"Liberals hate America.""Liberals hate society."

"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take more of our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race."

"Liberals seek to destroy sexual differentiation in order to destroy morality."

All I can say is that she's onto us. Ann Coulter that is. The above quotes were lifted from Chapter Two ("Ann Coulter: Nutcase") of Al Franken's new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." I got them from Franken's book rather than straight from Coulter because I would never, ever, ever buy one of her books, even if Barnes & Noble paid me to take home a copy. Not that they'd need to; Coulter's material tends to do quite well.

Here's one more of her delicious quotes - this one culled from a column (I use the term extremely loosely) of hers archived at www.townhall.com: "Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites."

You know what, Ann? I take offense at that. I may be a coward, a philanderer, a liar and a weasel, but I assure you I have never dodged a draft.

And one more thing: As a little experiment, I took the text from the five most recent Coulter (or as I call her, "The Shrieking Wraith Queen") articles archived at the aforementioned site and pasted them into what became a 12-page Word document (as you can imagine, it was not a document that was particularly keen on affirmative action). Then I searched for the word "liberals." "You're always telling everyone the woman has no real ideas other than her raging, all-consuming hatred for liberals," I told myself, "so why not test your theory?"

The result? 29 hits. Point Jesse. That means that, if we take these five most recent columns to be representative of her work (another term I'm using quite loosely), then she averages just under six uses per column. Where would this woman be without us America-hating liberals? As we've made her millions of dollars, the least she could do is keep secret our plans to destroy this country.

There are lots of Ann Coulters out there, unfortunately. There is very little pure discourse in this country anymore. It is a nation of hotheaded pundits, and the important thing for Brandeis students to realize is that they come in all shapes and sizes.

I'm not just talking about the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world, either. Michael Moore is an excellent example of someone who uses lots of the dirty tricks we tend to attribute to conservatives. Check out www.spinsanity.org, a truly excellent and truly nonpartisan site dedicating to rooting out examples of dishonest and unfair discourse (they have extensive sections devoted to both Coulter and Moore), to read about the distortions that seem to pop up in all of his work, from "Roger and Me" to Dude, "Where's My Country?"

I was a Moore fan when "Bowling for Columbine" came out. I even read "Stupid White Men." In retrospect, I should have suspected something. Take, for example, this quote from the online-only chapter of "Stupid White Men:" "What if there is no 'terrorist threat?' What if Bush and Co. need, desperately need, that "terrorist threat" more than anything in order to conduct the systematic destruction they have launched against the U.S. Constitution and the good people of this country who believe in the freedoms and liberties it guarantees?"

I consider myself pretty far to the left. I can't stand the majority of Bush's policies, and I desperately want him booted out of office next year, but it's nonetheless hard not to condemn a statement like this one. Moore protects himself with the "what-if", but it is unfair to suggest what he suggests - that Bush has simply whipped up a phantom threat to pursue his own ends - without including very strong evidence to support it, which he does not.

This kind of broad, generalized attack does nothing to promote honest discussion between the right and the left. All it does is add another screaming head to a cacophony that never accomplishes anything. Anyone who thinks that politics in this country boil down to "liberals are right and conservatives are wrong" or "conservatives are right and liberals are wrong" is naave. It is never that simple.

It's pretty obvious why people like Moore and Coulter are so successful. It feels great to read something that confirms everything you believe and that paints the world in black and white. There will always be people who are happy to revel in these feelings and who are self-assured enough to never question the self-appointed leaders of their particular ideology.

But the fact is that you don't really learn anything from pundits like Moore and Coulter. Al Franken is an exception because, despite the obsequiousness he displays towards the Democratic Party and Bill Clinton in general, the focal points of his arguments tend to actually involve policy analysis.

Moore is good at throwing startling numbers at you (numbers that, according to the various critics that Spinsanity has archived, are often inaccurate or somehow misrepresentative), and Coulter is good at liberal-bashing and using her piercing wails as a means of alerting those in a five-mile radius to oncoming disaster, but neither has much to contribute to a reasonable, fact-based dialogue.

In the case of Moore, it's too bad - for a while I thought he would be an excellent candidate to be part of the voice that the post-Sept. 11 left has so consistently lacked. Other than a few examples like Franken, however, it's back to the drawing board until someone emerges who is willing to transcend what has become a nation of idiots hurling invectives at each other.