In order to have academic freedom, don't you have to be, like, an academic?

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Michelle on University of Colorado professors defending Ward Churchill:

Churchill's defenders frame this as an issue of academic freedom, but I wonder how many of these same faculty members would be singing the virtues of academic freedom if Churchill had articulated a controversial right-wing view rather than a controversial left-wing view. Would they be rallying to his support, for example, if he were under fire for defending Japanese internment, supporting enforcement of immigration laws, or opposing affirmative action?

Who could she possibly be talking about?

Update: Eric Muller's take on this is why he is an academic and I'm not:

Which media figure says that calling 9/11 a justified attack on deserving "little Eichmanns" is analogous to defending the Japanese American internment of World War II?

...But she's right, you know!

Ka-POW!

(Makes my focus on the academic freedom issue seem silly, doesn't it?)

Or maybe "MMIARDPH"?

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So I open up my inbox today and what should I find but another tip from LibAv. While I was taking the weekend off, Malkin said this:

For those who have been living in a cave for the past year, [MoveOn is] the left-wing activist group that compared President Bush to Hitler.

If there was any justice in the world, Malkin would have just Godwinned* her entire career.

Which is more offensive, throwing Hitler's name around or accusing someone else of throwing Hitler's name around? Either way, as LibAv points out, Michelle either doesn't read what she links to or knows the truth and doesn't care...I'm going to lean towards the latter. From the Memory Hole (Malkin's source for this accusation):

Over 1,500 ads were submitted. Out of them, two compared Bush to Hitler. After years of talking about "feminazis" and "Hitlery" Clinton, the right wing suddenly felt that Third Reich references were absolutely indefensible. Republicans expressed new-found outrage, and the corporate media dutifully tsk-tsked. MoveOn pulled the ads from their contest Website.

Maybe we need something stronger than "IOKIYAAR." How about "Republicans are all lying hypocrites, almost without exception - RAALHAWE"?

Just a thought.

* Just to clarify - I'm referring to the second part of Godwin's Law, in which the person explicitly invoking Godwin's Law thereby loses the argument. Just because the whole premise of Godwin's Law is silly and played out, doesn't mean it's not important to get it right.

Weekend Offtopicism

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Welcome to the new self-gratification (ew) section of MalkinWatch, wherein I get a little bit tired of always commenting only mostly on those things that fall under Malkin's watchful eyes (you know which picture I'm referring to) and devote a bit of the weekend to talking about other issues of importance to me.

It was either that, or get into her whole anti-vaccine fetish, and I just can't face that.

So let's spin the Wheel of Issues and see what we come up with, shall we?

It's passing "Blogging may have jumped the shark"...

There went "The continuing brilliance of David Neiwert"...

Ah, missed "Just rename it 'Talking Points About Social Security Memo' but keep up the good work anyway"...

And it's landed on one of my personal favorites: "Feeling inadequate while reading Digby."

I wrote about this tribal divide sometime back and I agree with Matt’s analysis. This has its genesis in the original sin of slavery and is best illustrated by the fact that as the country has divides itself distinctly between the parties in a 50/50 fashion, the dividing line continues to fall along the same lines of the old confederacy. Once again, the best way to understand this is to go right to the heart of the beast and quote the first Republican president (who hailed from one of the bluest of blue states) Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York in 1860:

You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite - license, so to speak - among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all.

Read the whole thing, of course , and marvel.

michellemalkin.com: Still Jeff Gannon-free*

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Tom Tomorrow cuts right to the heart of the whole thing:

[W]hy do so many rightwingers seem to think that being gay is exactly the same thing as being a gay prostitute--i.e., bringing up G/G's sordid past is somehow anti-gay? Doesn't that say more about how the righties view gay people than anything else?

You got it.

*It has come to my attention that Malkin made one tiny little Gannon-related comment in her fifth update to some old post - simply linking to a blog post which attempted to contrast Jordan vs. Gannon. So now the followup watch is a true followup watch.

Won't you do my job for me?

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I missed Malkin guest-hosting Hannity and Colmes* tonight, partially because I'm pretty sure I'm still at work when H&C comes on.

Anyone watch? Link to a transcript?

* Apologies to Al Franken for stealing his idea

Michelle, just admit it

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Professor Muller over at isthatlegal? has a post up about his radio "debate" with Malkin. I say "debate" because she basically monopolized the microphone, but Muller got in one really good point:

[W]ould she at least have the decency to repudiate the call of US News and World Report columnist John Leo for a renewed debate about internment? After all, Ms. Malkin has maintained over and over again that she does not favor mass detentions of Arab and Muslim Americans, even while peddling a book called "In Defense of Internment." Leo read her book and, on the basis of the book's arguments, called for an "honest debate" about "present internments."

Surprise, surprise. She would not repudiate Leo's call for internment. Instead she equivocated, saying that she didn't know what sort of internment Leo was referring to. He might have been referring to the indefinite detention of enemy combatants, she said, or he might have been referring to the detention immediately after 9/11/2001 of hundreds of Arab aliens. And those, she said, were and are good policy.

Attention Wingnuts

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Ward Churchill is one guy who wrote and did some silly and offensive things. Is he really worth all this attention? Will getting him fired break the back of the liberal movement? Is the revelation that he's apparently a plagiarist some sort of indictment of 99% of liberals in the country who had never heard of him before you started bringing him up?

Christina Ricci on "Joey" - Psychiatric hospitals overflow

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Just returned from a friend's show. His band could, if one were overly interested in categorization, be called "emo." Not really feeling an urge to cut, but maybe I wasn't listening closely enough. (Unpaid advertisement: Odds Against Tomorrow - New Album: nights.not.end Available now at iTunes or CDBaby. Buy one for you and one for a loved one!)

Many people have weighed in on Malkin's column, enough to cause her to defend herself:

Readers recall an old friend here or there who nicked himself/herself with a razor blade 10, 15, or 20 years ago.

Nice try, Michelle. But if you were trying to look more sensitive to mental illness, you're not doing that well. Our "old friends" who cut themselves were cutters. And we object to your implication that if Hollywood would just shut up, teenage girls would no longer suffer from mental illness. Or, to put it another way: I'm going to be exactly as forgiving of your explanations as you were of Eason Jordan's.

Yes, it's true, emotional, woe-is-me music has been around a long time. But the kind of "emo" music embraced now by young people who cut themselves (Taking Back Sunday is one of the most popular cited; the Apathy Code, which depicts cutting on its album cover and in the lyrics to "No Alarms") is new.

