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| BULL'S EYE |
| Friday, June 09, 2006 |
| "Conservative" bomb-thrower Ann Coulter has a way of getting our attention that most people just won’t employ. She takes political incorrectness to the extreme. It makes some people uncomfortable, and it enrages others, but it gets stuff out in the open that needs to be discussed. Never has that been more true than now.
It’s just one line in her new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” but it has drawn more blood than all of the other intentionally offensive things she has said or written in the past. The line is, “I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.”
She is speaking specifically of four 9/11 widows who have gained fame, wealth and power from the 9/11 attacks that killed their husbands. She has dubbed the four New Jersey women “The Witches of East Brunswick,” after the town where two of them live.
The four-woman cabal has spent the years since the 2001 terror attacks blaming President Bush for 9/11 and supporting his political opponents, including the failed 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry.
Coulter’s point, which she makes after getting the mules attention with a 2X4, is that liberals have employed “untouchable” sympathetic figures to do their dirty work for them and shield themselves from criticism. The four New Jersey widows are not actually enjoying their husbands’ deaths, but they certainly have not forsworn the fame, fortune and political influence that it has brought them. They are taking advantage of their sympathetic status to attack and judge, and they seem to expect impunity.
Coulter doesn’t respect the widow’s expectation of impunity and neither should the rest of us. In a debate that is important to the entire country, perhaps the whole world, no one should be given a shield from criticism. No one has more standing than anyone else who has a stake in the outcome of the debate. Being a victim of terrorism may earn the widows more sympathy than you or me, but it does not earn them any more standing to criticize. The point is, sympathy does not engender impunity, at least not in politics or public policy. The outcome of the debate is too important to let sympathy skew it. |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 6/09/2006 10:10:00 AM   |
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| 3 Comments: |
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I guess I would see it differently when the women of 9/11 exploit their spouse's death for political and economic gain. Ann Coulter points out this exploitation in a book...Hmm...it seems different to me, Helen.
What am I missing?
-Jack
(I guess my point is that just because these women lost a spouse that it should not shield them from all criticism. We seem to have adopted the attitude in these United States that loss entitles one to a free ride. There are many people who lose loved ones in a variety of ways that they do not exploit.
Personally I disagree with Anne on many points and also many times in methodology--but that does not render her points invalid. Hmm...where have I heard THAT before?:)
Good to hear from you, Helen. Hope you are having a wonderful day.
-Jack
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You omitted the part where Coulter calls them names and wonders baselessly if their husbands were planning on leaving them. Huh? She's shown herself to be a wacko who can't be taken seriously.
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Unfortunately I think you're right, Kathy. One discredits themselves often by their presentation (or lack).
Guess my point is that just because we have the Moores, Frankens and Coulters in the world we should still not allow them to distract from the real debate.
-Jack
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I guess I would see it differently when the women of 9/11 exploit their spouse's death for political and economic gain. Ann Coulter points out this exploitation in a book...Hmm...it seems different to me, Helen.
What am I missing?
-Jack
(I guess my point is that just because these women lost a spouse that it should not shield them from all criticism. We seem to have adopted the attitude in these United States that loss entitles one to a free ride. There are many people who lose loved ones in a variety of ways that they do not exploit.
Personally I disagree with Anne on many points and also many times in methodology--but that does not render her points invalid. Hmm...where have I heard THAT before?:)
Good to hear from you, Helen. Hope you are having a wonderful day.
-Jack