Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers

In an appearance on the Today Show, promoting her autobiography, Godless, Ann Coulter courageously tackled the frightening menace of widows and grieving mothers. For years after 9/11 the power of women like Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Aukenhas and Cindy Sheehan has gone virtually unchecked as they have bullied the President, cowing him into appointing the 9/11 Commission and ruining his vacations in Crawford, Texas. "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much," says Coulter, who reluctantly bears the celebrity that has been thrust on her like a burden and, sadly, has no death of a family member she can enjoy. On Tucker Carlson, Coulter, who hasn't made one dime off of 9/11, other than her standard lecture and writing fees, said, "These women got paid. They ought to take their money and shut up about it."

If you have any doubt about the power of these women, just look at how Coulter has gotten pilloried (and Hillary-ed) for daring to take them on. Even some on the right, who for years have cheered her on, have suddenly turned on her. Though Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters says he enjoys Coulter's "good humor," he believes she has "lost her humanity." Rick Moran calls her a "shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction." The Anchoress says that Coulter "goes too far and discredits herself and the values she says she espouses." Don Surber says she "brings shame to conservatives." Hugh Hewitt says she owes an apology to the widows of 9/11." Even Michelle Malkin responded by saying she agreed with Hillary Clinton's attacks on Coulter, though she did use it as an excuse to run an unflattering picture of the Senator (it's a good thing there are no unflattering pictures of Malkin).

Coulter has used the words "camel jockey," "jihad monkey" and "tent merchant" to refer to Muslims, come out against a woman's right to vote ("It would be a much better country if women did not vote") and said Abu Ghraib proved women "shouldn't be in the military," called for the assassination of a Supreme Court Justice ("someone should put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' crème brûlée"), claimed "a baseball bat is the most effective way" to deal with liberals, called Democrats "gutless traitors," lamented that Timothy McVeigh "did not go to the New York Times building," revealed that she is "not a big fan of the First Amendment," said she hates Canada "because they speak French," said God gave us permission to "rape the planet," told disabled Vietnam vet Bobby Muller "No wonder you guys lost," called people who collect Social Security "greedy geezers," said Episcopalians "don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief," dubbed the Democratic Convention "the Spawn of Satan Convention," and called Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff "whores." But apparently, when she attacked the 9/11 widows, she really crossed the line.

Coulter is understandably frustrated at how the liberal media fawns over these women and hangs on their every word, while she has struggled to get her message out through the occasional television appearance, talk radio, college campus tours, her syndicated column, her website and her bestselling books. The media seems to believe that these women deserve some sort of special status just because they happen to have lost a loved one, even though they lack Coulter's long list of credentials. These narcissistic women persist in believing that their loss was somehow greater than that of the rest of the country who watched it all happen on television. "We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9-11. This isn't about her personal loss," Coulter wrote in a column last year. And in her recent book she wrote of the 9/11 widows: "These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them."

Being a widow or grieving mother gives someone immunity to criticism, according to Coulter, which she calls "the left's doctrine of infallibility." And so when Coulter is paired with one of these women on a talk show, she is rendered practically speechless. "How about sending in somebody we are allowed to respond to?" she said. "We always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die." This is a common ploy of liberals that has a long history. Back during the Civil Rights era, for example, the rational arguments conservatives made in favor of segregation were often pitted against pictures of dogs and fire hoses being unleashed against black people. These provocative images drowned out any reasoned discussion of state's rights. More recently, after Hurricane Katrina, we had to endure countless interviews with people who lived in the region. Focusing sympathetically on the plight of these victims caused many Americans to point the finger of blame at the President instead of on these very same people who made a conscious choice to live in a dangerous area. While Coulter and other conservative intellectuals want to talk about ideas, their liberal opponents respond with emotionalism and overheated rhetoric that makes rational discourse impossible.

Coulter believes that thankfully the time these women spend in the limelight will be finite ("And 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," she writes in her book). No doubt, these women will continue to try to up the ante with more and more outrageous statements in order to extend their 15 minutes of fame a little bit longer, while Coulter, on the other hand, will once again be embraced by the right when this tempest dies down. (Indeed, Malkin has already appeared to back off from her initial criticism of Coulter, calling the controversy "hype and hyperbole" and reprinting Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz's denunciation of the widows, while Rick Moran refuses to take down the ads for Coulter's book from his website because that would be "stifling debate.") But unfortunately, Coulter's suffering will probably not end soon. With no end in sight for the War in Iraq and the possibility of another terrorist attack just around the corner, even if the stars of Breitweiser, Aukenhas and Sheehan do begin to fade, it is likely there will be more widows and grieving mothers to take their place.

Jon Swift, Ann Coulter, War on Terror, Terrorism, Cindy Sheehan, Michelle Malkin, Bush, Today Show, Liberal, Conservative, Books, Book, Godless, September 11, 9-11, Media, Politics, Carnival of Trackbacks LXXII, Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots OTA #12