Ahem. I'll say it again: EMO IS NOT NEW. We're not talking about "emotional, woe-is-me music." We're talking about the "genre" of music usually called Emo. Want some proof, Michelle? From AMG:

Originally an arty outgrowth of hardcore punk, emo became an important force in underground rock by the late '90s, appealing to modern-day punks and indie-rockers alike. Some emo leans toward the progressive side, full of complex guitar work, unorthodox song structures, arty noise, and extreme dynamic shifts; some emo is much closer to punk-pop, though it's a bit more intricate. Emo lyrics are deeply personal, usually either free-associative poetry or intimate confessionals. Though it's far less macho, emo is a direct descendant of hardcore's preoccupations with authenticity and anti-commercialism; it grew out of the conviction that commercially oriented music was too artificial and calculated to express any genuine emotion. Because the emo ideal is authentic, deeply felt emotion that defies rational analysis, the style can be prone to excess in its quest for ever-bigger peaks and releases. But at its best, emo has a sweeping power that manages to be visceral, challenging, and intimate all at once. The groundwork for emo was laid by Hüsker Dü's 1984 landmark Zen Arcade...

...blah, blah, blah. Why is all this important? Well, it's not, really. But what is important is catching Malkin setting up straw men left and right.

Look, you can mock me for paying attention to this problem, but something very wrong is going on here--for whatever reason you want to believe--and parents have asked me to help get the word out. I hope it helps.

Look, you can feel persecuted about this column, but something very wrong is going on here: You're trying to make it look as though you didn't just try to find another societal ill to dump on Hollywood's doorstep. Hollywood shapes culture, but that's not nearly as important as the fact that it reflects culture.

Judge a book by its cover! You judge a book by its cover RIGHT NOW!

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Malkin links to a Michael Smerconish column about Michael Tuohey, the "airline worker in Maine who encountered Mohammed Atta on 9/11."

MICHAEL Tuohey "stared the devil in the eyes and didn't recognize him."

Now he kicks himself for not having acted, although if he had, our government probably would've punished him for trying to take the devil down.

Until recently, Tuohey worked the ticket counter at the airport in Portland, Maine, first for Allegheny Airlines, and then its successor, US Airways. He'll never forget one particular day of his 34 years of employment...

He thought the pair were unusual. First, they each held a $2,500 first-class, one-way ticket to Los Angeles (via Boston). "You don't see many of those."

The second reason is not so easy to explain.

"It was just the look on the one man's face, his eyes," Tuohey recently told me.

Hindsight is 20/20. That's not a criticism of Tuohey, but it is a criticism of this comment from Malkin:

It's a vital lesson for all of us to listen to our gut instincts the next time around, so there isn't another next time around.

Now look. I will admit that if Tuohey had listened to his gut instinct in this case, lives might have been saved. But can you imagine what would happen if LGF commenters , for example, listened to their gut instincts all the time? (No link, you'll find 'em; Malkin links to it, for example)

Muslims suck in the hatred with their mothers milk. They are perpetually scowling.

There would be no Islam without jihad...Jihad is the tip of the spear (haaa I know that term because I watched all those generals discussing our Marines entering Iraq as the tip of the spear)...Jihad is the weapon used to bludgeon into submission millions and millions of dhimmis in over 1400 yrs of history...

Yet this turdlette goes on spewing forth that jihad wraps itself in Islam...

El-Al security procedures are geared toward finding out terrorists about to attack the plane they're boarding, not ordinary flying moonbats. Not yet, anyway.

I live in philly, were islam has all but taken over. Even our Police Commish is a nazi, errr... Muslim.

But here's the voice of reason, also from LGF (must be a plant!):

Don't forget that the next "archetypical islamist killer" looked like Richard Reid- a British, dorky-looking guy who came all-too-close to bringing down a civilian airliner with a shoe bomb.

If Reid's attempt had succeeded, would we be asked to "trust our gut instinct" about all dumpy Brits? I'm guessing not.

Stop the freaking presses

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Malkin and I agree on something. Listen, I know that's not why you come here, but every once in awhile, it happens, and I figure I should acknowledge it.

One aspect of her posting about No Child Left Behind was particularly fascinating:

Most interestingly, the [National Council of State Legislatures] report tomorrow comes to the conclusion that the No Child Left Behind Act is unconstitutional. From the Times:

One chapter of the report says that the Constitution does not delegate powers to educate the nation's citizens to the federal government, thereby leaving education under state control. The report contends that No Child Left Behind has greatly expanded federal powers to a degree that is unconstitutional..

"This assertion of federal authority into an area historically reserved to the states has had the effect of curtailing additional state innovations and undermining many that had occurred during the past three decades," the report said.

"The task force does not believe that N.C.L.B. is constitutional," it said.

Wonder how Armstrong Williams and the other knee-jerk Bushbots for NCLB would respond to that?

Housekeeping

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A couple new blogs for the blogroll:

Susan from Suburban Guerilla won the 2004 Koufax award for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. So, as much or as little as this is worth, she'll get it from me.

[Chirac] also snubbed President Bush by speaking French at a dinner, despite having fluent English.

Well, yes, but wouldn't he also have offended him by speaking fluent English?

Hee hee hee.

And despite calling me a "stalker", a "fucktard", and accusing me of "Gannoning" the Liberal Avenger in order to win the Name Malkin's Next Book contest, for this advertising campaign Rev. Mykeru gets my forgiveness.

And, well, everybody's doing this, so why not me, right?

Breaking News

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As I sit down to write about Malkin's latest column, I feel I should say that I would never want to trivialize cutting. It's a terrible problem that does, in fact, appear to be an epidemic. I'll tell you what does trivialize cutting: Blaming Hollywood for it.

First of all, I can't resist a graf or two on how hopelessly out of touch Malkin is. From the name of the column: The new youth craze: Self-mutilation to this:

There is even a new genre of music -- "emo" -- associated with promoting the cutting culture.

Well, let's leave aside the fact that the music usually called "emo" is almost as new a genre as "grunge." I was surprised to read that there are "emo" bands - The Used appear to be in the forefront, at least after a cursory google search - who sing about cutting, and that apparently kids are associating "the emo lifestyle" with cutting.

But self-mutilation is not new. The "craze" isn't new. It dates back to at least Sophocles. From the timeline:

Modern psychiatric interest in self-mutilation was marked by a 1983 paper by Pattison and Kahan. Using 56 published reports, Pattison and Kahan classified self-mutilation on the basis of lethality, method, and repetition, constructing a chart in which all self-damaging behaviors could be classified.

I have no expertise whatsoever in this field, but Malkin's column just screams of a lack of understanding about this issue.

This madness would not be as popular as it is among young people if not for the glamorizing endorsement of nitwit celebrities such as twentysomething actress Christina Ricci.

Maybe instead of castigation, Ricci needs serious help. Who really needs help are the self-mutilating teenagers, mired in mental illness. And help does not come from yet another anti-Hollywood diatribe.

