Posted on 06/08/2006 10:59:21 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I was ready to give up on Ann Coulter. Even as a fan and a strong conservative, I found her questioning of the 9/11 widows in Godless hysterical and heartless. I thought it sad that such a brilliant mind had become unhinged. Saying that the Jersey Girls, the four women who lost husbands at 9/11, were "enjoying" their husbands' deaths? Ann -- time for rehab.
But then I saw the response from Kristen Breitweiser and the other 9/11 widows. Despite myself, against myself, a small fissure found its way into my disappointment. Don't bring it up, I told myself. To question grieving people is an attack not on their politics but their personhood. It is beneath you. Let it go.
But the more I saw the Jersey Girls' press release, the more that fissure widened. They defended their criticism of the lack of preparation for 9/11 -- a lack they claim continues to this day -- and called for civil right oversight, stronger border security, and better defense at ports and airports. Before the list came this: "Contrary to Ms. Coulter's statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day."
I read that, and a thought came to mind. I tried to push it away, ignore it. But I simply could not get that line out of my mind: "there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive."
But I couldn't get around it.
What person describes the death of a loved one in such detail?
Think about it. Think about people you've loved who have died, and how they died. When I was in high school in the early 1980s a friend was killed in a devastating driving accident There was an open casket at the funeral, and afterwards me and a group of buddies went to the roof of one of their houses and sat there talking all night. We talked about football, girls, sadness, the weather, depression, our parents -- everything except what we saw in that coffin. To this day it's referred to as "the night Dale (not his real name) died." Ten years ago, my father died of cancer. I can hardly bring myself to say the word, much less describe what he looked like and went through in the last months. When I meet someone who had a loved one suffer a similar fate, the conversation always trails off when we mention our common story. One of us will mutter, "it's a terrible thing," then change the conversation.
Curse me, I know I'm going to hell for this: Why did the Jersey Girls describe the deaths of their husbands with such startling precision? "Men that we loved burned alive." My mind wanders back to the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. In one powerful episode that was recounted in Harper's magazine, the father of a girl who was killed when the plane went down asked about justice. He turned on the reporter and said, "How can there be any justice in this cruel world?" It is to make one weep. This poor soul gave no details, but delivered a powerful existential wail of pain: how can the cosmic scales of justice be righted when I've lost my girl? Think of that space in death (and the ineffable splendor of love) that unites us as humans created by God. It's the space that creates a zone of quiet respect, mystery, and even fear that stops us short of details when the death of a loved one comes up. We evade out of deference to the tragedy of death, its inevitability, and the idea that it is a mystery allowed by God that we may at some point get to understand. It is where we are equal as persons, and politics disappears.
To inspect the details of death, reveal them, announce them, is often the province of the propagandist or social activist. It's the gun control advocate who announces at the town meeting, "My son's brains were splattered all over me." The seatbelt champion showing slides of bodies in pieces. The reporter who will pick over every drop of blood spilled at Haditha.
It was the Paul Wellstone funeral.
When Ann Coulter doubted the 9/11 widows' grief, one way to prove her wrong would have been to respond not with a bullet-point memo about the failures of George Bush, but to simply say: Ann, you have entered a sacred space and violated it. We will not describe how our husbands died -- that is a silent place of pain between us and God. We have political differences with Miss Coulter, but we do share a common humanity. It is that humanity which she has soiled. We will pray for her, and for the United States of America.
Instead, they created a visual that no American doubts, or wants to contemplate. Not because we are cowards, but because we know the reality all too well. Our rage -- some of us anyway -- has hardened into steel resolve to see this through and support those fighting for us. One gets the sense that Breitweiser & Co. decided to rachet up the imagery to score political points. Saying our husbands died because we weren't prepared just doesn't pack the same punch as: they burned alive, and Bush could have prevented it -- and may cause more of it. One is philosophy, spirituality, and love of country. The other is politics.
Mark Gauvreau Judge is the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep: How I Became a Catholic Despite 20 Years of Catholic Schooling (Crossroad, 2005) and Damn Senators: My Grandfather and the Story of Washington's Only World Series Championship (Encounter, 2003).
Do you have a basis for saying the husbands of the Jersey girls were going to divorce them? There was a basis for criticizing Clinton's personal life. He had a long history of such behavior. It is not out of bounds to point out that Cindy Sheehan's family disagrees with what she is doing. However, to say nasty things about a relationship involving now deceased partners is just coarse.
Their subsequent behavior.
However, to say nasty things about a relationship involving now deceased partners is just coarse.
According to you, and liberals.
I'll stick with Ann.
I disagree with the author's interpretation of the meaning of such precision. I think he is well outside of logic on this. He (and Ann) may be correct about the Jersey Girls, but not for the "reason" he sets forth above.
Terrorist use innocent humans as targets and shields.Graet minds think alike!The left uses victims as targets and shields.
A common denominator of enemies of the Republic.
