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To: ahayes
This isn't that tough:

Definitions of enjoy on the Web:

  1. derive or receive pleasure from; get enjoyment from; take pleasure in; "She relished her fame and basked in her glory"
  2. have benefit from; "enjoy privileges"
  3. love: get pleasure from; "I love cooking"
  4. have for one's benefit; "The industry enjoyed a boom"
  5. delight: take delight in; "he delights in his granddaughter" wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I think it's important to realize that the 2nd definition is the most relevant and clearly what Ann meant, but if you simply read the first definition I think you'll find that the example given clearly could apply to the Jersey Girls, or Cindy Sheehan.  When their loved ones died did they feel pleasure?  No one is suggesting that, least of all Ann.  Rather it is the simple and undeniable fact that these women are deriving benefit from those deaths, and in all likelihood they are having a good time along the way. 

The deaths of their family members were not enjoyable, but these women have taken those deaths and ridden them to fame and, in some cases, fortune.  They wallow in those deaths.  They use those deaths as their entry cards to the world of fame and glamor, invitations to parties in New York and Los Angeles with all the right (leftist) celebrities.  Book deals, TV appearances, speaking fees, ad nauseum.  They have turned those deaths into a successful franchise and the Democrats are using them as their unassailable mouth pieces.

Ann Coulter is proved right in every particular by posts like yours, or the comments by blogger's such as Captains Quarters Blog or Hugh Hewitt.  Any criticism of these women is immediately turned into a "mean and vicious attack" and Ann's critics, particularly those who should be her allies, don't bother to examine the actual substance of the charges.  They're to busy distancing themselves from the "pariah." 

Of course, it's not a "mean and vicious attack" if she's right.

Now, does that matter to you?

I applaud your motivation.  You are reacting to what you've been told Ann Coulter's comments were and what they mean.  Unfortunately you, and many others, don't seem to take the time to actually work through the tough work of analyzing the rhetoric and logic, nor examine the underlying facts.

I did not benefit from a Jesuit education, to my great detriment, and have had to largely educate myself on topics such as rhetoric and logic.  I did get a couple of good history teachers in college (both products of Jesuit educations) who concentrated on these basics and, regardless of their own political leanings, they gave me a grounding in skeptical analysis that has served me well, at least IMHO.  They were two particular professors, both ultra liberal in the era of the end of Vietnam, who were still close enough to not yet being members of the Establishment that they were still teaching critical analysis in an honest fashion.  I have continued to apply their lessons and owe much of my conservatism to those techniques I learned from them.

But it takes honest, critical analysis, not just emotional responses.

 

127 posted on 06/17/2006 10:26:17 AM PDT by Phsstpok (Often wrong, but never in doubt)
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To: Phsstpok
Thanks for the long post, but it's off-base. I initially thought that Ann Coulter was complaining they were lying by saying Coulter said they enjoyed it, which is ridiculous because she did say that. That's not a point of conflict--Ann Coulter says they enjoyed it, I agree that Ann Coulter says they enjoyed it. You may rationalize that however you like, I personally think it's horribly gauche, but that's neither here nor there. It ends out that Coulter's really complaining they're lying by saying she lambasted the whole lot of widows, which actually by all of the evidence I've seen is not true.
128 posted on 06/17/2006 10:33:41 AM PDT by ahayes ("If intelligent design evolved from creationism, then why are there still creationists?"--Quark2005)
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To: Phsstpok
You are reacting to what you've been told Ann Coulter's comments were and what they mean. Unfortunately you, and many others, don't seem to take the time to actually work through the tough work of analyzing the rhetoric and logic, nor examine the underlying facts.

No, I've read the dozen pages or so in Godless covering this topic and her criticisms of the "Jersey Widows." Your condescension is noted and dismissed.

130 posted on 06/17/2006 10:36:21 AM PDT by ahayes ("If intelligent design evolved from creationism, then why are there still creationists?"--Quark2005)
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