But it probably made Malkin feel better.

Addendum: I let this go, but a friend read the column and his head almost exploded when he got to this sentence, so I guess I'll address it:

The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as "Thirteen").

"Thirteen"? Are you kidding me? Do I have to explain why an R-rated independent film that was released in a very limited way is not targeted at young girls and teens? That's like blaming "Traffic" for a rise in drug use.

Addendum 2: Am I the only one with this take on Malkin's column? Happily, No!

Won't anyone think of the alien-human hybrid children?

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WorldNetDaily publishes its list of the 10 most underreported stories of 2004.

Somehow, Saddam's deal with the devil got left off the list.

By the way, WND, the WWN's tagline for its website is "Not really news, or is it?" No, it's not.

(Edited because LA is too lazy to use Google. Hee hee. Good catch.)

Rhymes with "infringed". You know, like the rights of internees

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Michelle trots out her favorite word - and no, it's not crikey - to describe Rep. Hinchey of New York, who apparently (according to a transcript of a recording made by LGF) said:

Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media.

Okay, let's all take a deep breath. First of all, this is a transcript provided by LGF, but I'm going to operate under the extraordinary assumption that it's true. Now, let's point out one thing: Hinchey was very foolish to make these comments.

But he's not the first to think of this. And true, some of it does read like wackjob conspiracy theory - but just because it sounds crazy doesn't mean it is crazy.

The place to start when it comes to conspiracy theory is not "does it sound too outlandish?" but "does it have a precedent?" I'm positive that when the Watergate story started rolling, somebody - probably Ben Bradlee, for that matter - had exactly the same reaction: "The White House involved in a break-in and coverup? Wow, you've really gone over the deep end, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford!" or something like that.

But in the end, the truth became as strange as fiction - and let's not forget who had a "walk-on role."

Rove's dirty tricks - from bugging his own office to dumpster-diving to planting fake stories (get it?) - have followed him throughout his career, and unlike his boss, he's never claimed that he hit the life reset button at age 40. To paraphrase lay psychologists everywhere, insanity is hiring the same guy and expecting a different result.

So am I endorsing Rep. Hinchey's remarks? Not necessarily, but I am repudiating the right-wing blogosphere's shock and outrage that this could even be suggested. Back to Michelle:

"I think it's blatant fear-baiting really," Johnson notes. Any reasonable person who sat down and tried to create Hinchey's scenario would get a "migraine headache."

Yes, that's Charles "Best Commenters in the Blogosphere" Johnson on MSNBC. They're letting anybody on the liberal media these days, aren't they?

Update: And when you put it like TBogg does, it starts to get even fishier:

Within three hours of the documents broadcast on CBS, Harold McDougald posting as "Buckhead" on FreeRepublic posts:

To: Howlin Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively. 47 posted on 09/08/2004 8:59:43 PM PDT by Buckhead [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies ]

According to Trickster over at Tacitus:

MacDougald is an Atlanta lawyer in the firm of Womble Carlyle et al. He has no professional background in printing or office equipment and his legal expertise lies elsewhere. He graduated from Brown University in 1980, and assuming he is the same Harry W. MacDougald who graduated in 1976 from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia--and my research reveals he very probably is--he would not have been old enough to have used typewriters on a professional basis in 1972-73.

Read the whole thing and just try not to make the connection.

Off-topic, but...

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From USANext's web site (link is to Josh Marshall):

Did you know that the AARP has received over $1 BILLION in taxpayer dollars over the past 20 years?

Yes ____

No ____

Now that's a push poll. Eat your heart out, Karl Rove. Oh, wait...

Update: Just in case you were wondering whether this poll might just be information that USANext was dying to have, here's the response you get when you submit a poll answer:

Server.MapPath() error 'ASP 0175 : 80004005'

Disallowed Path Characters

/survey/conn_acc.asp, line 3

The '..' characters are not allowed in the Path parameter for the MapPath method.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Feeling Better After my "Meltdown and Release"

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On Friday Malkin noted that Lawrence Summers released a transcript of his controversial remarks. Naturally, she doesn't comment on the content of those remarks, but ties it back to - surprise! - Eason Jordan.

The campaign to get Jordan to do the same goes on here.

I'm still waiting for evidence that Jordan has any control over said transcripts, but hey. My point goes back to Lawrence Summers. She made a pretty big deal out of this the first time.

Summers made clear that he was simply throwing out theories, summarizing scholarly research, and not himself endorsing any particular hypothesis. So, how did women academics respond to a challenging intellectual discussion? By having a collective emotional snit fit unbecoming of any self-respecting representative of the ivory tower. From the Globe:

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

If that is how Professor Hopkins is training her female students to respond to rigorous academic debate, the fewer of them the better.

Strong words. Now that the transcript is out, you'd think Malkin would want to find out if he was "simply throwing out theories, summarizing scholarly research", etc.

Strange, then, that she doesn't quote his remarks. Courtesy Bitch Ph.D. (emphasis hers):

It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture.

These are not neutral remarks. Allow me to strip this crap of the semi-respectable academic phrasing. Summers is saying, "investment bankers are WASPs, Negroes play basketball, and Jews don't farm." The historic and social reasons why this is the case are very well-established: Protestants were socially dominant in America for many years, so "old money" tended to be Protestant, not Catholic; Christians in Europe didn't want to be "usurers," so they did not lend money--though they needed to borrow it, and a lot of Jews who immigrated to America from Europe (where a great many Jews did, in fact, farm) were, by definition, mobile and tended to congregate in cities, where--like many immigrants--they tended to live near one another in part for protection; Black children are, to this day, encouraged to go into sports and music rather than, say, medicine or banking; not too long ago, Blacks were actually denied higher education except at a very few Black colleges. Ask any parent of a Black child how many times their kid has been asked if they like Basketball.

Go read Dr. B's entire analysis for response to his gender-specific comments, but I think it's clear that Dr. Summers is not an innocent lamb beset upon by mean ol' feminists, but rather guilty of making shit up ("the data will, I am confident"? Nice scientific method, Larry).

How I Really Feel

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She never ceases to amaze. In, as Liberal Avenger puts it, "celebrating" Executive Order 9066, Malkin vomits forth these nuggets:

How could they be "imprisoned" in camps if they (like thousands of other Japanese-Americans who were evacuated from the West Coast) were allowed to go to the East Coast to work? The reporter never explains the process by which thousands left the camps after obtaining security clearances, and does not mention that ethnic Japanese who did not live on the vulnerable West Coast were not required to enter the camps in the first place.

Wow. There's almost nothing in that paragraph that doesn't expose Malkin. The idea that the things she lists (some US citizens weren't required to enter camps, US citizens were allowed to go to work) are in any way mitigating factors would be laughable if it weren't so disgusting.

