Thanks for your perspective newbie. Coulter has hardly gotten a pass for her comments. If you do search the coulter threads here in the last week, you will find that she has been roundly criticized and defended here mainly for a couple of lines out of her 310 page book that were clearly seen as over the top by a significant number of FReepers and other conservatives. Of course, the vitriolic way she was condemned by liberals for these comments and the names she was called went a long way toward illustrated the point she was making with her acerbic language.
As for the author's comments being "tongue-in-cheek", there is nothing tongue in cheek about "do us all a favor and kill yourself" and there is nothing tongue in cheek about describing someone as "rabidly hateful, foaming-at-the-mouth, sub-human".
As a further study of interesting responses, why don't you search the comments, quotes, columns from those on the left (your basic MSM, democrat party, whatever) and see if you can find any criticism from the left for similar or more inflammatory rhetoric from the likes of Michael Moore, Al Franken, and/or Ted Rall. I would bet that you could not find enough criticisms from the left for all the vitriolic statements of all three of these left wing-nuts combined to equal even one-tenth of the criticism for just this one comment of Ann's from convervative columnists alone. You want to talk about giving someone a pass? You'll need to look elsewhere.
If ANYONE complains about Ann's comments, just ask/reply to the person:
"Can you show me where the Jersey Girls, et al, issued statements complaining about Micael Moore's and especially Ward Churchill's hateful statements about the innocent 9/11 VICTIMS THEMSELVES? Did they protest him at his college?
What about all of the writers and rappers that thoerize that "we" brought down those buildings and they cannot supply one salient, proveable piece of evidence? Anything?"