The latest media furor over Ann Coulter - best-selling author of the No. 1 best-selling book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" - centers on reports that she suggested "fragging" Rep. John Murtha. Those reports are blatantly untrue, but that hasn't stopped such Coulter critics as Editor & Publisher magazine from spreading the falsehood under the headline "Latest Ann Coulter Outrage: 'On 'Fragging' John Murtha."
In an e-mail interview by John Hawkins at the Right Wing News Web site, Coulter was asked to give her opinion of certain people, among them anti-war Congressman Murtha, D-Pa. In a style familiar to journalists who have quizzed her via e-mail, Coulter responded with her characteristic single brief line: "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'"
That's it. That's all she wrote.
She did not suggest that Murtha, long out of the military service, should be killed by a grenade because his men considered him deserving of death -- which is what fragging means -- she was describing him as the kind of leader soldiers have good reason to distrust.
That however is not how the Coulter haters at E&P and the rest of the liberal mainstream media portrayed her remarks - universally they accused her of wanting to frag Murtha.
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This in spite of the fact Hawkins, the recipient of the e-mail, told E&P that she meant no such thing. Said Hawkins: "Although I wouldn't have phrased that like Ann did, I would say in her defense that in that quote she didn't say that she wanted to kill Murtha, she'd didn't say that she thought he should be killed, and she didn't say that she thought Murtha should have been fragged. Is that hair splitting?"
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