In fact, hundreds of people chose to enter the relocation camps voluntarily--a fact I strongly suspect is not disclosed to schoolchildren in Bainbridge Island and elsewhere.

If Isamu Noguchi knew that his act of solidarity would one day be used to defend internment, I wonder if he would have been as willing.

I feel dirty, so I'm going to close here, except for this tidbit I hadn't previously realized:

Muller also suggests that Richard Kotoshirodo, the Japanese-American man on the cover of my book, violated espionage statutes. (Wanting to give Kotoshirdo the benefit of the doubt, I had expressed doubts about whether Kotoshirodo's activities rose to the level of espionage, since the information he transmitted to Japan was not classified.)

I missed that somehow, and it's very interesting.

Warning: I have tried to be fairly cool, calm, and collected during the three months I've been writing this blog. I'm gonna go ahead and let go with this one, though.

HEY, MORON: YOU CALL JUXTAPOSING KOTOSHIRODO'S FACE WITH MOHAMMED ATTA'S ON THE COVER OF YOUR BOOK GIVING HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?!? WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF!

Fucking idiot.

Forsake Journalistic Integrity

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From a post titled "TELL ME THIS IS A HOAX, PLEASE":

Lots of readers keep sending me a link to this anti-military site: Forsake the Troops.

Not going to link to it myself. Here's the address if you must see it: www.forsakethetroops.info.

True or Better has background on the guy who apparently created the site. Seems he has pulled a similar stunt before.

Whether it's a hoax or not, it's deeply disturbing. Some people have way too much time and hate on their hands.

Agreed. Those heartless liberals.

But wait. That sentence (the emphasis added one) seems kinda vague, doesn't it? I wonder why she didn't quote from her link like she usually does? Let's see:

Looks like a new site from White Power activist Michael Crook called Forsake the Troops. This time he’s creating another site that’s designed to attack the U.S. troops, presumably to make those who oppose the war in Iraq look bad...I signed Crook’s guestbook, stating the following:

...You guys really do need someone to hate the troops. There really aren't such people, so you have to invent them. I'm not fooled, and neither is anýone else.

Next time, try harder.

Within fifteen minutes, my comment had been deleted from the site. Shockola.

Crook did something like this last year, I’ve learned, creating a fake “group” called Citizens Against the Troops, as a “practical joke,” he claims.

Man, I just can't think why Michelle didn't make the fact that this has been completely debunked clearer in her blog posting.

Then again, she's still waiting for proof that Juan Alvarez is a U.S. citizen.

Just a quick one

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I'd just like to point out that Michelle Malkin's columns are carried by a "news organ" which uses the Weekly World News as a source.

After defecting to Kuwait, Mazhar shared a "bizarre" photo with the Weekly World News that purportedly shows Saddam with a horned figure. Mazhar believes Saddam signed a "sinister pact" with the devil.

I'm still waiting for Malkin's column on Bat Boy.

It's really piling up - so to speak

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Flu or not, Michelle posted a giant post "commemorating" the "anniversary" of Executive Order 9066. Unfortunately, I'm facing massive deadlines and so I won't be posting about it today - at least not until much later.

I actually have three different posts I'm working on right up here *taps skull*, so there should hopefully be a bonanza coming out of the weekend.

Meanwhile, go preorder Neiwert's book.

I Win! I Win!, or, Something you should buy

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Liberal Avenger ran a contest to name Michelle's new book. It drew some absolutely stellar suggestions, including, but certainly not limited to:

The Virtues of Fascism: Why We Need to Make the Trains Run on Time in a Post-9/11 World (David Neiwert)

Hammer and Sickle Cell - The Invasion of the Bolsevik Genes (Dr. C)

How To Suck The Flesh From Their Stinking Liberal Bones (filkertom)

In Defense of Lynching (upyernoz)

Mein Queef (Rev. Mykeru)

All the entries were fantastic, so go check them out.

But I am humbled to say that one of my entries was selected as the winner. So, without further ado, and considering Malkin's standard of research sure to hit shelves sometime in the next six months, Malkin's next book:

Pulling Up the Ladder: Why My Parents Were the Last Acceptable Arrivals

Woo! I won myself a $20 Amazon gift certificate...which brings me to the real reason I posted this.



With my spankin' new gift certificate, I'm going right over and preordering Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community, the next book from David Neiwert.


David Neiwert was one of my favorite writers long before I ever heard of Michelle Malkin. His essay "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism" (Part 1 here) is one of the best pieces of blog reporting I've ever read. As did Greg Robinson and Eric Muller, he wrote a very effective critique of In Defense of Internment, and has kept an eye on Michelle at other times as well.

His new book, written over sixteen years, studies the effect that internment had on Bellevue, Washington. Go here to read the publisher's description, and click on his link (or mine, which should also provide the extra kickback to David when you pre-order at Amazon).

(Link fixed even though Mykeru threw wild accusations around. I'm sweet like that.)

The problem with talking tough

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You don't put a $25 million bounty on someone's head and then punish someone else for trying to collect it.

I don't know if he's telling the truth, but I'm surprised this hasn't happened before.

(Malkin connection: She links to it. Don't blame me, she has the flu and is at CPAC. She's not very busy today. If I had a cat, I'd be cat blogging right now.)

The Cult of Michelle

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How's this for a puff piece?(Very large, pixelly, windblown picture alert)

Ain't she beautiful? Michelle Malkin is the face -- and the media model -- of the future.

Who Said It?

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I am a conservative who does not know [my] place. If I were white, they wouldn't care.

If you guessed Michelle, you'd be wrong. She knocks Armstrong Williams for using it as an excuse, and rightfully so - and she's been pretty consistent about the payola scandal.

But you wouldn't be crazy. Earlier in the controversy, Malkin said this:

Rabid liberal elitists expect and demand that "women of color" in public and political life adopt their left-wing political orthodoxy. When we don't accept such tripe, their racist and sexist diatribes against us are unmatched.

I, in fact, defended her against such "racist and sexist diatribes." But it's still fascinating to watch her carefully parse the race card and when to play it.

Other people read her, too

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Mykeru goes after Michelle today:

Malkin is noteworthy for penning such masterpieces as Captain Yee's sympathy circle, which exists solely as an underhanded attack on a man who was later completely exonerated save for the stain left on his reputation by ill-informed mud flingers like Malkin who, not surprisingly, has a side job complaining about liberal's lack of civility...It goes without saying that Yee's vindication was met without a word of apology or retraction on Malkin's part.

Clearly I'm not the first to notice such things.

If I may channel Glenn Reynolds for a moment, go read the whole thing.

(Hat Tip, as usual: Liberal Avenger.)

They really think this way, don't they?

