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 ...
I suspect they are part of the group that is agitating to have NO special designation for the rescuers on the Memorial.
"Imagine demanding to know why Rudy Guiliani was at the Moussoui trial. After all, he didn't lose anyone."
She said Giuliani had no right to testify in the victims phase. And that people died because of his bad judgment.
No outrage. Not a murmur.
Right on.
That's really indefensible.
Technically true.
How does this author know that the comments were false?
Maybe there are some 9-11 widows out there who are still too distraught to speak out on issues such as these women did. Maybe those callous unfeeling left wing women are the really cruel ones.
Keep this pot stirred. Make these people calling themselves commentators and journalists defend themselves and lets keep Ann's work in the headlines.
Idiots!
ROFL!
I think it was Cal Coolidge who said that rarely had he gotten into trouble for something he didn't say.
Wish I could remember that.
The serious point underpinning my wisecrack: I've learned to expect very little from liberals in terms of class and decorum; Ronald Reagan taught me to expect a lot from conservatives.
Yes!
I think you're right, and the "Jersey Girls" are against any special recognition of the firefighters and cops who died.
This (great) article notes it in passing. But be forwarned. The "Jersey Girls" are called the "rock stars of grief":
Families of 9/11 are 'the rock stars of grief' says sister of Pentagon pilot
By Julian Coman in New York
(Filed: 27/06/2004)
Among the activist leaders of 9/11 families' groups it is safe to say that Debra Burlingame - whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - is not a uniformly popular figure.
Ms Burlingame, a staunch Democrat, has become the first public 9/11 "dissident" - a vocal critic of the "blame game" being played over the al-Qaeda attacks - and an unlikely defender of George W Bush. For good measure, the outspoken former lawyer describes some of the bereaved 9/11 families as America's "rock stars of grief".
"I've practically been thrown out of meetings," she says. "They've gotten very angry with me. But I've decided it's very important that another voice is heard in the September 11 debate."
Charles "Chic" Burlingame piloted the doomed American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon minutes after the twin towers of the World Trade Centre were struck. Since suffering the loss of her brother, Debra Burlingame has undergone an extraordinary and traumatic political education.
A year and a half ago, the grieving sister passionately supported efforts, championed by a now-famous group of four New Jersey women, to force a highly visible inquiry into the events that led to her brother's death. Like the so-called "Jersey girls", led by Kristin Breitweiser, Ms Burlingame believed that grievous mistakes must have been made for such a catastrophe to occur. She carried a home-made placard to one rally that angrily pointed out: "The men who murdered my brother were listed in the San Diego phone book."
With anger mounting among the relatives of victims, the 9/11 Commission, made up of both Republican and Democratic Congressmen, was formed; it will report next month. After hearing evidence given in the commission's recent hearings, the four New Jersey women have made countless appearances in the national media, accusing various federal agencies, agents and the White House of hopeless incompetence.
Ms Burlingame, though, begs to differ. In blistering attacks last week on the 9/11 Commission and those who lobbied for it, she described the high-level hearings as a "Beltway soap opera - awash in politics and finger-pointing". Even more provocatively, in an article published in the Wall Street Journal, Ms Burlingame accuses prominent 9/11 activists of holding an unjustified "contempt for all the people whom they feel contributed to a loss of life on the day their loved ones didn't come home".
For good measure, she also states that the 9/11 families "are not a monolithic group that speaks with one voice". The activist organisations, she says, have been indulged too much. Standing by a memorial in Manhattan to the September 11 victims, with her back to Ground Zero, Ms Burlingame says: "I first felt the need to speak out when 'The Families of September 11' group protested against the use of images of Ground Zero in Bush campaign advertisements. The idea that relatives of victims 'own' September 11 and its images, and can give or withhold permission to use them, is frankly ridiculous.
"People held back from criticising the relatives because of who they were. But what's happening is that this prominent group of activists have become the rock stars of grief in this country. I think people are getting sick of them because they are being so demanding. I can say it because I'm a relative too."
Her views have certainly hit home. On the day Ms Burlingame's article was published, it was the most frequently read piece on the Wall Street Journal's website.
Most of all, Ms Burlingame is angry on behalf of those who made valiant, improvised efforts to avert the tragedy of September 11 and who are now, as part of a political agenda, "being told that their hard-fought but doomed efforts amounted to incompetence and poor judgment that cost lives". "The air-traffic controller in charge of my brother's flight did nothing wrong," she says. "He never went back to work and went into a deep depression.
