Columnist’s Take on Coulter and Me

Phil Reisman’s column in The (Westchester County) Journal-News discusses the parallels and differences between Ann Coulter and yours truly, specifically relating to our comments about 9/11 widows. I have to hand it to Ann; she’s really going to the bank by plagiarizing my comments from March 2002 in her “new” book.

Among Reisman’s comments:

How soon we forget.

Ann Coulter, the self-styled uber-babe of the right, wasn’t the first pundit to characterize the relatively small contingent of vocal Sept. 11 widows as self-aggrandizing, media hounds who have capitalized on the deaths of their husbands. She’s merely the first to make money out of it.

Coulter’s political opposite, the syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall, made ground chuck out of the sacred-cow widows a long time ago. But unlike Coulter, he’s talented, original and often funny.

He also paid a price for his searing commentary.

and

Both Rall and Coulter tapped into this zeitgeist, and depending on how you feel about them, they were either offensive in the telling or right on the mark.

At least Rall had the guts to do it first.

Rall sees that as his job. And without complaint, he lets the chips fall where they may.

Rall noted how he and Coulter are often compared. They’re both glib and flippant.

“I think the difference is that I’m interested in getting to the truth,” Rall said.

“I’m going to say something that she will never say, which is that I reserve the right to one day become a right-wing conservative. I reserve the right to come to a completely different conclusion. I don’t guarantee anyone that I will always be a liberal.

“She’ll never say the opposite, and that’s the difference.”

Check it out.