al-Zarqawi's, Jersey Girls and Ann Coulter – a Strange, but Useful, Comparison

By: Steve Yuhas

Proving that Ann Coulter is right is not difficult because she is brilliant and would never print anything wrong – provocative and angering to lefties – of course, but wrong: never.  The best part of Ann Coulter is that she is seldom proven right so quickly after being told she is wrong and vile by half of the media for almost an entire week, but this week it happened in record time!

This week the mainstream media, including some right leaning folks on Fox News and other networks, focused on the important things happening in America: the gay marriage amendment in the Senate and Ann Coulter’s comments about the four Jersey women who became millionaire widows on 9-11.

Coulter did not write in her new book, ‘Godless: the Church of Liberalism,’ anything that she would not and or has not already said in public (well there is new stuff, but you know what i mean), but for some reason her putting in print things that many people, including me, talked and wrote about years ago about these women from Jersey became fodder and top story breaking news that the media could not get enough of.

It was not until the world found out that the US military was successful in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that the media stopped talking about Coulter’s remarks that the four women who went on a public crusade against President Bush and the entire GOP establishment left the top story and front pages.  One has to consider what Coulter said that got so many people frazzled and how they took her words and twisted them for their own advantage so that everyone with a camera within 100 yards could come out and repudiate Coulter's entire book based on a few passages about some 9-11 widows made millionaires.

Coulter wrote in her new bestselling book that the four women from New Jersey chose to become public figures and that because their husbands died on September 11, 2001 when Islamic terrorists turned airplanes into missiles that not even their ideas, no matter how stupid they were, could be challenged.  It was a new low for free speech advocates on the left who frequently attempt to shut down any speech they disagree with (I should know – 3 weeks after my radio show started I had gays writing the FCC to get me off the air: more than 2 years later we’re still on the air) and advocate for any speech that is over the top on the left (like the murder of the British Prime Minister: perfectly okay to lefties).

These four women took to the airwaves and became media darlings: they claimed credit for Presidential commissions set up to look at the events of September 11th (it was pretty easy – a monkey could have served on that committee because every writer predicted the outcome long before their final report came out): former President Clinton and his staff did nothing to stop terrorism so it grew into the monster of September 11th. 

At the same time these women became self-styled experts regarding issues of homeland security without any of them having any experience of doing anything except being a victim of 9-11 – an historical and American event; not one owned by four Jersey women or only those who lost relatives and got millions of tax dollars.

Imagine four widows from Pearl Harbor galvanizing against President Roosevelt being treated as experts and called to testify against the president simply because their husbands happened to be on the USS Arizona on that fateful day in 1941.  It wouldn’t have happened, but it just shows how times have changed. 

In the case of Coulter and the Jersey Girls politicians could not get to cameras and microphones quick enough to blame Coulter for upsetting women who decided on their own to become public figures, but who were off limits to criticism because they were widows.  So ridiculous did the week become that a Congressman from New York - Mr. "I can't find a camera or microphone will someone please get one, even if it doesn't work" Weiner said that Coulter's book was little more than a publicity stunt.  Huh?  Isn't that what all books are and does anyone remember My Life by Bill Clinton - no publicity there huh Weiner?

Weiner found cameras and was able to issue statements along with his appearances (you would think that with the country going to hell in a handbasket that liberals who are telling us every day that the sky is falling would have something better to do than become book reviewers).  I digress: using the logic put forward by the Jersey Girls and their supporters my status as a victim allows me to have on-air fits about anything I want, regardless if I know about the issue or not, because I am effectively immunized from criticism because I'm Jewish, gay and disabled.

Oh wait, I’m a conservative so all bets are off – the off limits for criticism rules only apply to liberals and liberal thinking: conservatives can be talked about no matter how much they sacrificed.

As a logical person wanting proof of my theory I did not have to wait very long.  It was the only story that knocked Ann Coulter and the Jersey Girls off the front page and top story: the death of Zarqawi.  Proof came in the form of a father who lost his son, beheaded by Zarqawi himself, who is now running for Congress under the Green Party banner.  We cannot discuss his stupid ideas of military withdrawal from Iraq either or the obtuse nature of his blaming of President Bush for his son, Nick Berg, being killed by terrorists in a county he traveled to without the blessing of the coalition authority.

Nick Berg effectively walked into a war zone, got kidnapped and became an American beheaded by a madman and now his father, Michael Berg, decided to run for Congress to do, what else, end the war in Iraq by using the Representative Murtha model of “cut and run” now endorsed by almost the whole of the Democratic Party.

Michael Berg, Green Party for Congress in Delaware, was treated with kid gloves in all of his media appearances because he lost his son in Iraq – never mind that terrorists killed him – Michael berg blamed President Bush for his Nicks beheading because President Bush never looked Nick in the eye and Zarqawi did.

In true form of Jersey Girl Coulter logic – Nick Berg’s father is immune from attacks of his stupidity and obtuse opinions because his son was a victim of terrorism.  Perhaps if Nick were a member of the military or if he sought permission to enter Iraq he would have been protected from the terrorists, but Nick went alone and met his end by terrorists.  Without batting an eye the mainstream media allowed his father to go on and on about President Bush and the “policies to end lives” for his sons death.

If ever there were proof coming on the heels of other truth it is exactly what Ann Coulter wrote in her book: that the left loves victims and if you’re a victim of anything and you are a leftist (the more left the better) you are forever immune from criticism or even an honest disagreement with your thinking because you had loss in your life.

Forget that we all lost things on September 11, 2001, our nation was attacked by Islamic extremists and we are at war for it and many of us lost friends or relatives to wounds or death in a war for liberty – the only people who really count are those who think to the left and represent the minority of American political thought.

When the stories were going on and on and politicians were taking to the airwaves to talk about how badly Ann Coulter was treating widows it never dawned on them that in the very same week her theory would be proven out in the form of Michael Berg.  Berg goes on television and radio and gives interviews in print and his positions are not challenged and the softballs lobbed at him are rationalized because he lost his son in Iraq: not because he was a hero who volunteered to fight for his country, but because he traveled to Iraq not believing that the people he thought he could talk out of killing innocent people would end up killing him.

The timing for Ann Coulter could not have been better because the Jersey Girls are off the front pages and their expertise in homeland security is once again only kitchen table talk for their little get togethers to talk about American foreign policy, but proving her example of the Jersey Girls was Michael Berg who is never challenged on his wacky ideas because his son was beheaded and that gives him carte blanche to say whatever he wants, attack anyone he desires and to put forward stupid and obtuse foreign policy objectives as he runs for Congress without so much as a murmur from the other side because he is off limits because he lost his son to terrorists.

Ann Coulter was right about the Jersey Girls and the proof came the same week that every politician was talking about how badly they were treated because someone dared question their status as experts in foreign policy.  They are housewives with a political hobby and Nick Berg’s father has become a father with a Green Party platform to run for Congress and is off limits to criticism because he is on the left, criticizing the right man in President Bush and there is nothing anyone can do because taking on his dumb ideas would paint you as evil and crass.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com