Posted on 06/07/2006 4:51:37 PM PDT by new yorker 77
Conservative author Ann Coulter sparked a storm on Wednesday after describing a group of September 11 widows who backed the Democratic Party as millionaire "witches" reveling in their status as celebrities.
"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter writes in her book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published on Tuesday, referring to four women who headed a campaign that resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission that investigated the hijacked plane attacks.
Coulter wrote that the women were millionaires as a result of compensation settlements and were "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis."
A spokeswoman for publisher Crown Forum said it had set a first print run of 1 million copies of "Godless" and there were 1.5 million copies of Coulter's previous four books in print.
The four women, Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken, declined to discuss the book in detail but issued a statement saying they had been slandered.
"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," said the statement signed by the four, along with a fifth woman, Monica Gabrielle.
The four women, who live in or around East Brunswick, New Jersey, became friends after September 11 and formed a group that agitated for the investigation. "Our only motivation ever was to make our nation safer," they said.
Coulter, whose books include the bestseller "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," argues in the new book the women she dubs "the Witches of East Brunswick" wanted to blame President George W. Bush for not preventing the attacks.
She criticized them for making a campaign advertisement for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004, and added: "By the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."
PERSONAL ATTACKS
Asked by Reuters why she made such personal comments, Coulter said by e-mail, "I am tired of victims being used as billboards for untenable liberal political beliefs."
"A lot of Americans have been seething over the inanities of these professional victims for some time," she added.
Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record) of New Jersey said Coulter's "shameless attack" on the widows sparked disgust. "Her bookselling antics and accompanying vulgarity deserve our deepest contempt," he said in a statement.
The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News. Corp., slammed the comments in an article on Wednesday headlined: "Righty writer Coulter hurls nasty gibes at 9/11 gals."
Coulter, a regular television commentator who is hugely popular among some conservatives, was challenged on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday over what host Matt Lauer called "dramatic" remarks, prompting her to say, "You are getting testy with me."
Coulter is known for a combative column after September 11 saying, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." In one book, she wrote, "Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do."
Her latest comments were quoted on radio stations in New York on Wednesday and the book was the subject of debate on Web sites such as www.salon.com. The Daily News newspaper's front-page headline was "Coulter the Cruel."
The controversy appeared to be doing no harm to sales of Coulter's latest book, which was listed as the second-best seller of the day at online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday afternoon.
Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
How do we know you don't beat your wife? (See how lame that is?)
Ann jumped the shark.
"The invectives, insults, ad hominem attacks, name calling and vitriolic statements made about Coulter on this and many other threads are worse than anything Ann said or did."
Nonsense. Did anyone say Ann was getting enjoyment out of her spouse's death? Ann's statement was full of invective, insults, and ad hominem attack. So if you don't like that, then I guess you won't defend what she said.
You better get a barf bag then, baby.
It fits in the same way as the Dixie Chicks are using their dust-up with Country Music Fans to sell their products. It is EXACTLY the same tactic, just a different message.
And discretion has it's place. Sometimes it is time to "out" a subject.
Just look at all the discussion this has generated. WOW!
I don't care for her, you do.
We both have opinions.
God Bless America
Did you type that with a straight face?! LOL. As if you think Carville and Begala are people to be emulated!
Amen, Sky!!!
Any of you who are more angry at Ann then these four Jersey girls should speak up now.
Let's hear you defend the four who had more negative things to say about Bush than Bin Laden.
Tools.
I'm all smiles on this one.
I think, as one poster said, we may discover that Ann IS the shark.
Most of politics is crass.
Ann Coulter once again revealed herself as a political hack.
But of course, calling her "Bones" (since she is not a medical doctor) is NOT a personal attack. Hmmmm /sarcasm
Right on, new yorker!!
Can the shark jump Fonzie?
That "inaction" was a true betrayal.
Exactly!! They were Liberal Mouthpieces first, widows second.
"It fits in the same way as the Dixie Chicks are using their dust-up with Country Music Fans to sell their products. It is EXACTLY the same tactic, just a different message."
Well right. It's just that in addition to trying to sell books I thought she was trying to engage in the marketplace of ideas with persuasive argument. I just don't see what the comments about the Jersey Girls have to do with the thesis of her book. As you can see, no one is talking about her central idea, just her name-calling.
Because, as members of the Church of Liberalism you are supposed to venerate the Saint Jerseys.
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