“Terror Widows”: The Last Word

A number of articles and blogs have compared my March 2002 “terror widows” cartoon about media coverage of opportunistic 9/11 survivors Lisa Beamer, Ted Olsen and Mariane Pearl with Ann Coulter’s remarks about the “Jersey Girls,” 9/11 widows who have pressed the Bush Administration for answers about the terrorist attacks. Interestingly, there’s been some amnesia among right-wing commentators, some of whom posit that Ann is catching hell while I got away scot-free with the same exact remarks.

Well, for one thing, they’re not the same remarks. For another, I received numerous death threats and lost clients as a result of commenting on the commodification of grief. Don’t believe me? Check out my upcoming collection of cartoons AMERICA GONE WILD. It includes a 35,000-word foreword detailing the hate mail, threats of death and dismemberment, client cancellations and the hypocritical behavior that originally inspired my “terror widows” cartoon. Anyone interested in the truth behind the myth should give it a read.