See also, from THIS recent thread:
Why Ann Coulter is right:
Kevin McCullough defends author for 9-11 widow comments
WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, June 9, 2006 | Kevin McCullough
Posted on 06/09/2006 12:42:21 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Liberals in America have been staging a new strategy on winning public-policy debates: Simply provide spokespeople that no one is allowed to respond to. Ann Coulter had the gall to challenge that and let loose with some direct observations in her newest best seller, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," and true to form, liberals have been fomenting in response.
The reason they are is not because Ann has broken some sacred respect that one should have for a grieving mother, wife or relative. Rather, the reason they are so outraged by this is because it stabs through the heart the strategy of hiding behind spokespeople who "can't be criticized..."
-- snip --
...Ann's criticism is legitimate. If liberals in America wish truly to have a debate on the issues that we all have strong emotions about, then stand and make the point, but don't hide behind those who are ineffective, unskilled and often wrong in their views, simply because they're victims.
For the last few weeks, Rep. Jack Murtha has been crisscrossing the television pundit circuit criticizing the brave Marines who fell under attack via an improvised explosive device, after which some women and children tragically ended up dead. The Marines claimed that they were fired upon and that those firing upon them did so from behind women and children being used as human shields. The jury is still out, but thus far Murtha has yet to present evidence that contradicts the Marines' account.
Liberals are using the exact same tactics today – firing upon people of faith who believe in God, who believe God's model for marriage is what society should promote, but they do so from behind victims against whom, they believe, no one would fire back. People like the Jersey Girls, Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan and Jack Murtha. They do so knowing that they would lose in substantive, equitable fair debates...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
That's not quite right either. They claim to have watched them burn to death.
You fools! [ROFLMAO] She's the reason why our administration has such a hard time getting things done. She's making money off of the very thing she's accusing the women who lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks. It's like she's feeding off of this war like a parasite. . . .
First the liberal insults her audience:
Anyone who falls for Coulter's rehtoric and actually believes she is representing the conservative mindset is a fool. I'd exect such inane stupidity from the liberal left, not our base. Certainly not my base of critical thinkers.
I address the poster: What do you mean "we", kimsoabe?
Then she insults the writer:
She is not a christian or a conservative or an American for that matter. She's a money grubbing wanna-be Rush Limbaugh, except she'd stoop as low as Satan to achieve the status Rush has achieved through actually making constructive points.
Amusing the inept use of the ad hominem with the mighty verb "is not" leading the charge of the argument.
Back to the reader:
Most of you side with Coulter because A) You think she's hot or B) She's a woman and thus she's 'speaking out!'.
And this is bad, how?
Then polishes off her argument with some fatuous commentary:
Let our soldiers and our true leaders and figureheads shine on for America and for VICTORY. VICTORY. . . America's Victory Overseas is What Matters People! Stay Focused!
Of course, such unhinged imagery serves well to illustrate why I'm happy this is an anonymous forum.
I'm not sure which is sillier: the post or the idea that the post would be persuasive.
he nails it.
No more to say.
Liberals love to use a coffin as a soap box.
Sorry if you're such a strung out Coulter fan, but calling people lefties for not agreeing with your heroine is absurd and quite frankly a MSM leftie tactic. And if me thinking she 's a wannabe Rush is insulting her, then so be it. The truth hurts.
You are right. Both of my parents have died, along with ten of my aunts and uncles, and many neighbors. No one who was with them discusses the details of their dying moments.
Just a few months ago my younger brother died at his home. I last spent time with him a day and a half before that. (I live in another state.)
His wife did not go into every graphic detail of what occurred that morning...just enough for me, his sister, to be informed. I won't ask her to relive this pain, for her sake and mine.
I'm thinking that "normal" people treat such sadness as mostly private and want dignity for the person who died.
I'm not sure if the Jersey women deserve to be crucified for the "burned alive" comment. They obviously believe the U.S. Gov't. could have prevented this attack. How sure are the rest of us?
Ann has challenged the sanctity of the victim propogandist.
The Democrats do this on everything. They really go at it if the subject matter is a controversial topic where they believe they can make political inroads. Remember the AD of the black guy being dragged behind a car by southern racists and blamed on Bush41? Every time the subject of poverty comes about, you get visuals of some shack down south with a child with a distended belly sitting on the dirt floor inside. Most perpetrators of crime are portrayed as victims of society by liberal Dems. When given the death sentence, all the defenders of the murderer are out there with their candlelight vigils commenting on the hard life or childhood of abuse that caused the bad guy to do what he did and we should pity him more than the victim. The liberal MSM attacks our troops for atrocities rather than the enemies that are trying to kill us, and show visuals of blood-stained walls and poor Iraqi victims.
Liberal Dems always seek out the anecdotal example, the one case out of thousands that is the exception to the rule to justify whatever outrageous position they are defending at any given time. And then they swing right into moral equivalence. Putting panties on the heads of Iraqi prisoners is as much torture as jihadists lopping off heads. It's all the same you know.
I watched my stepfather die. It was awful, but at least I could be thankful that his death was peaceful and painless. That this Jersey Girl calls attention to the horror of her husband's death makes me wonder how much his death bothered her.
Great, great thinking and writing here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.