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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Who cares? She makes her living being mean and cruel and has no partner in life.
She probably sleeps with her money.
Have a good one. It's been fun.
Coulter is a loudmouth skank and nothing more. Let her whore herself with obnoxious comments to sell books. I would never celebrate her for doing that.
Why, you sound just like that which you accuse Ann of being. A loudmouth and obnoxious. One would think you would love her.
I agree. What I want to know is how anyone can prove that the d@mn dog didn't take it upon himself to do the threatening!?
I invented the question mark.
And I have the largest clam farm in the world.
I bought Mick Jagger his first guitar.
The question is not you or I or Ann or any one in media. I was saying that my opinion of her is that she is an embarassment.
You are free to your own opinion, but you sound pretty cult like in your defense.
Who do you respect more William F. Buckley, or Ann Coulter?
Excellent point.
Read the posts... reference the name calling.... you criticize it yet do the same.
"Miss Coulter is simply taking the fight to the enemy in terms they can understand.
Can we get an Amen?"
AMEN!!!!!!
Coulter taught me how. Blame her.
When Savage kissed up to chuck the schmuck I gave up on him, a lot of FR did.
Speak for yourself. But not for other Freepers. Savage agreed w/Schumer on one issue. And he didn't suck up, he agreed w/the guy on the Dubai Ports deal. As did lots of other Republicans. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. For instance, right now our President Bush is on the same side as Schumer is on illegal immigration and support for the Senate bill. Guess you'll have to give up on Bush too. Lots of Freepers have, you know.
Amen.
"but you sound pretty cult like in your defense."
Hope so. We need more Ann's, as she has what many men want and few have in her pundit field. A set. And what a set. Got to get more Pubs into the "cult" to fight for our cause by shooting from the hip and lip, rather than engage in endless niceties that just get you some Dem talking over, under and on top of what you are trying to say. Ann cuts through all of that and slays them with clarity.
Coulter taught me how. Blame her
Well, one step in the right direction. You've obviously listened to what she says and it has made an impression, to the point that you are just like her. We can make use of that.
Ann Coulter zingers:
"By 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else's medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress."
" Democrats always assure us that deterrence will work, but when the time comes to deter, they're against it."
" Democrats couldn't care less if people in Indiana hate them. But if Europeans curl their lips, liberals can't look at themselves in the mirror."
" Have we been cryptic? Right-wingers said Clinton was a lying, unscrupulous traveling salesman. It turned out he was a lying, unscrupulous traveling salesman. Now liberals scratch their heads demanding to know: So what was it about him you didn't like? "
" If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam - oh wait, he does."
" If we're so cruel to minorities, why do they keep coming here? Why aren't they sneaking across the Mexican border to make their way to the Taliban?"
" Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking."
" Liberals are stalwart defenders of civil liberties - provided we're only talking about criminals."
" Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy."
" My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
" Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words "abortion" or "tax hikes" pass their lips."
" The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control."
" Usually the nonsense liberals spout is kind of cute, but in wartime their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening."
" We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
" We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States."
" When we were at peace, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now there's a war, so Democrats want to raise taxes. When there was a surplus, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now that there is a mild recession, Democrats want to raise taxes."
" Whenever a liberal begins a statement with 'I don't know which is more frightening,' you know the answer is going to be pretty clear."
" Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant."
" While the form of treachery varies slightly from case to case, liberals always manage to take the position that most undermines American security."
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