Ann Coulter
Well, I suppose the MSM is rejoicing in that they’ve found a Ted Rall of the Right. Aside from the bits I’ve seen and heard on the radio I must admit I haven’t fully read what she said, nor am I likely to. I can’t stand her. Oh, I will admit to getting a small thrill when I hear about her latest outrageous statement; there’s some churlish part of me that enjoys hearing the outraged sputterings of the Left when someone dares to talk back to them in the same manner as which many of their mouthpieces regularly flail those who dare oppose them. But I lost interest in her about the time Monica should have been interested in a dry cleaner; Coulter’s crassness is not neither witty nor worthy of that much attention. Oh, I’m sure she’s held up as representing how conservatives think, much like Falwell or Robertson is held up as typical of how I believe, but bollocks, a pox on all of them. So I’m sure the MSM will demand a statement of contrition from her, or maybe force-feed her a few Big Macs on Pay-Per-View, but I will continue to mostly ignore her.
Mostly.
Because in spite of herself and her methods she did touch upon a point that has been bothering me for a while now, and one that has been expressed far better than Coulter could ever dream of doing by Dorothy Rabinowitz in this column in 2004: (thanks to THS for reminding me of it)
But the best known and most quoted pronouncement of all had come in the form of a question put by the leader of the Jersey Girls. “We simply wanted to know,” Ms. Breitweiser said, by way of explaining the group’s position, “why our husbands were killed. Why they went to work one day and didn’t come back.”
The answer, seared into the nation’s heart, is that, like some 3,000 others who perished that day, those husbands didn’t come home because a cadre of Islamist fanatics wanted to kill as many of the hated American infidels in their tall towers and places of government as they could, and they did so. Clearly, this must be a truth also known to those widows who asked the question–though in no way one would notice.
Who, listening to them, would not be struck by the fact that all their fury and accusation is aimed not at the killers who snuffed out their husbands’ and so many other lives, but at the American president, his administration, and an ever wider assortment of targets including the Air Force, the Port Authority, the City of New York? In the public pronouncements of the Jersey Girls we find, indeed, hardly a jot of accusatory rage at the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. We have, on the other hand, more than a few declarations like that of Ms. Breitweiser, announcing that “President Bush and his workers . . . were the individuals that failed my husband and the 3,000 people that day.”
The venerable status accorded this group of widows comes as no surprise given our times, an age quick to confer both celebrity and authority on those who have suffered. As the experience of the Jersey Girls shows, that authority isn’t necessarily limited to matters moral or spiritual. All that the widows have had to say–including wisdom mind-numbingly obvious, or obviously false and irrelevant–on the failures of this or that government agency, on derelictions of duty they charged to the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, Norad and the rest, has been received by most of the media and members of Congress with utmost wonder and admiration.
Every day I see the hole in the ground that was the WTC. And every day it pisses me off anew. Firstly, mostly, and primarily, that the islamic bastards did it, and would gleefully do it again.
Secondly, but increasingly, that due in large part strident 9/11 families like the ones Coulter attacked and, as Rabinowitz says seem to feel
…their assurance that it had been given to them, as victims, to determine the proper standards of taste and respectfulness to be applied in everything related to Sept. 11…
I am pissed that I see the hole in the ground that was the WTC and not new buildings defiantly rising in its place. It’s been 5 years, and while the majority of the families it seems to me have gotten on with their lives there’s this small core that is intent on controlling all aspects of September 11th and wants to turn the WTC into some sort of shrine to the dead, as opposed to a place that honors them with life. If I ever hear the WTC site referred to as ‘sacred ground’ again I will, probably not too respectfully, point out that if you consider the materials that were there ‘sacred’ than you’d best make a pilgrimage to the Freshkills Landfill on Staten Island because that’s where all those sacred items and relics and icons are. There’s nothing left at the WTC site except a hole in the ground, a hole in the City, and a hole in the country.
And that hole needs to be filled.
Update: I see Michelle Malkin wrote bits of my screed for me last night. Oh well; that’ll teach me to surf at home instead of playing SOCOM on my PSP like I did…
Media | Mr. Bingley | 
June 8, 2006 7:35 am
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She is such a touchy subject. At times I really enjoy reading her stuff and hearing what she has to say. Other times I’m disgusted by what she has to say.
It’s like that part of you that enjoys Eric Cartman. You know, sometimes you agree with what’s being said, you just don’t like how it’s being said and who it’s being said by.
If she toned down her vitriol she’d probably be far more lucid. However, no one would probably know who she is if she had.
She’s a rabid dog and I’ve always said so. I change the channel or leave the room when she’s on the telly. Like I said over at Bill’s, if Pat Buchanan had long blonde hair and legs like Secretariat, he’d get a lot more airtime.
Dorothy, on the other hand, is my favorite Dragon Lady in the whole wide world. I adore her.
She might be over the top sometimes, and I often disagree with her at fundamental levels (mostly regarding religious motives) but she is often right on the money. This is one of those times.
The real problem is that beyond the generous donations that Americans bestowed on these families, the government also gave each of them millions of dollars. Now, not only do they have opinions that I don’t care about, but they have a lot of money to dole out to political organizations and lots of time.
These widows are exploiting their husbands’ deaths for political gain. And that is ghoulish.
I like what Jonah Goldberg wrote shortly after 9/11 – if we have to have some sort of shrine or monument to our remorse, then put it on the 200th floor, right next to the anti-aircraft guns.
Amen, Emily.
Not coincidentally, Goldberg fired Coulter from her NRO gig a couple of weeks after 9/11 for some extra-spicy frothing.
Ah yes, the “invade and convert” masterpiece. She really reveled in the attention after that one.
I think NRO ran that piece with disclaimers draped like bunting all across – it was her NEXT piece that Goldberg deemed unusable, and then one thing led to another…