(Edited below.)

Writing about the awfulness of Ann Coulter is a bit like writing about how three-day-old garbage smells pretty bad, but here I go. Coulter’s invective aimed at John Edwards over the last few years has been well-reported, so there’s no need for me to repeat it. But last night, she came eyeball-to-eyeball with Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball. The beautiful thing about being Ann Coulter is that you never have to face the people you insult—and Coulter didn’t exactly “face” Edwards last night, either. Instead of responding to Elizabeth’s request that she lay off the Edwards family, Coulter did what she does best—she erected a straw man (”You’re asking me to stop speaking. Stop writing your columns. Stop writing your books” and something about Edwards and trial laywers), then tried to knock it down without really responding to what Elizabeth said. If I were willing to wade into the right-wing blogosphere, I imagine I’d find that’s being called brave and forthright today, and that she’s being lauded for taking Elizabeth down.

(Added Thursday morning: Actually, what the right-wingers are saying is that those nasty liberals are trying to take away Coulter’s right to free speech. Which is even dumber than I thought they’d be. Imagine, after all this time, underestimating how dumb they are. Now, back to the original post.) 

Don’t buy it. I’ve been an Elizabeth Edwards fan for a while, and now I adore her. It took a lot of courage to do what she did—particularly since Chris Matthews clearly has a crush on Coulter, particularly since it’s unseemly for liberals to fight back. (John Edwards is supposed to be on Hardball tonight. He should say that he hopes that Coulter dies in some horrible way—the Rude Pundit has some suggestions that are not for the faint of heart—but Edwards is not that kind of guy.)

Coulter also told Matthews that the 41 percent of Americans in a recent poll who still believe Iraq attacked us on 9/11 are right. If Coulter’s goal is to make left-wingers give up and stop arguing with her, that’ll do it. You can’t argue with somebody that dishonest; if she really believes it, you can’t argue with someone that delusional.

Matthews says he had Coulter on his show after an absence of a year because “she sells books.” Glenn Greenwald’s book is Number 1 in nonfiction at Amazon after its release yesterday. Anybody want to take bets on when Greenwald gets on Hardball?

I’m taking “never.”