"To me he's just as much a victim of 9/11 as my brother, as are other people like him.
"So to have a widow saying they could have done this, they should have done that is just unfair. And it is to place an intolerable burden of guilt on their shoulders."
Not all the bereaved relatives, she suggests, are so concerned with apportioning blame and "owning" the events of September 11. "I'm getting many many messages of support from relatives of 9/11 victims," she said. "Some of what I'm saying might be considered blasphemous by some, but people are telling me, 'Thanks for saying what you said.' "
According to Ms Burlingame, discussions over future memorials to victims have been constrained by demands from 9/11 activists for "politically correct" mourning. "The Ground Zero memorial will list all the names of those who died," says Ms Burlingame. "There was a suggestion made that the firefighters who died heroically doing their job should be acknowledged by stating their unit or engine. What was the response from the 9/11 groups? They said there can be 'no hierarchy of heroes'! Why can't we acknowledge what the firefighters did in trying to save lives? It's just nutty."
Attending the commission's sometimes rowdy hearings, which have been held in both Washington and New York, Ms Burlingame says it also became clear that the 9/11 Steering Committee, an umbrella organisation for the various relatives' groups, had a specific, partisan agenda.
"The groups wanted to dictate how the commission was constituted, who the witnesses would be and what questions should be asked," she says. "They won't say it in public but I can tell you that in private, it is all about bashing Bush. They want to get Bush out of office and they are using 9/11 and the commission to try to ensure that happens.
"At the beginning, I would receive e-mails from the groups which were all about emotional support and solidarity. Then they started getting political, along the lines of 'Can you believe what these bastards in the government are doing?'
"Yet the 9/11 Family Steering Committee is made up of 12 unelected, self-nominated representatives. It's like 12 people sitting around someone's kitchen table with a bottle of wine, but they've managed to establish themselves as the voices of the 9/11 family members. The media never go anywhere else for an opinion."
By the time Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, agreed to appear before the commission in April she was, says Ms Burlingame, entering a bearpit. "It was a circus atmosphere, and I mean that in the Roman sense; there was a sense of menace."
However, Kristen Breitweiser said: "People are entitled to their opinion but I think it's sad that Debra keeps singling out me and the other three women from New Jersey in particular for criticism. What we are trying to do is make sure that much-needed reforms in important areas are made. It's our conscience that's driving us. This is not political. I voted for George W Bush. My husband voted for him. But because I voted for him I hold him to a higher standard than I would otherwise."
Next month, Ms Burlingame expects the "Jersey girls" and others to use the 9/11 Commission's final report to savage further the Bush administration. She will be mounting her own campaign, with a quite different message.
"I would like to act as a reminder to people of where we should focus our energy: that is on the people who are trying to hurt us. We need to concentrate on defeating them, not on beating up on each other. I know that is what my brother, Chic, would be thinking."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessionid=TGBSDHDQNOMZTQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2004/06/27/wsept27.xml&site=5
But more to the point, who cares? When genetic dreck on the left gets away with Bush is Hitler etc on a daily basis, why should we care what Ann calls these nitwit skanks?????
I see O'Reilly is doing a segment on Ann this evening. As long as they spell her name correctly - and mention the book! - she probably doesn't mind.
A friend of mine was going to read it; she thinks Ann is smart too. And a freeper acquaintance said her moderate daughter was going to read it but changed her mind after hearing the statements.
My parents were appalled and as people in their 70's, they've never voted anything but Republican. I tried to share my e-mail with them regarding the first chapter of Ann's book, but they aren't interested now.
Maybe she asked a few guys what they thought about those women.
Heck, if she asked me what I'd do if I were married to such women, I'd say that I'd divorce them.
This is all stupid. FReepers making the talking points for the crazy left, and thinking it is taking the high road.
Somebody is high for buying into this criticism.
My wife and I watched it twice the night it was on. We were flipped out. I knew Ann was a bomb thrower..... fine, but I did not know she would stoop to classless and crass with the "divorce" remark.
Exactly. The author of this piece has a problem with the English language in the fact that words can have different meanings in different contexts.
She could have said "I've never seen people benefitting their husbands' deaths so much" and it would have the same meaning.
Sam, I couldn't agree with you more. Why this guy has been allowed to stay on these threads is beyond me. A whiny, leftist proletarian.
Yes he did. What a MAN!
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