Jersey Girls - Political Controversy

Political Controversy

The Jersey Girls have been the target of attacks at various times. In 2004, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times that "The phenomenon has sufficiently alarmed the White House that earlier in the month its media allies tried to discredit the 9/11 families, particularly the so-called 'Jersey Girls,' the four telegenic suburban widows who have forced the administration to reverse its stonewalling of the 9/11 commission at nearly every juncture. Rush Limbaugh labeled Kristen Breitweiser a Democratic operative. Bill O'Reilly sounded the alarm that 'some 9/11 families have aligned themselves with the far left.' But this stab at damage control went nowhere." In her 2006 book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, conservative commentator Ann Coulter created a firestorm of controversy with her remarks about the Jersey Girls. Coulter wrote:

They first came together to complain that the $1.6 million average settlement to be paid to 9/11 victims' families by the government was not large enough... These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities... These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. ... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much ... the Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president ... cutting campaign commercials... 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."

These statements received national attention after an interview on The Today Show, and were widely criticized. The Jersey Girls themselves also responded critically to Coulter's remarks. Kristen Breitweiser stated, "I'd like her to meet my daughter and tell her how anyone could enjoy their father's death... She sounds like a very disturbed, unraveled person." Lorie Van Auken said that "she was stunned by the vitriol." She said, "Having my husband burn alive in a building brought me no joy. Watching it unfold on national TV and seeing it repeated endlessly was beyond what I could describe. Telling my children they would never see their father again was not fun. And we had no plans to divorce." Nevertheless, Coulter has repeated her criticism of the Jersey Girls. "I feel sorry for all the widows of 9/11... I do not believe that sanctifies their political message....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...this idea that you need some sort of personal authenticity in order to make a political point..."

The New York Daily News reported that the Jersey Girls "tried to stay above the name-calling fray" by emphasizing that "the nation shouldn't focus on Coulter's words but on security problems like porous borders, wasteful Homeland Security funding and intelligence agencies that don't work together. 'Our only motivation ever was to make our nation safer,' they said in a statement. 'We have been slandered. Contrary to Ms. Coulter's statements, 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. We adored these men and miss them every day.'" And Senator Hillary Clinton found it "unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I've known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safety and security of our country."

After the 9/11 Commission issued its report, the Jersey Girls pressured the Administration to follow its recommendations. They specifically commended the Commission for not politicizing blame in the report. "The USS Cole was bombed under Clinton's watch, and 9/11 happened under Bush's watch," said Rosemary Dillard. "I don't blame either administration; I blame the people who were reporting to them." As the 2004 election neared, the widows criticized Bush for the failure to enact the recommendations of the commission; many interpreted this as an endorsement of Bush's opponent John Kerry; the New York Times reported, "In a statement clearly meant to influence voters in next week's election, the group did not explicitly endorse Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, but said Mr. Bush had 'allowed members of his own party to derail the legislative process.'" There were other 9/11 victim's families who supported the Bush campaign; Debra Burlingame, whose brother flew in the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon, responded to the widows: "The Jersey Girls criticized President Bush because he wasn't rounding up Arabs in airport lounges before Sept. 11. These are the same people who are now decrying the use of the Patriot Act."