Posted on 06/13/2006 3:02:44 PM PDT by Mike Bates
In the controversy over Ann Coulter's comments about the group of 9/11 widows, there is one critical question, from the point of view of ensuring standards of accuracy in the media. How does Coulter know it to be true that, "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." There is no evidence whatsoever that those women enjoyed their husbands' deaths, and Coulter offers none. The only "evidence" for this preposterous and hurtful claim is that the women became activists and sought the media spotlight and took a political position at odds with that of Coulter. But what does that prove?
I think Coulter probably would have been correct to say that the women appeared to enjoy the media attention. You don't go on these shows unless you enjoy them to some degree. But enjoying a death? And the death of a loved one when fatherless children were left behind? Coulter's comments are not only false but cruel. She has also made other disparaging personal comments about the women.
In journalism, facts and truth are supposed to matter. Opinions are allowed, and Coulter, a columnist for Human Events and many other newspapers, is entitled to her own opinions.
SNIP
If the matter only involved personal opinions about people or things, Coulter's comments wouldn't really be newsworthy or significant. But she is claiming to have inside knowledge of the personal psychology of this group of women who lost their husbands on 9/11. That is why the comments have generated so much outrage—except from a few conservatives unwilling to criticize her.
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
GEEZ..It was a paragraph in a book. WHO CARES.
Anyone who doesn't tow the party line that Ann is brilliant and SHOULD attack widows with baseless innuendo gets attacked here.Anyone who doesn't tow the party line that Ann is brilliant and SHOULD attack widows with baseless innuendo...
Give me a break! There is no party line to toe about Ann. A lot of people love her. A lot of people think she goes too far all the time. A lot of people find her amusing but don't pay that much attention to her until there is a big uproar about something she said.
As for the part about being attacked, the rhetoric I see appears to be fairly evenhanded between those who are ridiculing the coulter-bots and those who are criticizing the criticizers. Hardly anything I've seen here would rise anywhere near the level that I would call an "attack" unless one has very thin skin for a FReeper.
Is there anything new on this thread that was not discussed on the other sixty-plus threads on this topic? :)
"One just cannot be considered conservative unless one thinks Ann is the best thing to happen to conservatives since sliced bread"
Try being a McCain supporter on FR and see your conservative credentials brought into question. I can tell you about that one first hand.
And no, if you don't care for Coulter's style I don't think that calls into question anything about your conservatism or your commitment to the cause any more than my enjoying her makes me "UnChristian." I doubt many on here would think you a closet liberal for not approving of her approach.
I just happen to enjoy someone who speaks what I think in terms of today's liberals. I don't see her as the greatest thing "since sliced bread," but I do enjoy her wit and ability to nail it on the head in regards to describing liberalism and its methods. It's not that we who enjoy her are vicious, but rather that viciousness has overtaken liberalism to such a degree that I think there's not much that's negative one could say or think of them that would be "UnChristian" because most of it is simply true. And I don't think it is mean spirited of UnChrist-like to note this trend.
I've seen too much anti-Americanism and outright hatefulness and lunacy out of those people to think I'm just being unkind and mean in having those opinions of them. Coulter fills the role of giving voice to what many of us sense about these people, even if at times she goes a bit overboard. And she does that when just about no one else in the conservative movement will hit back at these people and with the bark off, especially when so many conservative commentators now such as George Will are spending all their time attacking the president rather than focusing on the left and its growing lunacy.
Anyway, I don't think that makes me UnChristian or mean. It's just what I've observed in watching and involving myself in politics for decades now. I would not ever want to imagine that so many of my fellow Americans have come to this point of lowering themselves so far to support a partisan end, using the most rank and ugly slander against a sitting president I've ever witnessed and even advocating his murder in the case of that political hack in New York State, with some openly siding with the nation's enemies in the service of their pathological hate. I would like to believe I don't need to think that about liberals and that I've not just concocted this all in my mind.
But I know what I've seen and I know what I've observed in the liberal movement in recent years and I just can't pretend the emperor has no clothes. Indeed, for many, many years I think relationships between right and left, Republican and Democrat were very collegial and cordial. But liberalism's ugly rhetoric has taken us to a place we can't deny exists just because we wish it were not so. True perhaps Coulter does nothing to heal that breach. But some of us just feel we need someone to say to them "We get you. We see you for what you are." To me, Coulter fills that role and provides a few laughs with the deal.
And I'm not sure any amount of happy talk is ever going to change the left and their partisan psychosis in any event, even if Coulter weren't there adding fuel to the fire. They're like the Soviets were. No matter how much you disarm, they're just going to keep building and building up their weapons to hit us with. So I prefer sometimes a strong offense to hit back with rather than just playing nice and constantly getting trashed by these people without throwing a few punches back at them. Just my opinion with all due respect to yours.
The thing that bothers me about these daily Ann-Bashing Fests is that those who excoriate her for her comments in this book never raise the point that the basic premise of her book is sound. Where is the person who says, "Her comments about the Jersey Girls were unfortunate, to be sure, but the rest of her book is right on target"? The fact that the comments she's criticized for here are the same ones the leftist media has been drum-beating about since the book came out makes me wonder if there's an agenda here that goes beyond a few unfortunate comments.
Touche--except WE would because we'd be posting about them here and wondering why the MSM never has them on. (Easy answer: Because Chrissy Matthews and company wouldn't be comfortable being tough with them.)
Apparently a great number of people on FR.
he is no different than Denny Hastert was on the "dollar bill"(William Jefferson) issue.
Sad to say, but yes:
"User Posts"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?id=7094;more=39310576
Let me check and get back to you. It may be a while, though.
Yes, but they at least had the decency to not dig up their dead husbands to be used as objects of speculation. Debra Burlingame takes issue with their political stances, their statements, their testimony to the 9/11 commission.
She's got too much decency and class to speculate about the state of their marriages or encourage them to pose for Playboy.
Out of curiousity, what did Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, and Cliff Kincaid say about the rest of Ann's book? Were they in agreement with her? Or did they simply focus on one unfortunate comment to the exclusion of everything else in the book, like most of her detractors do here on FR?
The Right Professor.
Sounds good to me. Ann usually has more courage than most of our elected Republicans, and frankly, I'm tired of us forever eating our own.
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