I often enjoy Ann Coulter's refusal to bow to the liberal priesthood and genuflect to their pieties, but I cannot defend some of her statements in her new book Godless. In the book she allegedly says about some of the widows of 9/11 victims, in the words of Claudia Parsons at MyWay News, that they are:
...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."
If all this is true Ann has stepped over the line. I admire her desire to be outrageous and provocative. I admire her willingness to shatter politically-correct protocols and sensibilities, but she has, in this instance, made herself look cold and churlish. It is one thing to criticize these women for the political positions they have taken, but to call them witches because their politics are at variance with one's own and to assert that they are enjoying their husbands' deaths is simply wrong. Nor is Coulter displaying good sense or taste in saying that they are revelling in their celebrity status unless she has some proof that this is so.
In any event, the opinions the women express are fair game, but accusing them of callously exploiting their families' tragedy for personal gain requires that some evidence be adduced. As far as I can tell from the MyWay article, though, Coulter simply makes the assertion and leaves it hang unsupported in mid-air.
This is despicable when the left does it. It is no less so when those one usually agrees with do it. If this is indeed what she does in the book [and I confess to not having read it] she should either produce the evidence or apologize.