With Ann Coulter, how far is ‘too far’?

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.