OK, here goes. I went to high school with Ann Coulter. Or so my yearbook indicates. I have no recollection of her. Maybe it was our age difference. At any rate, back then I don’t believe she was a very memorable figure. There she is on page 36, as a member of the class of 1980 at New Canaan High School. And there she is on page 146 (in the pic shown here), as a rather dark-haired member of the fencing team (!). (Apparently, she later traded in her rapier for blunter instruments.) I mention this now because Coulter is once again out marketing a book in her inimitable style, this time suggesting that some 9/11 widows are reveling in their husbands' deaths because it’s given them fame and—monetarily, at least—fortune. Every time she trots out another inflammatory sound bite destined to make the front pages, she embarrasses the pants off my hometown, since her New Canaan heritage is all too well-known. (Gawker even referred to her as the New Canaan Natterer a few days ago.) And given that New Canaan is a well-known Republican bastion, the knee-jerk assumption is that the townsfolk agree with everything she says. (I highly doubt that.) Obviously, Coulter is no dummy; she has a laser-like focus on selling books. And it works. But this time, even Bill O’Reilly thinks she may have gone too far. Still, you have to ask what “too far” means, exactly. In the marketplace, sadly, it means nothing as long as her books remain on the best-seller lists.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor