Jan 19, 2008 By Al Owens 4 min read

Back in the early 1980s, I worked as a reporter at KPNX-TV in Phoenix, Ariz. It was located at 1101 North Central Avenue, just off the downtown area. Walking distance north of that station is a beautifully adorned building at 2500 North Central – the world headquarters of Phelps Dodge Corporation.

I remember that despite its shiny façade, there was a bit of ugliness going on inside Phelps Dodge back then. Something that may have altered the way corporations treat their workers today.

A strike by Phelps Dodge workers eventually lead to the decertification of the steelworkers local union, and since then the company has placed even further demands on its workers.

In 1996, despite its record-breaking profits, the company held fast to its demands for a four-year wage freeze and lower retirement and health care benefits. The workers were forced to give in to demands, thanks to the weakening of their negotiating position that began when they lost their union in the mid-1980s.

That, according to Ann Coulter, is something worthy of praise for her father whom she claims was behind the union-busting at the time.

This comes from a woman who claims to respect the hard work of workers, but who has a troubling disdain for their unions.

In her last column, which is really a eulogy for her father who died recently, she understandably gives him high praise. John Vincent Coulter seems to have been quite a fellow. He’d been a self-made man who fought hard for the things in which he believed.

Yet, his daughter still can’t seem to find a way to free herself from her heated rhetoric long enough to simply offer her father what would otherwise be a worthwhile tribute.

I’ll admit – no, strike that – I’m proud to be a liberal. But I’ll also admit that I don’t think like a liberal when I’m engaging in activities that have nothing to do with politics. I’m not a liberal when I watch a Steelers game. I’m just a fan. I don’t care what political party Hines Ward belongs to. I just want him to catch the ball when it’s thrown to him.

I would hope that if I wrote a tribute to my deceased father, he would (if he could ever read it) consider it to be suitable for framing. I can’t imagine writing a harsh word about anybody – that would interfere with my feelings of admiration for him.

Ann Coulter, for some bizarre reason, felt compelled to honor her father, while at the same time, taking cheap shots at her usual liberal targets, John Edwards and Ted Kennedy.

The Phelps Dodge section of that column, by the way, isn’t supported by the facts I’ve read about the union busting. There may have been some violence, but there were also some very questionable governmental activities that helped the company free itself of its obligations to its workers.

Namely, the Arizona State Criminal Intelligence Systems Agency, which had engaged in compiling intelligence files on union members and their supporters, in the interest of a company that had shown it had had enough of unions.

That’s the kind of activities that smell a lot like those warrantless wiretaps, of which hard-line conservatives like Coulter are so fond. They’re keeping us safe, don’t you know – as long as you don’t throw in unimportant documents like the U.S. Constitution to the mix.

I now can truly understand Coulter’s recent fixation with trying to rehabilitate the tarnished image of Joseph McCarthy. I know that her father had been, too, a fighter against communist influences in this country.

While her father lay dying, and without any hope for his recovery, she was still trying to please him. When my father was facing death, I did the very same thing.

Yet, to end her column with the words, even in jest, that, “Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop laughing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for me,” makes me shudder with the possibility that a childish joke will be included in the only public memory many people will have of a man whom she obviously loved.

Edward A. Owens of Uniontown is Webmaster of “Red Raider Nation: Where Champions Live.” E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net