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Malkin quotes a reader e-mail on the subject of the anniversary of Flight 103. An anniversary worth remembering and mourning, definitely. But not like this:

Elitists, wackos, and academic nut jobs who cheer for the terrorists and screech against our involvement in the world will never figure it out. September 11 was not a lone act of violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists -- it wasn't the first, nor will it be the last as long as there are those among us who are willing to provide aid and comfort to those whose ultimate goal is to kill Americans.

"Against our involvement in the world"? This on a blog advocating the withdrawal of support from the US for the United Nations? For all its faults - and in one situation, at least, they appear to be extremely serious and in urgent need of attention - disengagement from the UN would be seen as wildly isolationist.

I mean, this just really hits all the talking points, doesn't it? "Aid and comfort"? "Elitists, wackos, and academic nut jobs"? "Cheer for the terrorists"?

My ass. I mean, really.

Update: Let's hear what a real tough-on-terror conservative has to say, shall we? I guess we lefties need to learn a few lessons, according to Joe L.

Our target was terror. Our mission was clear -- to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden...the preeminent [terrorist leader] in the world today.

[Al Qaeda] comes from diverse places, but share a hatred for democracy, a fanatical glorification of violence, and a horrible distortion of their religion to justify the murder of innocents.


They have made the United States their adversary precisely because of what we stand for and what we stand against...

Their mission is murder. And their history is bloody...


America has battled terrorism for many years. Where possible, we've used law enforcement and diplomatic tools to wage the fight. The long arm of American law has reached out around the world and brought to trial those guilty of attacks in New York, in Virginia and in the Pacific.

We have quietly disrupted terrorist groups and foiled their plots. We have isolated countries that practice terrorism. We've worked to build an international coalition against terror. But there have been and will be times when law enforcement and diplomatic tools are simply not enough...

[I]n this day, no campaign for peace can succeed without a determination to fight terrorism. Let our actions today send this message loud and clear: There are no expendable American targets.

There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values. We will help people of all faiths, in all parts of the world, who want to live free of fear and violence.

We will persist and we will prevail. Thank you, God bless you and may God bless our country.

Hell yeah! Now that's leadership! Now that's a President who understands that this is a war that began long before September 11th! That's a President who'll get past these obstructionist Democrats and really get the job done!

Have I telegraphed this enough yet?

(Oh, and by the way - I still don't agree with the above-described policy. But the point is, a concern about terrorism didn't begin with George W. Bush.)

Whoops, no title

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From Angry in the Great White North, on the Eason Jordan spectacle:

What a piece of work is a right-wing blogger, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

Oh wait, no. It's hasn't gotten quite that bad yet. Here's what he actually says:

Read Michelle Malkin's piece, and this piece at Captain's Quarters. Youngpundit has an excellent post as well.

Are the bloggers acting like lynch mobs? I think the metaphor is inaccurate. I would say that they behave like the antibodies of the media, identifying, attacking, and ultimately destroying lies...

What do bloggers do? They rummage about the Internet and the various streams of old media looking for items of interest. A key criteria for interest -- truthfulness. And when something is spotted that is not true?

Immune cells will swarm around the foreign cells and, within 48 hours, local inflammation will set in.

Hey, that's a fantastic analogy. And not self-important at all.

"Get out of our country": It's not just for illegals anymore

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Not that it ever was, but Malkin takes it to new heights:

The news side of the Wall Street Journal has conceded that immigration depresses wages among blue-collar workers. Here's an excerpt:

Dale Baughman, who has lived in Northwest Arkansas all his life, has had a different experience. Three years ago, the BB-gun manufacturing plant where he worked for 29 years closed and he lost an $18.50-an- hour tool-making job. "It's hard to find a job and the ones you can find don't pay anything," says the 52-year-old, who has a high-school diploma. He looked for machine-maintenance jobs at factories that would match his old pay but found only ones paying $12 to $13 an hour. He partly blames a rise in immigration, which he says is keeping wages low for less-skilled labor.....[sic-more-than-three-dots]

Interesting. Of course, this is only one small part of the WSJ article, which blames a myriad of factors (free version) for the depressed wages. Also, Malkin (and Vdare, who she links to regarding the WSJ article fail to add ellipses, three-dot or otherwise, between some paragraphs, presumably to make it look as though the article writer launched a direct attack on immigration.

Needless to say, he didn't, and the only "evidence" presented in the article regarding immigration is the opinions of locals. Naturally, I'm concerned for people who are un- and underemployed. But if keep-the-hordes-out advocates like Malkin want some sort of proof that if only we ended immigration, good Americans would be able to afford their mortgages again, this article isn't it.

Someone should send it to Paul Gigot.

I'm sure he's shaking in his boots, Michelle.

Duh: Michelle, obviously, does use ellipses, since I held them up for ridicule in the post. It's VDare.com that elided those suckers.

Aren't we past this?

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I guess not...

The Los Angeles Times runs a lame correction regarding its Eason Jordan coverage...What is the point of running a correction if the correction is as bad as the original error?

She links to Patterico's Pontifications:

The L.A. Times story on Eason Jordan’s resignation had this absurd paragraph:

While at CNN, Jordan also had provoked many activists and critics in an April 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times. Jordan asserted that he sometimes could not allow his network to report all it had learned during the intense early days of combat in Iraq, for fear that releasing certain confidential information would put lives in jeopardy.

So there appears to be a big mistake there. His focus was not just "the intense early days of combat", rather the entire length of Saddam's regime. Jordan's op-ed:

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

So that's worth correcting, right? That must be what Malkin and others are complaining about. Back to Patterico:

Ha! Power Line reports that alert L.A. Times reader Diana Magrann wrote the "Readers' Representative" to suggest a more accurate version of reality:

In April 2003, Jordan admitted in a New York Times opinion piece that CNN had withheld knowledge of numerous instances of Saddam’s brutality in order to maintain access.

Maintain access? There is nothing in the op-ed to suggest this. Nothing any any of the "supporting links", such as this one, except assumption and innuendo. It's certainly possible that the righties' interpretation is correct, but I see no evidence presented.

So did the LA Times run a correction? Why, yes.

...Jordan wrote that he did not allow his network to report all it had learned "during the intense early days of combat in Iraq, for fear that releasing certain confidential information would put lives in jeopardy." Jordan’s essay was about his network’s coverage in the years preceding the war as well as in the early days of the war.

Instead of the bolded language, what was wrong with Diana Magrann’s language? This way, even with the correction, L.A. Times readers never learn about the scandal of Jordan’s decision to cover up Saddam’s brutality in order to keep a CNN bureau in Baghdad. That can’t be the right way to handle this correction.

What's wrong with the language? You haven't provided any evidence for what's right with it.

