Sadly, No, Sarcasm and Ignorance Don’t Mix
Sadly, No holds this truth to be self-evident that every thug who attacks American interests should be entitled to all the same constitutional protections as the ordinary blokes who live here, and takes Human Events Online to task for suggesting otherwise. But the real kicker is the dumb aleck heading:
Guess they studied Con Law with Ann Coutler
Ann “Coutler” (Coulter) studied con law, along with everything else law, at the University of Michigan, a top ten law school, made law review, and later clerked for a federal appellate judge. Obviously, not everyone who studied con law with Ann Coulter made law review or got a federal clerkship, but they did all get in to a top tier law school, so they couldn’t have done too badly by most people’s standards. [Full disclosure: I didn't get in to University of Michigan myself, though I was waitlisted there. As a likely victim of the affirmative action program the Supremes upheld a couple years back, I had to settle for Boalt Hall instead.]
Mr. No, however, finds Coulter’s legal (or at least constitutional) education not only lacking, but so obviously bad that its badness extends far beyond her, tainting anyone who may have studied with her in law school. One possible explanation is that Mr. No is a bit of a snob, whose own law degree came from Yale, where he served not merely as a lowly law review editor but the chief editor, before going on to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice rather than that piddly appellate riff-raff. Any others?
UPDATE: The least consequential problem of this post, the spelling of Ann Coulter’s surname, has been fixed. Has the logic underlying the entry? Sadly, no.
UPDATE x2: In response to this post, Sadly, No has just promoted Coulter from the rank of constitutional idiot, which she’s not, to ” world’s leading constitutional scholar,” which she’s also not, by pegging her to a controversy that has nothing to do with the Constitution. What did I say about mixing sarcasm with ignorance?
February 18th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Guess they studied Con Law with Ann Coulter
Human Events Online asks: Do you recall voting for these laws? [...] AL QAEDA GETS A LAWYER: Thanks to liberal judges, foreign enemy combatants now have access to our courts. Look for them to demand the right to a lawyer,…
February 18th, 2005 at 4:52 am
I would imagine that crack was not really intended to disparage the quality of the dear Ms. Coulter’s legal education, but rather simply to associate the Human Events writers with her bigoted, extremist views (“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity” and so forth.). If I were going to hazard a guess, I might even say that Mr. No probably didn’t even have the University of Michigan in mind at all when writing his post. It would be like if you were talking about the director of an anti-war documentary and said “I guess he studied film with Michael Moore.”
February 18th, 2005 at 6:58 am
I’m sure he didn’t have U Mich in mind, but he was disparaging the legal credentials of the writer in question, not accusing him of making impish, Coulter-esque remarks about anybody. So your analogy would work if I were to say “I guess he studied film with Michael Moore” about the director of a documentary that I thought was poorly made (which I don’t think about Moore’s films), and which had nothing to do with Michael Moore beyond the fact that (1) I didn’t like it, and it (2) it made some point Michael Moore would be likely to agree with and (3) it was produced by a company that also produces Michael Moore movies. In which case, it would be pretty lame of me to say such a thing, wouldn’t it?
February 18th, 2005 at 11:40 am
There’s no shame in a law school waitlist. You know where I was waitlisted ;)
February 18th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Good thing we have Human Events Online!
Don’t take our word for it — take the word of the world’s leading constitutional scholar, Ann Coulter: For example, in recent issues of HUMAN EVENTS… I also read the following quote. “People are the cause of all the problems….
February 20th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
‘Ann “Coutler” (Coulter) studied con law, along with everything else law, at the University of Michigan, a top ten law school, made law review, and later clerked for a federal appellate judge.’
Which is what makes the way she acts so sad. She knows better.
February 20th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Knows better than what? Coulter’s been known to say a lot of things that offend the left, and some that offend the right, but can you name a specific instance in which the Constitution said X and Ann Coulter said the Constitution says Y (where X != Y)?
February 20th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
‘Knows better than what? ‘
Its not about her constitutional knowledge. But her ‘scholarship.’
February 20th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
OK. Care to elaborate?
February 20th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
She knows the value of substantiation and citation.
February 20th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Guess that means no?
February 20th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
No what? She knows the value of substantiation and citations in arguments, which makes her non-cited and non-substantiated assertions worse than if they were coming from some sort of a kook.
Basically, the fact that she has a non-kooky pedigree makes any of her kookisms more blameful than if she had been just a regular ole, well kook.
February 20th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
No concrete examples. It’s not as though you cited to any articles she attempted to pass off as “scholarship” which were inadquately cited, researched, etc.
February 20th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
Oh ok. Click my name. Its basically her trademark though. I thought it was obvious. ‘liberals are all commies that are wrong about everything’ and whatnot.
February 20th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Yawn.
February 20th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
You’re the one that dragged this out and wanted all sorts of specifics. I never promised it would be exciting. As Coulter surely knows, citing and substantiating are real boring.
February 21st, 2005 at 9:12 am
When did you graduate from Boalt? I’m class of ’02, and wondering if we were there at the same time. Also, can you believe we’re down to no. 13? I blame Dywer for his, um, inappropriate activities.
February 21st, 2005 at 10:08 am
Josh: I graduated in 1999, so we just missed each other. Speaking of Dwyer’s peccadillos, it sounds like you were there when it happened. Did you know Jennifer “I’m Anonymous” Reisch? Did she keep quiet about the issue then, or were rumors circulating the whole time?
