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'm starting to get it.
Hey! Aren't you supposed to ping me when you mention my name? ; ).
Palladin, these women are not behaving WIDOWly they are behaving MERCENARILY. Biblical admonitions no longer apply.
Coulter with balls. Definately not a womans woman. Ann is amazing!!! What a partner she could be.
Posts 279,280--excellent posts IMHO!!
Ann's goal was to reveal these women as political hacks for the left is to sell her book, and she did it in a very memorable way.
Breitweiser is possibly the worst example ever of how a widow should behave.
However, Coulter's scathing personal remarks were below the belt, and Ann could have been more judicious in her choice of words regarding these particular 9-11 survivors who have offered themselves up as pawns in a political game.
Maybe it's just my age or what I consider feminine, but to me, if a woman is going to talk like Michael Savage she sure needs more then the figure of a 14 year old boy, a couple of implants and a bad dye job for me to take a second look.
I agree with that sentiment. Look how Letterman raked O'Reilly over the coals, after O'reilly had enough of Sheehadi Sheehan and told it like it was, Letterman made OR out to be the bad guy, not Cindy Sheehan who has pranced all over the world and country with Code Pink being photographed with Harry Belefonte, Hugo Chavez, etc.. The Jersey Girls, particularly Kristen, have put themselves in the line of controversy by their actions, which have been plentiful.
What Coulter said was nothing compared to what I'd like to say, face to face (shudder), to Cindy al-Sheehan. If American isn't worth fighting for, why the hell did her son sign up/enlist AGAIN?
What is called humor? And I'm not reading PJ O'Rourke so you'll have to speak for yourself. I find PJ painful.
Believe me, I did my share of bashing Breitweiser and her flunkies when we had numerous threads about them. I do not like her or others who make a living off of misery--their own or someone else's.
That being said, Ann could have made her point about victimology and the left without resorting to really cruel remarks.
It makes her look like a bitter old maid, who couldn't possibly even begin to understand the heart of a widow.
You said it very well... I tried in my post 310.
Yes, she is not everyones cup of tea. I read her for entertainment, more than anything else. Her books are witty, and quick to read and she is the least politcally correct pundit I know. She does not seem angry to me, rather seems to enjoy herself tremendously. Savage is angry. He hypervetilates and he is extremely inconsistent in his message. One day he is calling the Democrats treasonous scumbags, then next he is sucking Charles Schumer on the air, because he agreed about the Dubai Ports deal. I just about gagged.
I don't expect every conservative to appreciate Ann's type of humor, but she is the only prominent, smart bombthrower we have on our side. We have some prominent dumb ones though. Like I said her reply to Hillary today was priceless
My faves are Hugh Hewitt and Larry Elder and Rush, as far as talk shows go. Medved bores me, though he is very smart. I read mostly serious history, and toss in current political tomes from Coulter/Mona Charen/Newt as light reading.
I'd say it has more to do with you having a thing for Savage.
Unfortunately, old-fashioned gentlemen are getting rather thin on the ground . . . in fact, outside the South they are essentially nonexistent.
And the problem that old-fashioned gentlemen (and ladies for that matter) have is that they insist on fighting by Marquess of Queensbury Rules when their opponents are street thugs.
The liberal Democrats have employed the Jersey Girls to leap out of a dark alley and start beating President Bush over the head with a broken bottle, all the while screaming, "You can't attack us! You can't call us names! Why - we are grieving widows!!"
Miss Coulter is simply taking the fight to the enemy in terms they can understand.
rod, I agree with you, Ann is a true believer. And I don't mean that in a high-on-your-horse-dour-sour-pussed-harpie kind of way. She does it with pinache, hyperbole, and HUMOR!!!!
LOL. Too late for the last part. :^)
Ann made a mistake, and it's good to see you recognize it as such, and I don't mean that in a smarmy way, I'm serious.
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