Words have consequences

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Malkin calls the case of Marine 2nd Lt. Ilorio Pantano "especially relevant in light of Easongate/Eason's Fables/Eason-quiddick."

Sadly, No!™ It's especially relevant in light of Mattisgate.

And, Mr. Gittins said, he was charged with desecration for posting a sign in English on the SUV that said, "No better friend. No worse enemy" — the slogan for the Iraq war of the 1st Marine Division's commander, Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis.

Now. Do I believe for one minute that Pantano, who may be charged for murder for killing two Iraqis, thought it was "fun to shoot some people"? Not really. In fact, this pacifist thinks that this is shaping up to be a huge miscarriage of justice.

But Lt.Gen. Mattis is the one that opened up this line of reasoning, that gave credence to the idea that Marines are not just out there trying to protect the USA or Iraqis, not just trying to save their comrades, but looking for any excuse to kill a few guys who "ain't got no manhood left anyway."

If that were Pantano's motivation, and I am sure that it was not, then murder charges would be exactly what the doctor ordered. As Americans, we still make a distinction in wartime between civilians and combatants; Pantano presumably thought he was dealing with the latter - and if he was wrong, it certainly sounds as if he acted in good faith. I only regret that he had to be in that situation in the first place.

Comments like Lt.Gen. Mattis' make no distinction between the two, and call the good faith of our Marines into question. Who's really disrespecting the troops?*

* That's by way of being an actual question. I'd be happy to hear from soldiers who disagree with this take on things.

Shed a tear for the poor underfunded Republicans

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From USA Today:

Google employees gave $207,650 to federal candidates for last year's elections, up from just $250 in 2000 when it was still a start-up. And 98% went to Democrats, the biggest share among top tech donors, a new USA TODAY campaign finance analysis shows.

Naturally, this is just payback for Google News' Malkin "snub", but let's talk about this, shall we? The source for the USA Today article is the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks, among other things, donations from employees of particular industries, including, naturally, the tech industry.

Now that that tortured sentence is behind us, let's look at the web site:

• Accountants: 64% Republican


• Tech (Including Google): 53% Democrat


• Big Pharma: 67% Republican


• Tobacco: 74% Rebublican


• Doctors: 62% Republican


• Transportation: 74% Republican


• Entertainment: 68% Democrat (surprise!)


• Oil & Gas: 81% Republican (surprise!)

And let's not forget the direct corporate donations to things like conventions.

I think that democracy will survive a San Francisco-based tech firm's surprising political bias.

Update: Michelle thinks she's got Google-related problems...what's going on with Atrios?

Defending our gene pool

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Liberal Avenger rightly takes umbrage with Malkin's reprinting of a Moonie Times article, and more specifically its inclusion of sickle cell anemia in a list of diseases "imported from southeast Asia and Latin America." LibAv:

Don't worry, Michelle - neither you nor your children will contract sickle cell anemia by sharing the colored water fountain with an illegal immigrant or sitting on a toilet seat that a brown person without documentation may have used earlier in the day...

Given that this undesirable condition is genetic, what then might we change in our immigration policy to weed out immigrants carrying this undesirable trait? The only choice is genetic testing. Does that sound right? We should subject immigrants to testing to see if they carry the sickle cell anemia trait and then what - deny them entry to the country if they do?

Would this brave new policy extend to immigrants who are already in this country? Should we start testing retroactively?

Update: Orcinus provides some historical perspective for this kind of anti-immigration hysteria, and closes with the kind of perfect paragraph only he can write on this subject.

There is no small irony in all this, of course. Because racial bigotry is like a virus, too. Given the proper iteration -- especially by disguising itself as part of the discourse over the "war on terror" -- it can quickly spread from the fringes into the mainstream. Of course, it always takes special transmitters, modern-day Typhoid Marys, to do it. The Washington Times and Michelle Malkin fit that description to a T.

So predictable

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If we needed any more evidence of Malkin's, and the right's, amnesia when it comes to the dangers that face us, we need only look at the mall shooting today in Kingston, NY.

But first, a refresher. Who walks into public places with guns and opens fire with an assault rifle? Americans. Americans. Americans. I don't mean to make light of these tragic incidents, but it's been happening for years.

But after 9/11, whenever a violent incident occurs, there's only one question that needs answering.

Spoons says, "Doesn't sound much like terrorism to me." Me neither.

Me neither. So why bring it up?

Then again, if it wasn't Islamists, the shooter must be an illegal immigrant.

Seems to be an inconsistency here...

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I would have thought a pro-lifer wouldn't post a link to an article so critical of adoption. As an adoptee myself, I hope this "scare story" doesn't discourage others considering adoption.

Proving a point

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Within the honest community of bloggers, some of them claimed to be the "sons of the First Amendment", they just were the sons of Senator McCarthy. And this is very worrying to see this new wedding between self-proclaimed citizen's media and maintstream journalists scalps' hunters. Fifty years ago, it was enough to be communist to be fired, today, it is enough to raise questions about the Bush administration policy in Iraq to be denounced as "anti-American".

Whether or not you agree with Bertrand Pecquerie, the Director of the World Editors Forum, you have to love Malkin's response:

One of the members of Pecquerie's organization is the Newspaper Association of America, which represents about 90% of the daily newspapers in the U.S. Its President is John Sturm (e-mail *****@naa.org, phone 703-***-****).

(Contact information deleted here.) We're not on a witch hunt, and to prove it, let's get 'im!

The Central Question

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If I hate America so much, why does it break my heart to see what George W. Bush is doing to it?

If it wasn't so apt an analogy, I'd stay out of the gutter

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Malkin lies back and lights a cigarette.

Update: Tbogg links to the same post, but has an altogether different analogy.

If you listen closely you can hear the chanting of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders™ as they do their tribal dance around the pole with Eason Jordan's head impaled upon it. Later tonight they're going to sneak into Jonah's house and steal his thick spectacles to make fire.

I left the punchline off, so you'll have to go visit Tbogg for it. It's worth it.

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back

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Eason Jordan has resigned. And in his resignation, he's still not changing his story...from the AP article Malkin quotes:

He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

Now, I don't know why the transcript hasn't been released. Maybe Jordan is just consistently lying. But as I said before, I gotta go with Occam's razor - especially considering that what he says he said just happens to be the truth.

Meanwhile, Malkin can't resist piling on:

How brave of him to hand in his resignation on Friday night.

Let's see, what else traditionally happens on Friday night?

Oh, that's right.

Shameless, shameless partisan hack.

Keep tryin', or, Followup Watch: Jeff Gannon

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Malkin exhausts her thesaurus coming up with offensive labels for mental illness in describing Francisco Gil-White, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

From Unconsidered Trifles (Malkin's source):

While it's tempting to compare Professor Gil-White with Ward Churchill, it's also important to note that these two apparently come from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

So what we have here is evidence that academic outlandishness comes from both the left and the right, making both Gil-White and Churchill kind of non-stories.

