A book title like Anne Coulter´s is an insult to the idea of democracy, which basically calls for respect for other people´s opinion, even if you don´t share them. It is primitive to call someone a "liberal" and assume that everybody knows that being a "liberal" is a form of mental illness. The same goes for calling somebody a "conservative". Either a point stands rational criticism and analysis, or you can forget it - no matter what faction brought it up.

Comparing U.S. media with German ones, I can only confirm the Canadian comment: You Americans are one people deceived by news that are in turn either lousy, prejudiced, ignorant, or irrelevant (or all of this at the same time!).

The news coverage is deliberately designed to keep you uninformed or misinformed, to leave the powers that be in perfect control, and to lose interest in the complexities of world politics

No democratic nation can afford such abuse of its central element (press and information) for a long time without paying for it, and you are paying indeed:

1. You have an almost incorrigible image of stupidity and ignorance abroad, no matter where you go.

2. Your good intentions are alway questioned; you are meeting severe and determined opposition, even in cases when there is no objective necessity for opposition.

3. Ill-informed voters tend to make decisions based on misconceptions of reality. This is not a moral issue, but a practical one: continuing policies based on unrealistic assumptions and interpretations of situations aggravate whatever problem they tackle. Aggravation means that it will be more expensive and difficult to correct the mistake. If the correction is based on unrealistic assumptions again, you´re in a vicious circle. (Anybody thinking of Iraq here?)

But you do have some incredible long-hair ladies in the USA.....