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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Well, the father of Nicholas Berg, the kid Zarqawi personally sawed the head from, was quoted today as saying Bush is as bad as Zarquawi and Saddam. This while running for political office (democrat, I reckon). So am I supposed to use tact when describing this piece of human excrement?
Thank you for the explanation. Now understanding it, I think she has done herself a disservice by giving all her opponents an easy and cheap way to dismiss her. What if all the furor was over her comments about abortion? Then people would really be engaging with the meaty ideas of the book rather than this sideshow.
"Look, Davis, if the truth of my statement ("Because, as members of the Church of Liberalism you are supposed to venerate the Saint Jerseys." ) didn't get through to you, then you haven't understood any of what is going on in this argument."
In the first place, I don't know you, so I have no idea whether your statement is truthful. I did operate under the assumption that it was so I don't know why your knickers are in a twist.
Second, I understand the argument. There are people who think that politics involves persuasion with ideas and those who think politics involves persuasion with a baseball bat. It's obvious which side each of us, and Ms. Coulter, is on.
"You guys are begining to sound pollyanish. These people are UNC0NVINCEABLE only self-destructive. We just need to help them self-destruct whimpering in a corner somewhere."
I was once one of those people. I moved right because I saw the correctness of conservative ideas, not because someone called Bill Clinton an a$#hole. There are people who are UNCONVINCABLE. They're like the lefty version of you. However, many people are convincable and they move back and forth in the middle and they often decide elections. To the extent this round of controversy has any impact at all, I think it's more negative. The people, like you, yelling "Go Ann" are already on board. But there are people who might want to move to the right who don't want to be associated with the kind of rhetoric she is offering here.
I did like her comeback to Hillary though.
Why did you send me three responses? Your ignorance in the first one was all I needed to see.
Thanks for calling.
Actually, you're wrong. Most adult Americans fall into the category of non-partisan, middle-of-the-road. They go about their daily lives giving little or no thought to politics. They typically hold right-of-center views on some issues and left-of-center views on others.
Only a comparatively small percentage of adults are what might be called political junkies -- politically active and/or who pay close daily attention to the issues of the day. This is not just me talking. It's empirical data taken from a variety of sources, including ratings for TV news programs, talk radio shows, the rising number of voters registered as independents, studies, polls, and so on.
Nationwide, independents now make up roughly a third of the American electorate.
I really expect trash talk and low blows from libs, but Anne should know better. I just dismiss their incessant whining and blathering to their stupidity. Yeah, they're dumba$$es, but that's pointing out the obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense.
I just don't know why or where she comes up with her playboy comment or the one about maybe their husbands were going to divorce them anyway. What's that got to do with anything? She's pulling stuff out of thin air and makes her look like a raving goofball. But then of course, she's hawking her new book and I suppose it's her way of getting attention. Bad Anne! I won't bite! :P
You don't have to bite. Ann is Ann. You either like her or you don't. She's been just as cruel and personal to many others. Moonbats are moonbats. If she attackes Micheal Moore as a fat, treasonous sleazeball, I don't care. If she attacks Hillary as a coniving rape appeaser, I don't care. If she attacks the NJ gals as playboy posing, profiteering harpies, fine by me. They mean no more to me than Hillary or Michael Moore or Joe Wilson or Jimmuh Carter, or, or, or. You get my point.
Loud and clear, Pissy! Your point is well taken, sir!
Zarqawi is DEAD and Coulter has been proven right by the likes of Michael Berg and the MSM even making him newsworthy.
A great day for America is supplemented by a father who lost his son in Iraq. Hands off. No. Like the Jersey girls, he is also a self-serving moonbat.
I expect all conservatives to not only not bend over for the Jersey girls but to follow suit with Michael Berg.
I agree with her points about these women absuing their situation, but that kind of comment is just plain ugly. Nasty provocations have their place, this is not the place for it.
"Did you ever think the women who lost their husbands actually want accountability from their government and elected officials?"
No. They wouldn't address the Gorelick Wall, they wouldn't address the inconsistencies of the Liberals on the panel. They didn'ty address Sandy Berger stealing documents. All they wanted was why Bush failed to prevent 9/11. Then they They went out and campaigned for Kerry.
They tried to hide behind the media and now that they are being called out on it they are claiming that Ann is being insensitive. Funny thing is, they are doing exactly what Ann is accusing them of doing.
