By Claudia Parsons
Wed Jun 7, 6:24 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.
This is why I f'ing hate the extreme right. That's disgusting. Rot in hell you stupid bitch