So that's Ward Churchill and Eason Jordan wrapped up, and still no mention of Jeff Gannon. Time for a pre-emptive follow-up watch.

(Thanks to Liberal Avenger for pointing out Malkin's outreach to the mentally ill)

Oh yeah, that's the same as Ohio

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With great relish and I-told-you-so-ness, Malkin announces the conclusion of a massive Democratic voter fraud prosecution in St. Louis...which isn't massive, only barely Democratic, and not a conviction for voter fraud. From the Nashua Advocate:

Even Michelle Malkin -- so obviously disingenuous a political commentator she makes "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" look like unadulterated sheep-lard -- seems genuinely excited by a Missouri criminal conviction so inconsequential it barely rises beyond the level of serial jaywalking, wearing brown shoes with a black suit, or paying full-price for Cosmo at the supermarket.

Off-topic but not

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This isn't absolutely Malkin-related but it should be required reading for every American.

I wonder when those in this country whose children were killed by a child molester like John Wayne Gacy or who were the victims of a brutal home invasion robbery or even a drunk driver might begin to wonder why the criminals who committed those crimes should should be allowed this "luxury" of due process when we can simply pluck terrorists off the street, inflict torture upon them and throw them in prison forever. That awful day on 9/11 was shocking, to be sure. But is it more shocking than Tim McVeigh or that woman who killed the pregnant woman and carved her baby out of her womb? An average person can be forgiven for wondering just why we must deal with warrants and grand juries and trials with our homegrown vicious killers when we don't have to deal with such niceties with terrorists. Just what is the principle that guides this decision?

I'm truly wondering when someone will ask that question. Because when someone finally does we will begin to answer Professor Yoo's startling question about whether there aren't some things that fall outside the legal system.

The answer is, of course there aren't. The reason, professor, is that the rules of due process were designed to ensure that the government cannot arbitrarily imprison innocent people. That principle is so basic and so clear cut that you wouldn't think that a law professor would have to even think about it.

(Hat tip: The Poorman, and as he said, read the whole thing)

The Mother of All Debatzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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So I watched the Greg Robinson vs. Michelle Malkin debate (thanks, LA!). Well, sort of watched it. The sound was absolutely atrocious, plus it was boring. So unless they started throwing chairs towards the end, it went something like this:

Malkin: I may have misrepresented both the timeline and the influence of the MAGIC cables, but at least I reprinted those cables in the Appendix.

Robinson: You have no credibility at all, and here's why.

Malkin: I may have written a book challenging fifty years of scholarship in sixteen months and 116 pages while holding down two other jobs, but I'm a mom - that's what moms can do! Did I mention I reprinted the cables in the Appendix?

Robinson: Your book contains more internal inconsistencies than the Nicole Kidman version of The Stepford Wives.

Malkin: I win. Read my Appendix.

No, I'm not just kissing Atrios' ass...

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Because of last night's misunderstanding. No, this is great: He quotes my congressman on HR 418 - a law which Malkin would most likely support but on which she has been eerily silent:

If this provision, the waiver of all laws necessary for quote improvements of barriers at the border was to become law, the Secretary of Homeland Security could give a contract to his political cronies that had no safety standards, using 12-year-old illegal immigrants to do the labor, run it through the site of a Native American burial ground, kill bald eagles in the process, and pollute the drinking water of neighboring communities. And under the provisions of this act, no member of Congress, no citizen could do anything about it because you waive all judicial review.

Hooray for Rep. Blumenauer!

Malkin enables comments

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Well, for a few minutes, anyway. Apparently fifteen was enough.

Release the freakin' tape already

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Let's get this Eason Jordan stuff over with. Malkin's post today quotes from Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald:

'He was going on and on about it,' recalled [Rony] Abovitz. 'My first thought was, gee, have I been missing something? And I stood up and asked, 'Is this documented? And if so, why hasn't it been on the cover of Time magazine? Because if it's true, it's much bigger than [U.S. military abuses at] the Abu Ghraib prison.'...

Jordan was traveling Wednesday and could not be reached for comment, but a CNN spokeswoman said he used the word 'targeted' only to mean that the reporters had been fired on by U.S. troops who thought they were enemy combatants.

'Mr. Jordan emphatically does not believe that the U.S. military intended to kill journalists and believes these accidents to be cases of mistaken identity,' the spokeswoman said.

Oh, so now he's changing his story being entirely consistent with his earlier explanation? What a putz.

And whattya know, not only is the spokesperson's explanation consistent with his earlier explanation, it's also consistent with the truth.

But Malkin is determined to ride this horse as far as it will take her. Oh, and not one word about Propagannon.

Quite the media watchdog, Michelle.

Welcome: Daou Report! I must say I'm flattered. Flattered enough to add the Daou Report to my Nonblogroll? Why, yes indeed.

Draw your own conclusions

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Read this.

Now read this.

Update: Liberal Avenger has something to say about #2. Also, wow.

Babelfish ain't cutting it

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Anybody speak German? How about a translation?

Apology/Explanation

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I am a huge Atrios fan.

I wrote a badly worded post which made it look like I wasn't, and Thersites, Tena, and a few other Atriots called me on it.

I stand by the opinion that ad hominem attacks, even against Michelle Malkin, are not constructive, sometimes in the extreme.

But I most especially apologize for even seeming to compare LGF to Eschaton. For that I deserve a swift kick in the groin.

Yes, but he has two last names

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In support of her column, in which she describes Eason Jordan as being "in the middle of" the Tailwind scandal, Malkin links to the report of the full investigation.

In a development which should come as a surprise to no one, Jordan's name is not mentioned once.

Stupid truth, always getting in the way of a good scandal

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Jeanne at Body and Soul has what should be the end of Easongate.

It should be, but it won't be.

It's tragic, but not unique

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Michelle has been up in arms about the apparent tracking of outspoken Christians online by Islamists. Today's "Blog Post of the Day" delivers a spooky view of the world:

Jeremy Reynalds has been targeted for death by Islamists for keeping on doing what I used to do....

Theo Van Gogh was murdered by Islamists for making a film. I'm a filmmaker....

[T]he Armanious family was slaughtered, probably by Islamists, for being outspoken Christians. I'm an outspoken Christian.

All of these things happened, not in Baghdad or Fallujah or in some tribal territory in Pakistan, but in the West. Van Gogh was killed in Amsterdam, a note explaining his murder pinned to his dead chest with a Bowie knife. The Armanious family was murdered just up the road in New Jersey, from the parents to the children. And Reynalds, an online journalist who criticizes Islamists, finds himself targeted now.