Why do you choose to use a hyperbolic baseball bat?Ann Coulter uses no such thing as a baseball bat, she uses rhetoric. Her rhetoric has a sting to it, but it is only rhetoric. And the people she uses her rhetoric on are far from innocents in the use of rhetoric with a sting to it.
The actual targets of her rhetoric are not the thousands of widowed spouses of 911 sneak-attack victims but the liberal Establishment consisting of not only the Democratic Party of the "Wellstone Memorial" but the "objective journalism" establishment which selects out from among those thousands of widows four liberal activist women and anoints them the "Jersey Girls." And, of course, selects the liberal activist Cindy Sheehan out of all the thousands of bereaved mothers of fallen troops and announces her - and only her - "absolute moral authority."
Ann's stinging rhetoric falls directly on the Jersey Girls and Mother Sheehan, but only because they are the adopted human shields behind which arrogant "objective" journalism presumes to protect its self-serving political agenda. A role for which they themselves volunteered. And Ann has likewise volunteered to be the skunk at that garden party, making herself "COULTER THE CRUEL" as the front page of yesterday's NY Daily News had it. Armed with her stinging rhetoric, and only that, she has launched a one-person Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign.
Ann must be part Mexican, because she has volunteered to do a job American men won't do. The truth is that the Republican Party has been in desperate need of vice presidential candidates with that sort of elan. Jack Kemp, for example, took exactly the opposite demeanor into the 1996 debate with VP Gore - and got his head handed to him. Kemp redefined the Republican Party with his Kemp-Roth bill, and on that basis should have had the presidential nomination in '96. But if he will not defend the (white, male dominated) middle class which is the base of the Republican Party, he is nonetheless disqualified for national office.
Man, you said it so well, I believed everything you said and was well persuaded.
I wonder why she couldn't do that.
Good line. Off hand, I can't think of any conservative pundit... male or female... that assails the Marxist-socialist left with more zeal than Ann. She is truly a conservative treasure.
I wonder why she couldn't do that.
Don't feel bad, we all have been bombarded with the propaganda of "objective journalism for so long that it can be difficult to think clearly.Ann has her role, and she is an effective writer as well as speaker. But - and this is far from being a knock on her, I am the opposite and wish it were otherwise - Ann is a motormouth. Yesterday I was at her book signing in Huntington, NY (radio cast on Sean Hannity) and could not but notice how very fast she spoke, and how sharply on-point her replies to questions/challenges were. Trust me, if she were criticizing something you believed in you would hate her. Ronald Reagan or Dick Cheney she ain't. It's too easy for her.
And so, ironically, I think she is especially effective as a book writer. In a book you can read her insights, however stingingly expressed, and think them over. If you think she's over the top on something, fine - just keep reading or stop and ruminate on what she said. Talk it over on FR. Just don't expect the liberal establishment which calls itself "objective" journalism ever to give her a break; discount everything they say just as much as you take a show-me attitude toward her opinions.
Journalism is a special interest masquerading as the very embodiment of the public interest. Journalism calls itself "the press" but newspapers are part of the press and broadcast journalism is no part of the press at all. If broadcast journalism were part of the press, it could not be censored just as speech and printing cannot be censored. Yet broadcasting exists only because the government censors you and me from transmitting signals which interfere with the "right" of receivers to receive government-licensed transmissions.
Let whoso thinks that newspapers are not part of the press try to censor a newspaper; let whoso thinks broadcast journalism is part of the press try to engage in broadcast journalism without a license from the government.
But journalism, print or broadcast, is a special interest because of the rules journalists must follow to be profitable. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the rule which clearly defines journalism as a special interest. It codifies the fact that journalism emphasizes bad news and does not even trouble to publish good news. So then, journalism profits from what is bad news for America and not from what is good for America. How can such an industry be anything other than a special interest?
Journalism is not only negative, it is superficial and unrepresentative. It is unrepresentative because of its "'Man Bites Dog' not 'Dog Bites Man'" rule; journalism is about what usually does not happen. And of course journalism is superficial because of its deadlines, and never more so when on broadcast "breaking news" when the deadline is always now.
Journalism is negative superficiality, and cynicism is superficial negativity. Cynicism is the opposite of faith and conservatism. The cynical view of a democratically elected republican form of government is that nothing actually matters except PR. And that is exactly the idea around which "liberalism" coheres - not only in liberal politicians but in journalists.
I wonder if these widows work for the Islam terrorists?
Dancing to Zarqawi News: http://www.ez-tracks.com/getsong-songid-17509-Preview-mp3.html
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