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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NYers feel that the rest of the country can go straight to hell and isn't worth protecting and they've been clear about that.
There's no question that Breitweiser is a Democratic shill. So why not simply say she's a Democratic shill, and be done with it. What's the point of saying she's enjoying her husband's terrible and tragic death?
I know. I've been sticking up for Santorum on some of the Pa. boards.
Businesses all across the country claimed WTC losses that were non existent. That was the fault of the bureaucracy. Long story, but millions of dollars was misspent.
Newark, NJ used homeland security money to buy air conditioned garbage trucks.
My guess is that millions of dollars were wasted in NYC as well.
Clearly these women enjoyed all the attention showered upon them by the MSM.
You just stated what's wrong with America. Women are praised when they act like men, but when men act like men, they get derided, called chauvenist pigs, etc. I don't know why there are all these people who think it's a good thing that our countries men are becoming wusses.
These were not misspoken words, these words are part of her book. She could have hammered them hard, while taking the high-road, but she did not. I think that is shameful.
No one is forcing you to buy her books.
sw
Can be a tough job, I am dreadging the day I have to stand up for Martinez down here.
sorry to hear that.
She's stepping on liberal sacred cows. It is her specialty. Hillary took the bait today and Ann crushed that pantsuited, canckled hag.
These hens have put themselves squarely in the political arena, tossing all kinds of criticism at the Bush administration. And campaigning for John F'n Kerry. They are no better than any other moonbat as far as I'm concerned.
Howlin makes a good point that I think is missing here:
Ann's 'outrageous' comments about the widows posing for Playboy are completely analogous to the things said against Bush and various other conservatives by their group and many others, including elected officials like Cynthia McKinney and Charlie Rangel.
These women wholly prostituted the empathy granted to them by every decent human being in this country and used it to further a political agenda that was not intended to enhance national security or bring about reform, but was meant to do only one thing: sully Bush and hurt conservatives. This point is irrefutable and sometimes it has to be put bluntly for people to understand.
Ann should be applauded by every true conservative on this board.
Please understand. I spend a great deal of time working with people I hope will become conservatives one day. In their heart, they know it's right. But this kind of thing waves them off, and then I have to start all over again.
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