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).
What alley's is this RINO prowling??????????? Hysterical and heartless???? Hey pal, I've got a new job for you! PR flak for Hitlery Crinton!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Similarly, if the Jersey girls and their running dogs use bereavement as a safe haven from which to strike out, then they themselves have torn down the protection decent people afford the grieving.
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Worth repeating!
Coming from an Italian family, I remember many widowed women mourning in black..veil and all.. for one year and hardly uttering a word.
Don't get me wrong..I'm not saying widows have to follow that standard, but, as respect for the deceased, why not restrain it a bit?
The 4 widow's are no better than Sheehan.
All of them are using grief to make political statements.
What is Christian about using grief for political and personal gain?
For those here at FR defending them and condemning Ann better think twice because these 4 and Sheehan are using their grief to besmearch President Bush, Rice and the administration and worked to get Kerry elected.
I am not defending Ann'a words in the book but her words did cut thru to the crux of the matter.
After much thinking and hearing a few other things I decided against buying the book.
Those 4 are still using their victimhood to promote their hate speech and that is not right. The other families of 911 aren't out there using the deaths of their loved ones for personal gain or for political reasons as these 4 are. Some have said what Ann said wasn't Christian what is Christian about using their loved ones for political reasons and condemning the President? It wasn't the President who caused 911 it was the terroists.
Some have mentioned their children and what will the children think about what Ann said. Well what about what they said themselves about watching their husbands (fathers) burn to death, what about that their mothers are teaching them hatred for President Bush?
Ann shouldn't have said what she did or maybe could of at the very least said it not as abrasive but point well taken and I refuse to defend Ann's words and book and refuse to defend those 4 jersey women because by talking against Ann and her book is defending the 4 awful women.
good read.
http://www.house.gov/paul/nytg.htm
In other words, what the author of this rambling piece points out, the Jersey Girls made Ann's point.
A keeper!
I loved when she was on his show for her previous book. She had to 'correct' him on SENATOR Joe not being on the HOUSE committee.
Whenever the demo/socialists/commies/hate-America group screams loud and long, we know a nerve has been struck. No one strikes those nerves like Ann. She uses twin .50 calibre machine guns to make her points, while others on our side use .22s.
Someone making merchandise of that death...just like Ann said.
"(Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out...)"
That's a quote from Robert Grave's "I, Claudius" as the poisoned emperor contemplates the coup of Nero and Agrippina. His point was that the Roman Imperium was rotten to the core and that letting the poisons run rampant was somehow good for the country.
Is that what you're trying to imply? That several decades of bloddletting and anarchy will be beneficial?
Please explain.
It's not just that. She says it in such a way that the ones on our side who are constantly selling us out to make points with the liberals are immediately exposed.
Anybody know how much the Jersey Four got in reparations?
I think it's safe to say they didn't enjoy their husbands 'dying,' but they sure have enjoyed them 'being dead...'
I think that's where Ann coined the phrase "Political Human Shield" in the last few days. I don't recall her using that phrase in the book.
...and it was also an excuse for them to become political endorsees for Hanoi Kerry and Breck girl Edwards. Here she is at a rally standing right next to the Breck girl, and you know without fail she was either A.Blaming Bush for her husbands death or B.Saying if Gore won her husband would be alive. Freggin` dingbat though all but ignores 8 years of democrat terror arse-kissing which directly led to 911.
Don't you think it may be a bit disingenuous to applaud "what" someone did, but complain about "how" they did it?
I for one think that's a political/public relations version of expecting a soldier to act like a cop.
One should never expect to be humoured when trying to both "ask for help" and "supervise."
Martyrdom by proxy - that is, being raised to an exalted position (in this case: media celebrity and pundit) through the suffering of someone close to them is just the latest version of authority without responsibility that libs try to foist on us and, in the process, degrade our culture. I am simply electrified by how clearly the culture war battle lines have formed during the Bush presidency. I'm not a Buchanan fan, but he saw it clearly in his '92 convention speech.
Ann's relentless attack in her books with single word titles gives me some hope that we might yet win.
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