with Coulter saying, “Excellent. Excellent. “ (In my mind’s eye, I see Coulter rubbing her hands together like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons while she said it).

Although the article is sympathetic to Coulter, it doesn’t make Coulter look good—namely because it uses Coulter’s own words. First, it has the already notorious quote: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." This is a depraved, moronic statement. It’s one thing for a foo-foo babe from New Canaan to go native and develop militia chic, but when she expresses sympathy for the activities of racist criminals like Randy Weaver, the mass-murdering Branch Davidians, and McVeigh, it should raise serious questions to her advocates. As far as I know, it hasn’t.

As the Daily Howler notes, the author of the Observer piece, like many reviewers of Slander, has footnote fetish:

There are 780 footnotes in the back of Slander, and so far, Ms. Coulter said, only two minor, irrelevant errors have surfaced. "‘Do you realize what this means?’" she said she told her agent. "This means the rest of this book is true! This is scandalous!"

Well not so fast. I don’t know what two minor, irrelevant errors she’s referring to, but there are many errors, none of which are minor or irrelevant. I started fact checking and found several just in the first few pages (other criticisms of the book can be found on my web site between June and August). The Daily Howler found many others (click here, here, here, here, here, and here). Dr. Limerick has a good comprehensive list of over 100 errors in the book. In fact, a major newspaper interviewed me about Coulter’s lies; I’ll let you know when the article is published.

8/26 UPDATE: Here is the article.