wannabe, Yasmin Alibhai Brown isn't being OTT. She would be, if she didn't regularly receive death threats. She is one of the most well known muslim women in this country and the reason she is well known, is because she proffers opinions. This makes her a really big target to masses of people who just hate her for what she is and what she does - mad muslim fundamentalists who don't think she should be writing or visible at all, others who accuse her of "washing the community's dirty linen in public", BNP supporters who hate the fact that an intelligent muslim woman has such a high profile and progressive ideas - she has loads of people who are only too willing to threaten her on a regular basis.
Given that context, it really isn't OTT of her to react to this the way she has. My first thought when I heard it was oh, it's obviously just a silly throwaway comment, but that's me speaking from a privileged position of someone who isn't living with regular death threats. In the context of the threats YAB lives with, I can really see why she's so livid about this.