Coulter calls 9/11 widows “witches”

By Claudia Parsons

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.”

The four, 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 email: “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.

The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News. Corp.,
on Wednesday slammed the comments in an article headlined
“Righty writer Coulter hurls nasty gibes at 9/11 gals.”

Coulter, a regular television commentator and figurehead
for 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 fourth best
seller of the day at online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday.