This Time, She's Right

I am not an Ann Coulter fan.  Her tone is nasty, and way too many of her comments are significantly over the line.  The New York Times reaps much criticism from me, but this comment is simply not appropriate:

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Still, once in a while, Coulter can come up with a good column.  Today she produces a column that fits right into that category.

Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services. Allen later became Bush's domestic policy adviser, meeting with the president several times a week.

In 2003, Bush nominated Allen to a federal judgeship on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which nomination was then blocked by the party that wouldn't exist without black votes. Deploying their usual strategy against black Republicans, Democrats raised questions about Allen's "legal credentials": Democrat-ese for "He's black, so he's probably not very smart." Allen went to Duke Law School, where he was remembered fondly by law professor Walter Dellinger, later Clinton's solicitor general.

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

But since Allen was accused of stealing from department stores a few weeks ago, the Times has mentioned him in seven articles -- including a major front page article on Monday, coverage more appropriate to the first moon landing. This makes Allen the first black alleged thief whose photo has ever appeared in the New York Times.

Allen isn't even working for the Bush administration anymore. Yet the Times is wallowing in his agony. I've never seen people enjoy another person's private pain so much -- at least not since a prosecutor started investigating Rush Limbaugh for taking too many back pain pills.

Comments

[Rilla]

Allen had a box seat as a guest of the first lady at Bush's State of the Union address, and Coulter doesn't know who he is?

[Peg]

I watched the State of the Union address, yet I would not have been aware that Allen was the person in the box.

Doesn't seem to take away from Coulter's primary point about news coverage and this administration.