Distorian would be more like it, but even that is charitable.
If you follow the link you will find a video of an interview with her about her book<i> Demonic.</i> From what I gather (no of course I haven't read it), it's supposed to be about the French Revolution. The distortion of history is nothing new, and Coulter is a high-price clown, Glen Beck in drag, and not to be taken seriously, but I blog about it here because the interview has great entertainment value, and it highlights most conspicuously the role of the bourgeois media.
The premise for the book is a preposterous lie. Coulter claims her friends are "really smart" and can expatiate about the Russian tsars and other historical topics, yet none of them had a clue about the French Revolution. So, she concluded, the liberals have commandeered the conflict and mischaracterized it in pursuit of their backward, wrong-headed agenda. The Revolution is perhaps the single most important event in history, and it would be difficult indeed to find a person who was well versed in world history but lacked any understanding of this seminal event. But she has got to sell the book...
Her basic themes are two: The French monarchy has been inaccurately and unfairly maligned; and all mobs are bad, even revolutionary ones. She cites the storming of the Bastille as an example.
Her interviewer, who continually refers to her as a "thinker," knowingly asks her how many prisoners were liberated from the Bastille. Six, she replies, as they both snicker in venal delight over how wrong the liberals have it.
The historiography on the Revolution, despite what Stretch Coulter would have you believe, is copious, too copious for anyone to ingest in its entirety, but I've read my share and I have never seen any other tally for the liberated political prisoners but seven. If she has unearthed some new information then I will stand corrected, but judging by the rest of the interview, I'm guessing that this is a mistake on her part.
And the blunder doesn't end there. The army had been called out by Coulter's favorite feudal dictator, Louis XVI, and the revolutionaries went to the Bastille because munitions were stored there. The battle wasn't to liberate prisoners (though that they also did), but to get those weapons.
Coulter also claims that one of the reasons the revolutionaries stormed the famous fortress was because they thought it was an "eyesore," and objected esthetically to the way the cannon were positioned.
I'm still laughing.
The host, who continually compliments the celebrity anorexic on her knowledge of the event, then asks her what "they" did to the guy who ran the place and just wanted to have a peaceful interaction with the mob? Coulter then almost accurately describes the man's dismemberment.
A peaceful interaction? The "guy who ran the place" worked for the king, and he understood that his life likely depended on his maintaining possession of those arms. At first he invited a handful of delegates from the assembled "mob" into the fortress to conduct negotiations. Opinions vary on what ensued, but when a detachment of the French Guard sent by Louis or one of his ministers arrived on scene, instead of reinforcing the defenders they mutinied and joined the revolutionaries. At this point a lengthy battle followed. The Bastille eventually fell to the revolutionaries.
It was the opinion of those who stormed the fortress that the guy "who ran the place" knew that reinforcements were coming and the negotiations were a stalling tactic. Whether this is true, and whether it was the army mutineers who were the source of this belief (be it true or not), is debated by real historians. In either case, he did eventually attempt to surrender, but the revolutionaries were of no mind for another round of negotiations, and brought him to summary justice. Defeat was costly for him.
The idea that that the defenders were peaceful is pure fiction. In fairness to the author, it was not she but the host who makes the moronic claim, but the "thinker" didn't correct him.
What's important about this is that the two propagandists are using their abuses to justify the repression of dissent. It is clear they have no concern for the truth. Coulter wants to sell books, but she could write about anything, the choice of subjects has relevance for contemporary politics. A tendentious version of the past is being used to mold the present, to control people and events. And the perpetrators of this treasonous black art must be exposed.
http://vimeo.com/25186029
