Coulter won't apologize for slamming 9/11 widows
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/lo...-top-headlines
(Gold9472: Then they should sue her for everything she's got.)
BY JENNIFER MALONEY AND JOSEPH MALLIA
Newsday Staff Writers
June 8, 2006
An unrepentant Ann Coulter Wednesday blasted into Huntington, hometown to 34 people killed on Sept. 11, to promote her new book in which she attacks victims' widows as "witches" and "harpies."
But in a town where a dozen roadways are named in honor of those who died that day, few took to New York Avenue to protest the bookstore signing of the conservative author.
Instead, a defiant Coulter was met with more than 300 spirited fans at an event broadcast live to hundreds of radio stations by conservative commentator -- and Huntington Town resident -- Sean Hannity.
And she made a show of tearing up a letter of protest handed to her by a town official.
Coulter, who said she hadn't known in advance how many Huntington residents died on 9/11, was asked whether, had she known, she would have hesitated to show up.
"I didn't fly planes into the building. I don't know what you're talking about," said Coulter, as she paused from signing copies of "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." Published Monday, it was No. 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list Wednesday.
In the book, she claims liberals habitually use women with personal tragedies to advance political ends. Her remarks were aimed in particular at a group of New Jersey widows who, Coulter said, used their grief to attack President George W. Bush and support Bush's onetime presidential rival Democrat John Kerry.
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by the grief-arazzis," she wrote. "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
She adds, "And, by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?
" ... They believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process," the book said.
One of the few who challenged her at the Book Revue, Huntington Town Board member Mark Cuthbertson, publicly rebuked her as he handed over a letter. "I'm here on behalf of many of my constituents. We are disgusted with your comments," he said, drawing hoots from the crowd.
The letter said, in part, "Your latest comments deriding the widows of 9/11 are a disgrace to thousands who perished on that day."
The letter said Coulter's claim that the women had profited from their husbands' death is a "nauseating misrepresentation of their struggle to keep the memory of what happened that day alive."
Coulter ripped up the letter to the cheers of her admirers, an action Cuthberston later said shows she is "promoting hate speech."
Denunciations of Coulter poured from Washington, D.C., from the widows themselves, and from their defenders.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called the book a "vicious, mean-spirited attack," and said, "Perhaps her book should have been called 'Heartless.'"
Coulter responded to Clinton on the radio show Wednesday: "I think if she's worried about people being mean to women she should have a talk with her husband."
Coulter told reporters before the radio broadcast that the widows' status as victims made conservatives wary to counterattack. "I think I've broken the taboo. I'm not going to treat them like victims."
Inside the bookstore, attacks came quickly against the few dissenters, including one man, Dave Weintraub, 34, who introduced himself as "Big Dave, the liberal from Queens."
"I'm here because I consider Ann Coulter the most evil woman in America," Weintraub said. "She says Jews are responsible for the Holocaust. ... This woman is just plain sick."
But Veronica Giordano, 59, of Glen Cove, said of Coulter: "I admire her because she's not afraid to speak, whether it's politically incorrect or not."
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