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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It was people like Carville and Begala that turned me off of the Dems in the first place.
Where is your logic here?
And the left ignores him.
As well they should. His pointy-head stuff, although very useful to conservatives, is completely underwhelming to liberals. He might as well be a sparrow chirping unintelligibly on a twig.
Coulter, on the other hand, forces the left to panic and rage. Unlike Sowell, she alters and shapes the field of battle in real time.
You are now in the FR Twilight Zone.
Don't bring the BS sexist crapola into it. Her sex doesn't change her rhetoric.
The logic is, there is fundamentally no difference between the Jersey Four and Cindy Sheehan. If you denied Sheehan the same tender solicitude that you are extending to the Jersey Four, you are perforce a hypocrite.
Heh. It took you numerous hours and 500 posts to come up with that! OK, it's all good now. Not. Ann screwed up.
I don't think even Ann would go as far as the most outrageous comments I've ever heard. It was by televangelist Clarence McClendon on the Trinity Broadcasting Network almost four years ago. He brought up the Catholic sex abuse scandal in his sermon, and he applauded the Catholic church for not allowing outside groups, including the ***victims*** of abuse, to dictate their methods of handling the issue. He said that the world isn't supposed to tell the church what to do. It aired July 2002, I remember well because I was furious. I sent the angriest email to TBN, and never got a response.
Why don't you do something completely different for a change and bash a liberal instead of bashing a conservative for bashing a liberal.
The 4 harpies had no credibility in the 911 Whitewash other than they had dead husbands along with $Millions from the generosity of Americans. Why did Gorelick never testify let alone sit on the Commission?
To pretend that they cannot be criticized it the Left's oldest tool.
Pray for W and Freedom Fighters
LOL
Oh BS It is one bitch fighting with 4 other bitches. Yes that is sexist BUT in this case it is true. Coulter used the classic bitchy attack with her made up crap about their Husbands probably ready to divorce them. This isn't politics bare knuckle or any other kind this is 5 women in a mud wrestling spectacular. It is a stupid CAT fight.
Correction: Ann screwed down, and the left howled in pain.
And you howled too, apparently.
He helped us, and all the moderates know it. The loonies still embrace him, of course, (heck, the moonbats think THEY are the nice ones) but the realistic Dems regret his bombast.
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