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 outrageexcept from a few conservatives unwilling to criticize her.
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
<Ann Coulter is just too right-on even for many conservatives who are soooo afraid of being called "mean spirited". Well, I'm sorry, but here's one conservative whose give-a-damn is just flat busted, to steal a phrase.
Bingo!
>>>How does Coulter know it to be true that, "I've never
>>>seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
Because she saw what she saw, and she is telling us what she saw?
And you know Coulter has been dumped "so often" how? What are you, a gossip reporter now? Why the obsession with this woman with you?? Did she turn you down for something??
LOL!! Stalking? She's a public figure. If she's going to open her yap, she's not above criticism herself.
You want FR to be a big cheering section for Coulter. There look to be lots of cheerleaders here, and a few dissenters.
You seem to want to silence the dissenters. Is that true?
And, George W. Bush has been the target of criticism of several posters on this website since the day he was inaugurated in 2001, yet they continue to post against him. Would you like to shut them up too?
Just how far do you want to go in silencing anybody you disagree with, Mojo?
I guess you missed the part where I mentioned that this has gone on for YEARS.
(TOW the line. LOL)
Is that so? Given that the Leftist Jersey Girls couldn't wait to stand on their corpses and use their deaths as a soapbox for political action, I would think Coulter is exactly right about how the little darlings "feel."
oh wow, we had the same reaction! LOL
That's what makes Rather and others in the MSM partisan propagandists and Cliff Kincaid of AIM honorable and respectable.
If you or I had read the chapter without hearing the controversy, we probably would not have focused on that statement.
Her point is also that these women do seem to enjoy the result of the catastrophe in that they seem to enjoy the cause it has given them. Which would be fine if it meant doing something helpful - but instead it has resulted in them doing something rather awful that would result in many more catastrophes and many more widows. That is the obscinity that is far greater than any insult Miss Coulter could come up with or could ever achieve. Remember who the good guys are here, and don't forget the evil ones. The left brings up this controversy to confuse us.
They do it ALL the time: Speaker-elect Livingston had an affair a long time ago. So now he cannot criticize Clinton for perjory, obstruction, subordination, etc and he has to fall on his sword. And this isn't because the left pushed him to it but because the right would.
And here we go again - insisting that Lady Ann must fall on her sword, too, for saying mean things about women who would - intentionally or not - would turn this country into Mogudishu.
Remember guys - don't treat the good guys like you treat the bad guys.
[In journalism, facts and truth are supposed to matter.]
It's a bit too late to start whining about that!
This is a fair criticism. Ann Coulter engages in way to much ad hominem. She doesn't defend conservatism; she attacks liberals. The way she's doing it is pretty low-brow, too. Tactically, she sounds exactly like the venomous & the deranged on any kook-fringe leftist website; if she fights fire with fire here, she'll sound (and does) as bad and as crazy as they do. She hates liberals more than she loves Conservatism. And that's the rub: her real motivation is hatred (for them), and it shows.
Her discourse is loaded with sarcasm. It's as though she hears her own laugh track inside her head whenever she thinks she's really laid someone out in the sophomoric way she does. She thinks she's really funny. More often then not, she looks extraordinarily immature.
Too bad she doesn't grow up a little. She could be a lot more effective if she'd knock off this irresistability she has to be outlandish. The more cute she thinks she is when she's landing the verbal blows on others, the more it becomes clear she's a one note symphony. Her whole premise is: "I HATE LIBERALS". OK. We get it. Enough already.
To her credit: She has more Stones AND Brains than Sean Hannity. But she has nowhere near the intellectual firepower or communication skill of Rush Limbaugh. She could use more of the latter and less of the former.
Freepers have argued various points of the conservative agenda, political candidates, etc., for years and years. Since FR's inception. That's a pretty uninteresting and unimportant aspect of your post.
Exactly. As if there's some sort of "Enjoyment meter" once can hook into a person to derive an objective measurement of enjoyment levels. Coulter never claimed to have any such device, so her remark was merely an opinion of what she's observed. It wasn't stated as metaphysical certainty.
Heh, heh. Did you see my post 22?
You don't either.
What slander? She makes a judgement that 9/11 widows are enjoying their husbands deaths, I make a judgement that her judgement is a projection based on experience.
You guys sure get pissy when Coulter's own methods are used against her.
Since some people seem to not want to understand what 'enjoy' means...
Enjoy: To have the use of; benefit from; have as one's lot: "at one time the white elephant enjoyed immense symbolic importance in the East" (Richard Carrignton). The American Heritage Dictionary.
I don't know what emotions these women in question have had, do have or will have, but it's pretty clear (unless one doesn't want to see) that they have very much benefited from i.e. enjoyed their situations. Coulter is perfectly correct.
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