Ann Coulter adalah salah satu kolomnis terkemuka Amerika, dan pendukung setia kebijakan George Bush.
Pekan ini (6 Juni 2006), dia menerbitkan buku lain yang kontroversial - "Godless: The Church of Liberalism". Seperti banyak kolom dan beberapa buku yang dia tulis sebelumnya, "Godless" berisi kecaman terhadap orang-orang anti-pemerintah. Salah satu kelompok yang mendapat porsi kecaman terkeras adalah para janda korban 9/11 yang berusaha menggolkan pembentukan Komisi Independen 9/11 setelah mereka tak puas oleh komisi serupa buatan pemerintah. Seperti diketahui, para janda ini juga mengkritik kebijakan Pemerintahan George Bush di Irak dan Afghanistan. Dalam kampanye "Not in our Name" mereka meminta pemerintah tidak mengatasnamakan para korban 9/11 untuk serangan militer ke Afghanistan dan Irak. Coulter menyebut para janda itu antara lain, "dukun sihir... yang memanfaatkan kematian suami mereka untuk jadi milioner...". Tuduhan yang serius. Tapi, tak berhenti di situ. Dalam sebuah kolom setelah 9/11, dia menulis tentang negara-negara Islam: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Kita tidak tahu persis seberapa jauh pandangan Coulter ini mewakili pikiran orang Amerika. Tapi, bukunya jelas best-seller, dan Mei lalu, Majalah Time menyebutnya sebagai satu dari '100 Most Influential People'. Dan di bawah ini berita terbaru tentang konfrontasinya dengan para janda 9/11 itu. fgaban ------- Coulter calls 9/11 widows "witches" By Claudia Parsons Wed Jun 7, 6:24 PM ET 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." A spokeswoman for publisher Crown Forum said it had set a first print run of 1 million copies of "Godless" and there were 1.5 million copies of Coulter's previous four books in print. The four women, 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 e-mail, "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. Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record) of New Jersey said Coulter's "shameless attack" on the widows sparked disgust. "Her bookselling antics and accompanying vulgarity deserve our deepest contempt," he said in a statement. The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News. Corp., slammed the comments in an article on Wednesday headlined: "Righty writer Coulter hurls nasty gibes at 9/11 gals." Coulter, a regular television commentator who is hugely popular among 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 second-best seller of the day at online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday afternoon. Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Home is just a click away. 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