NBC News Slanders Ann Coulter
In a vicious attack on Ann Coulter and her new book "Godless,” NBC News zeroed-in on her sharp criticism of the liberal "Jersey Girls” - the four highly politicized widows of 9/11 victims - leaving the impression that Coulter had attacked all 9/11 widows instead of the four women.
In introducing the segment, NBC anchor Brian Williams said "just when you think that it seems that there are no limits on anything, someone comes along and makes a comment that goes over the line – the line that is shared by just about everybody because some things are, it turns out, still sacred.”
Sacred?
Sacred, as it turns out, are the Jersey Girls. According to NBC’s Mike Taibbi, Coulter had written about some 9/11 widows charging that they have been reveling in their status as celebrities.
He reiterated the charge that Coulter’s attacks were on "9/11 widows” instead of the four Jersey Girls.
NBC then dragged out the shopworn David Gergen, the all-purpose "former White House adviser” who has never seemed to be able to determine what side he’s on, effortlessly sliding from a GOP White House to the Clinton menagerie. On cue, Gergen spoke of the "ugliness” of the charge against Williams' sacred icons.
Last night during a televised book signing in Long Island, broadcast on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," Coulter fired back.
"[The left] sends out spokespeople, who - because of some personal tragedy - we're not allowed to respond to. Because their husbands died in 9/11, because they had a son die in Iraq. If they're making a point worth making, if they're entering the public dialogue, how about letting Howard Dean make the point.
"I feel sorry for all the widows of 9/11," Coulter continued. "[But] I do not believe that sanctifies their political message. They're the ones who claim to be responsible for the 9/11 Commission - a total Clinton whitewash commission."
More Coulter: "They have attacked Bush, they have attacked Condoleezza Rice, they're cutting campaign commercials for Kerry. But we can't respond because their husbands died . . . I think it's one of the ugliest things the left has done to political dialogue in this country - this idea that you need some sort of personal authenticity in order to make a political point . . ."
Asked if she would accept an invitation to personally debate the Jersey Girls, Coulter responde: "Sure . . . But I'm not going to treat them like victims, as with Cindy Sheehan and - oh, you can't respond to Joe Wilson."
Just who are the Jersey Girls?
Writing in The Wall Street Journal’s "Opinion Journal" in April 2004, Dorothy Rabinowitz noted 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 [of the Jersey Girls], announcing that 'President Bush and his workers . . . were the individuals that failed my husband and the 3,000 people that day.'"
The four women - Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken and Patty Casazza - are scarcely representative of the hundreds of 9/11 widows.
Wrote Rabinowitz: "Others who had lost family to the terrorists' assault commanded little to no interest from TV interviewers. Debra Burlingame - lifelong Democrat and sister of Charles F. 'Chic' Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11 - did manage to land an interview after Ms. Rice's appearance.
"When she had finished airing her views critical of the accusatory tone and tactics of the Jersey Girls, her interviewer, ABC congressional reporter Linda Douglass marveled, 'This is the first time I've heard this point of view.'
"That shouldn't have been surprising. The hearing room that day had seen a substantial group of 9/11 families, similarly irate over the Jersey Girls and their accusations - families that made their feelings evident in their burst of loud applause when [Condoleeza] Rice scored a telling zinger under questioning. But these were not the 9/11 voices TV and newspaper editors were interested in.
"They had chosen to tell a different story - that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration 'to its knees' - and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story . . ."
Two years ago Rabinowitz made the point that Coulter is being chastised for making now - that the Jersey Girls status as 9/11 widows allegedly gives them immunity from being criticized.
Rabinowitz wrote: "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.”
The Jersey Girls actively supported John Kerry in 2004. As for the "civility" issue, NBC News, it should be noted, turned a blind eye to Al Franken's statement to Matt Lauer last October.
Then, Franken told the "Today" host that Karl Rove and Lewis Libby should be "executed." The comment drew a laugh from Lauer. Franken's comments drew no criticism from the major media, including NBC News.
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