hy·per·bo·le: Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Tonight, I would like to rant about Ann Coulter.  My Ann Coulter history is actually quite sad.  The kind of sad you experience when you first learn that Santa Claus isn't real or the world isn't flat.  I have actually read several Ann Coulter books.  Not cover to cover but probably 30 chapters spread out over three of her books.  A friend of mine had a few of her earlier books laying about and I picked them up and thought, "Wow!  This woman is hilarious!  She's making the liberal argument through the use of extreme hyperbole".  When I found out she was serious, I actually cried a little.  This, of course, was before she was famous (or is "infamous" a more appropriate word?) and she had just a few cult followers.  Do you understand my Santa-Claus-sadness now?

Today, Ann Coulter has a large following of people that support statements like, "You will find liberals rooting for savages against civilization," and "Marriage is not civil right.  You're not black".  In the wise words of Sheldon Cooper, "What fresh hell?"

Please now imagine my glee when she posted this update to her blog.

First, my least important point: "Got Racism?"  The early 90's called and they want their dated reference back.  Who killed Alexander Hamilton?  Click here to find out!

Second, and on topic this time:  Coulter alleges that Chris Matthews, the liberal host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, has declared the words "apartment" and "Chicago" as racist.  True to her asinine methods of making declarative statements and failing to cite them, she provides no link or even dates for when these statements were made.  But fear not!  I found the transcript of Hardball from August 30th 2012 where Chris Matthews is discussing the RNC with his guests.  The word "Chicago" is said three times during the entire transcript and here they are:

MATTHEWS: They [RNC Speakers] can keep saying Chicago, by the way. Have you
noticed? They keep saying Chicago. That sends that message, this guy [President Obama] is
helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods, screwing us in the burbs.

HEILEMANN: There`s a lot of black people in Chicago.

Need some context?  They are talking about the RNC speeches.  They do not declare the word "Chicago" as racist.  Careful Ann, if you use your horde of flying monkeys as fact checkers you are bound to have errors.  The only mention of Chris Matthews ever saying the word "apartments" is racist is in Coulter's blog post and where others have copied it to their blogs.  Note:  If you can find the Chris Matthews+apartments+racist comment, I'll happily amend this post.

Sadly, we must now, in the spirit of fairness, talk about Chris Matthews saying, "They [RNC Speakers] keep saying Chicago".  Don't make me do this Chris, I love you and your crazy liberal rants but I also love when people use 100% of the truth.  The ONLY mention of Chicago during any of the speeches was by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.  Here's the transcript.  Please note my use of caps-lock on the word "only".  That was it.  Only that one mention.  I reviewed all the speeches from every RNC speaker with the help of ctrl+f.  I'm declaring the one mention based on speeches only and with the assumption that the presenters were doing their jobs and presenting vs. speech-ing.

Is this a petty thing to latch onto?  I don't think so.  This is but one example of Ann Coulter's abuse of facts and truth.  Al Franken devoted an entire chapter to her in "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them".   With her books, appearances and blogs she makes unfounded declarative statements that lead people astray.  Coulter's followers base their vote on what she and her fellow political commentators say and probably never bother to locate the truth.  That is detrimental to our government and our election process and I, at least, find it very insulting.