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.
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I didn't know Ann was ever married.
My post was posted to point out the irony and hypocrisy.
I'm not supporting what she says, but she sure does it with a lot more class (classless as it is) than the psychophants here.
But then she is a professional, the people getting off on putting her down appear to be self-absorbed amateurs embarrassing themselves in public. Not a felony.
In boxing matches do they typically kick the opponent in the crotch?
I don't approve of these widows, but Ann Coulter's reply is mean-spirited and counter-productive. Ann-bots will applaud her, liberals will spit, and the majority in the middle will be disgusted and alienated from conservativism. Rather than criticising these women's appearance and suggesting their marriages were a sham she should instead be rationally discussing the issue, but I guess that doesn't sell many books.
No, but in real life it will simply remove one of his legs.
It will sell a lot of books for her. Which in the end is the only thing that will matter to Ann.
Annbots!
Its funny, so many willing to fall all over themselves making excuses for crassness, just so long as its the crassness we believe in.
I think her style is counterproductive to her arguments.
You have an adam's apple!?!?!??!
LOL
Many women do, but not the Terror Whores. They made it perfectly clear that they have only a partisan interest.
and your point is......??????
Absolutely, and some of us don't forget.
How do we know they weren't planning on killing their husbands? How do we know they didn't eat their newborn babies? How do we know they don't sacrifice black cats to Satan in their basements?
That nonsense is just baseless slander.
I think it is backfiring or perhaps smoldering until November!
"Because, as members of the Church of Liberalism you are supposed to venerate the Saint Jerseys."
Really, does she say that? Everything I've read today discussed her quotes with no context. If she is indeed making such a point she probably would have been better off doing it without the, in my opinion, personal attacks. Then the point might be being addressed instead of the attacks.
But then, I'm probably not a REAL conservative anyway. At least, that is what I've been told recently by those who see this fight differently. Sigh.
Sorry, but Ann screwed up. In a spectacular way.
She damaged the conservative message, her spew was as nasty as lib-spew. We know when the libs do it it doesn't work, but when Ann does it, it's magical elixir? No. She is an embarrassment and a detractor. If you think her speculation about the dead American husbands perhaps wanting to leave their wives and children HELPED matters, I think you are being disingenuous.
OMIGOSH did Ann make these socialist slime reporters forget about Haditha and convicting our brave marines? Thanks for taking one for the team Ann.
It may not make sense to you, but everyone has a different "calling" in politics. Granted, I personally would not respond as Ann does, I think there is a need to have people like her challenging the leftists in a way that only she can do it. She serves a purpose, and she is doing it exactly as she intends and getting the response she wants from it.
Amen, Baby!!
"But I'm not sure that it moves the ball down the field, which is actually what I'd like to see happen. We have to convince a fair number of THEM that we are correct. That is best done through patient, persistent, clear discussion of ideas.
But then, I'm probably not a REAL conservative anyway. At least, that is what I've been told recently by those who see this fight differently. Sigh."
It's as if I wrote it myself.
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