Coulter Draws Fire for Bashing 9/11 Widows
Jun 10, 2006
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit with a penchant for creating controversy, caused a ruckus when she called 9/11 widows "witches" and accused them of using their husbands' deaths for their own political gain.
It is just the latest of the high-emotion, sharp-rhetoric attacks that she has leveled in four previous books and frequent appearances on cable television programs. Her firebrand style even inspired NBC's "The West Wing" to create a "a blond, Republican sex kitten" in her mold.
In her latest book, Coulter criticizes the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed their husbands at the World Trade Center. The women also backed Democrat John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004.
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter wrote.
Among Coulter's previous statements, she advocated the invasion of non-Christian nations after Sept. 11 and the deportation from the U.S. of "all aliens from Arabic countries." She said American Taliban John Walker should be executed to show liberals what happens to traitors. And she said the only real question about President Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate."
Among the most quotable Coulter:
- "To expiate the pain of losing her first-born son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. ... After your third profile on 'Entertainment Tonight,' you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show," Coulter wrote in her TownHall.com column on Aug. 18, 2005.
- "Even if corners were cut, (Iran-Contra) was a brilliant scheme. There is no possibility that anyone in any Democratic administration would have gone to such lengths to fund anti-communist forces. When Democrats scheme from the White House, it's to cover up the president's affair with an intern. When Republicans scheme, it's to support embattled anti-communist freedom fighters sold out by the Democrats," she wrote in 2003's "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism."
- "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building," The New York Observer quoted her as saying on Aug. 20, 2002. She clarified those remarks with RightWingNews.com: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'"
- "After all other suitable office space in Manhattan had dried up and also after spending the weekend golfing at an all-white club in Florida Clinton announced he would take an office in Harlem. ... As one of my friends remarked, that should be nice: Having escaped a mugging on the way to work, Clinton's female employees will then have to face an accused rapist in the office," Coulter wrote on Feb. 19, 2001.
- "The Americanization of Iraq proceeds at an astonishing pace, the Iraqis are taking to freedom like fish to water, and the possibilities for this nation are endless. It's hard to say who's more upset about these developments: the last vestiges of pro-Hussein Baathist resistance in Iraq or John Kerry's campaign manager," Coulter wrote in a June 30, 2004, column posted on her Web site.
- "(Liberals) are always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. ... Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment," Coulter said during an Oct. 21, 2005, speech at the University of Florida.
- "Abortion is the sacrament and Roe v. Wade is Holy Writ," she wrote in "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published Tuesday.
- "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," Coulter wrote in a column published by the National Review Online on Sept. 13, 2001.
- "The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't cowering in fear during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis," she wrote in "Treason."
- "Mostly the Witches of East Brunswick wanted George Bush to apologize for not being Bill Clinton," she wrote in "Godless." She was referring to the New Jersey town where two of the Sept. 11 widows live.
- "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said in a Jan. 27 appearance at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., regarding Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She later explained she was joking about the justice, whose votes have upheld Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion.
- "You want to be careful not to become just a blowhard," she said in The Washington Post on October 16, 1998.
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