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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The kind of religion that approves of saying that these women were glad their husbands died?
Nah. I'll let you follow that hypocrisy. The God-Man I follow wants no part of that.
There is a certain viciousness amongst some of the families that is so very unseemly.
Jesus!!!, JC, you're getting a bit testy.
These women have a platform because it was given to them by the likes of Chris Matthews and his ilk.
I much prefer Mona Charen, a Jewish conservative, and Michelle Malkin, a Christian conservative, to Ann Coulter and her strident rhetoric.
Michael Moore = make stuff up
Ann Coulter = hyperbole
You are comparing apples to oranges; or boulders to sticks ;-)
Exactly. Rush was criticized for saying outlandish things when he first came on the seen.
Ann is going to take some hits for this but when the smoke clears the Jersey Girls are not going to be anywhere near as effective and people will now look twice when the Dems try to play the moral-authority-who-can't-be-criticized card.
She is a shark that bit off something she shouldn't have. Her overall message is good, her delivery officially sucks.
Clearly this has not been publicized in the media.
What a despicable thing to say about Rudy.
A few months after 9-11, MSNBC had a daytime roundtable with some of the families, discussing the government payout.
And one man stood up and said, yes, his son WAS more valuable than the people who washed dishes at Windows on the World, so he should get more $$$.
It was shocking.
But the bottom line is you have to be willing to put it all on the line like Ann does if you truly want to represent a cause. She does.And she is a dam good Conservative,IMHO.
I firmly believe that Ann Coulter is sincere in her love for the Lord. And I still say that she says things the rest of us wish we had the nerve to say.
I don't believe that it's "cruel" to put panties on the heads of misogynists and I don't believe it's "cruel" to speculate on the marriages these women have already shamelessly dragged into the public arena - marriages as weapons in the political arena, no less.
Really? How about that low-blow that the now deceased husbands may have been planning to leave their wives and children?
"Did anyone say Ann was getting enjoyment out of her spouse's death?"
The point being that nobody said anything about Ann that was that low. And it is a low, vulgar remark. Ann is an intelligent woman, but I guess she figures she can do better as a conservative Al Franken.
What do you think he' d say about judging "Bones" Coulter?
People across the country are writing to the NY papers now saying they are sorry they rushed to help NYers after 9/11.
A website created for NJ news has comments about this topic of Coulter vs The Widows. All the comments were AGAINST the widows.
People here are sick and tired of them and their hateful antics.
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