A World of Her Own

     Ann Coulter's "Why Liberals Behave the Way They Do" appears to be of a world where ad hominem attacks grow on trees and using specific facts is unnecessary. Going into the article with some prior knowledge of Ms. Coulter's tendencies, I attempted to remove her name from my consciousness as I read through, in hopes of remaining unbiased. It made no difference--her writing was classic Coulter cookie-cutter copy.

     Fallacies flowed through the text like an undammed river. Aside from the ad hominem attacks, straying away from her main point and the use of straw man arguments sent me careening across the logic-lacking land. Within the first few paragraphs, Coulter drastically shifted from attempting to make a point regarding what she perceives to be a shortcoming of the Democratic Party to simply berating the entirety of the Party. In the end, her piece failed to conclude her initial point; the topic clearly shifted to degrading the leftists who support the Affordable Care Act. Judging by this, there was an apparent lack of deductive reasoning.

     My editing of this text led me to attempting to add this heretofore missing conclusion to the landscape. Without doubt the most difficult part of the entire editing process, I found myself struggling to tie all of Coulter's loose ends together into a single cohesive sentence or paragraph. What I finally constructed was a closing statement that summarized the little text she had remaining while maintaining a stasis of value.

     An estimated 40% of the article managed to be left in its natural state without my direct influence. This is primarily the result of blatantly negative word choice seeded within statements that--not coincidentally--tended to be erroneous or fallacious overall. It seems as though, by my evaluation, she may have attempted to shade her illogical misgivings with shock value.

     Certain aspects I found difficult to flatly remove, such as the opening sentence regarding the release of her book on paperback. Similarly, quotes by Le Bon that seemed ill-used by Coulter were reworked rather than deleted, as they made up a large percent of the small overall number of--I assume--legitimate citations. I felt it was important to leave the scant amount of credible material I found, even if it meant difficult work-arounds were thus necessary.

     In a forest of misappropriated anger and limited factual information, I feel as though I managed to forge a path to moderate clarity at the very least. Revamped with a now-more-apparent stasis and thesis, Coulter's "Why Liberals Behave the Way They Do" can finally be read by centrist and left-leaning Americans without upsetting them. This adjustment on the whole is testimony to the sort of impact an author's understanding of rhetorical theories can have on a text. It's clear that Ann Coulter's world is in need of somebody with this particular knowledge.