February 21st, 2005 at 11:24 am
Actus: any actual substantiation would have been quite interesting. What was not interesting was the usual acthole hand-waving. Funny how you started the thread about Coulter supposedly “knowing better,” yet I’m the heavy for demanding some substantiation for the charge. As yet, I’ve received none, as expected.
February 21st, 2005 at 12:38 pm
I didn’t know her at all, and, checking my facebooks, I don’t recall ever seeing her. I asked around when the story broke and based on what the responses I received, the “incident” was common knowledge at the time (at least among her circle of friends), and it was never understood to be anything other than consensual.
February 21st, 2005 at 3:08 pm
‘Funny how you started the thread about Coulter supposedly “knowing better,” yet I’m the heavy for demanding some substantiation for the charge’
I put the link in my name. I put a different one this time. Sorry. I thought it was pretty common knowledge what Ann’s M.O. is: Outrageous lines, and not much backup. Maybe she got tired of all that cite checking as L.Rev. editor.
February 21st, 2005 at 3:26 pm
In this case, “common knowledge” means little more than “I think X, and so do most people I know, so why should I have to prove anything?” Did you really think that linking to one blogger who doesn’t like Ann Coulter was equivalent to documenting your common so-called knowledge? If so, why not cite to the same blog a second time, a third, etc. What else is a link to a second anti-Coulter blogger (Scoobie Davis, of all people) supposed to achieve?
Congratulations, Actus, you’ve just proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are at least two bloggers out there who don’t like Ann Coulter any more than you do. I’ll be generous: here are two more. It still doesn’t do a f’n thing to back up your claims, however..
February 21st, 2005 at 4:05 pm
‘What else is a link to a second anti-Coulter blogger (Scoobie Davis, of all people) supposed to achieve?’
Give you examples of lack of substantiation by Coulter. I don’t understand why this is so hard.
‘In this case, “common knowledge” means little more than “I think X, and so do most people I know, so why should I have to prove anything?”’
Ok, what is your estimation of how Coulter ranks in terms of ‘scholarship’?
February 21st, 2005 at 5:30 pm
You’re the one who made a claim, not me. Rather than back it up by documenting a single offense yourself, you’ve linked to a couple of web sites that make similar claims that they also don’t back up. You’ve given no actual examples yourself.
February 21st, 2005 at 7:17 pm
‘Rather than back it up by documenting a single offense yourself, you’ve linked to a couple of web sites that make similar claims that they also don’t back up’
I’m still not understanding your problem in reading the websites. Isn’t one of them a redacted version of coulter’s book?
Doesn’t one of them go into the problems with the citations?
What else do you need here? Is this much handholding normally required to show you things?
February 21st, 2005 at 7:38 pm
What I need is something remotely credible, not links to two, four, or any other number of cranks with agendas of their own. Or, as an alternative, you could admit that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
February 22nd, 2005 at 2:18 pm
“What I need is something remotely credible, not links to two, four, or any other number of cranks with agendas of their own”
Agendas are a bad thing in blogs? ok. Sorry for your time.
February 27th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
Actually, Ann Coulter wasn’t the editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review. She was an Articles Editor, which most of her biographies get right (but some don’t). You know this, but it’s confusing to non-law school students/alumni: Law Reviews and other legal journals place the title of “Editor” on almost all of their staff members, since the role of law students on them is to edit the articles (written by faculty members and practicioners) and notes (written by students).
Becoming an articles editor on the Michigan Law Review is no small task, however. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Coluter’s extremely well-versed in constitutional law. While much legal academic writing addresses constitutional issues, many law review articles – Michigan’s included – publish articles on international law and other areas in which the American constitution isn’t very prominent.
Full disclosure I’m a white male student at Michigan, and I’m more offended by yet another person blaming their rejection on our affirmative action program than I am about a snide comment on our Constitutional Law curriculum. (I am left-handed, but I’ve been told that did not grant me extra consideration). Further, I was rejected from Boalt, but from what I’ve learned about the school during the application process and as a student here, I’d say you haven’t settled at all. It’s a fine school, and you should be proud to go (or have gone) there.
February 27th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
First, if the University of Michigan Law School discriminates according to left vs. right-handedness, this is the first I’ve heard of it. It’s no secret that they discriminate by race, however, so if you are offended by “yet another person” saying so, then with all due respect, you really need to get a grip.
Second, no one said anything “snide” about your law school’s con law program. My snideness was directed at the schlock who belittled Coulter’s legal education while obviously not knowing a f’n thing about it. I don’t think even he was dumb enough to diss her legal education if he had known where it came from.
Third, if you had read my entry more carefully before commenting you’d have noticed that “actually” I never claimed was editor in chief of the Michigan Law Review, any more than I claimed she went to Yale or clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Fourth, last, and least, “settled” was tongue in cheek. I’d have picked Boalt over Michigan anyway, mostly because of the climate, but also because of the huge difference in tuition at the time. But there’s no question affirmative action pushed me down further on both institutions’ waiting lists than I otherwise would have been. It just turned out that in Boalt’s case it resulted in a minor inconvenience, while in Michigan’s it spelled the difference between being admitted and not being admitted. Sorry if hearing the truth “offends” you.
Congratulations on missing four points out of four. It takes a special talent to do that.