This is what the war is all about. Even if you're not an online journalist, even if you're not a filmmaker or a Christian, you too will eventually run afoul of these caliphascists if you don't help resist and defeat them now.

All three incidents are tragic, and scary.

But let's not forget others who publish addresses of and brutally murder people they disagree with.

Let's get ready to discuuuuuuuuuuuuuss internment!

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Hat tip to Liberal Avenger, the Malkin vs. Robinson debate is up on the Emory College Republicans web site...

The server is currently under DoS attacks, please be patient while the problem is being resolved.

...sort of. If anybody (I'm looking at you, LA) downloaded it ahead of the hackers, I'd love an e-mail.

Worst. Paragraph. Ever.

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Malkin tries to help us decide which side to believe in the Eason Jordan blowup.

Jordan's defenders say he was "misunderstood" and deserves the "benefit of the doubt." But the man's record is one of incurable anti-American pandering.

Jordan's the man who admitted last spring that CNN withheld news out of Baghdad to maintain access to Saddam Hussein's regime.

What he actually said was "Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff." That seems like an ethical tightrope - certainly not a cut-and-dried failure.

He was quoted last fall telling a Portuguese forum that he believed journalists had been arrested and tortured by American forces (a charge he maintains today).

Hey, maybe this demonstrates yet another reason not to use torture: Because when we forfeit the moral high ground, this kind of story enters the realm of possibility. Even probability: "Mr Jordan highlighted the case of al-Arabiya journalist Abdel Kader al-Saadi, who was arrested in Falluja last week by US forces and remains in their custody even though no reason has yet been given for his detention." Let's see...arrested in Iraq...held without apparent reason...how could we possibly believe he's been tortured?

In the fall of 2002, he reportedly accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting CNN personnel "on numerous occasions."

It's official: Making accusations against a foreign military is "anti-American."

He was in the middle of the infamous Tailwind scandal, in which CNN was forced to retract a Peter Arnett report that the American military used sarin gas against its own troops in Laos.

Well, by "in the middle of" she clearly meant "promoted to clean house after." Oh, and "physically sickened by."

And in 1999, Jordan declared: "We are a global network, and we take global interest[s] first, not U.S. interests first."

And that's so clearly different from any other multinational corporation.

Look, Jordan clearly has a tendency towards impoliticness. (Yeah, it's a word.) And some of the things he's said and done have not necessarily met the most rigorous of journalistic standards. But Malkin's column is not exactly a smoking gun vis-a-vis the Davos remarks and Jordan's intent in making them

Edited to clarify point of view - due mostly to distractions from a hyper three-year-old (the best kind of distraction) - and remove a grammatical problem.

Maybe they were donated to Adopt-a-Sniper

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I have my problems with Homeland Security, but somehow I'm having trouble blaming them for the theft of sniper rifles at the Super Bowl.

There's so many more ways to attack her

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Idiots. (Except maybe tbogg).

But, Michelle, even though this will be at least the four hundredth time I've mentioned this, you can't simultaneously love LGF's commenters and be schoolmarmish about Atrios'. They're aimed at you, so you have the right to respond, but either hate ad hominem, racially tinged attacks or love them.

You never know what you'll find on the internets

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The National Ledger, which does syndicate Malkin's columns, apparently has commenters second only to Little Green Footballs':

Is it not possible to ponder the possibility, or doesn't it just naturally come to mind, that the journalists have cost American Soldier's lives over the last 20 months with their Al Jazeera-like encouragement and legitimizing of the opposition forces? I am not saying that American soldiers have done what Eason Jordan says they have but if, IF, IF, a soldier were to allow an insurgent to kill 10 journalists I would have a hard time not thinking - "strike!". After all the journalists have made it pretty clear that those insurgents are after all their pride and joy. Isn't there poetic justice in their being killed by the "insurgence", the term they have established for their own real and mysterious hope.

Wow, Steve the commenter, if that's the case, why all this blowback about Jordan's remarks? Isn't he just another heroic truthteller like Lt.Gen. Mattis?

ormfront-Stay Headline-writer's remorse

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The always-fantastic Rittenhouse Review gives Malkin a one-two punch:

Frankly, I would have thought otherwise intelligent people by now would have known, or at least been vaguely aware, that the term "gypsies" refers to an identifiable group of people who now more properly are called the "Roma," and that the more commonly deployed, and now archaic, term "gypsies" is considered offensive, not only to the Roma but to others as well.

Should we give her a free pass? Assume ignorance rather than malignant intent?

No. Malkin, if you remember, castigated Adam Cohen for referring to Bobby Jindal's "freakishly impressive resume." I think she's pretty much established how much she respects "benefit of the doubt" when it comes to this kind of thing.

Meanwhile, Jim (if I may call him that) also notices something a little odd about Malkin's new Sitemeter stats:

Let's say, hypothetically, as they say, that The Rittenhouse Review were to link to a right-wing blogger with whom his relations were not entirely friendly.

And let's say, again hypothetically, that the right-wing blogger in this hypothetical situation, relied on SiteMeter.com to record her traffic and made SiteMeter's statistics pertaining to traffic to and from her blog available for review by all visitors.

Can anyone think of a reason why traffic from such far-superior blogs as Rittenhouse and MalkinWatch, at least as read here at Rittenhouse, would not appear in her referral log?

While I appreciate the vote of confidence (i.e. that your humble host would present enough of a threat to be worth taking some sort of action against), I have discovered that MalkinWatch does indeed show up on SiteMeter. It makes you wonder who else besides Rittenhouse Review she's blocked, though (see title for a hint).

Clarification: It should be noted that I was not implying that the above website runs Malkin's columns nor that Malkin has any relationship with it. I was simply referring to the fact that there are a few mostly-approving mentions from commenters there about her, which would presumably cause an unflattering link to show up in the referral log.

Nor was I meaning to equate Rittenhouse with those wackos, but that probably goes without saying.

How about Easonmania?

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Malkin is being somewhat even-handed in her coverage of "Easongate" (can we stop with the -gate suffix now?) - in that she links to at least one more forgiving view on the substance of Jordan's remarks. It's out of character for her, but maybe she's still feeling the sting of not being accepted to Google News.

To me, Jay Rosen's explanation - essentially, that by "targeting" Jordan meant that most journalists were victims of specific mistaken identity, rather than being caught in explosions, etc. - seems the most likely, given Occam's razor. (In other words, the simplest explanation is that Jordan was not intending to break a story that CENTCOM is issuing kill-at-will orders against members of the press.)

This is really small of me, but...

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...Please stop saying crikey.

Followup Watch Followup: Juan Alvarez

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Well, while I was at the beach for the weekend, Malkin did, in fact, follow up her questions about Juan Alvarez' citizenship:

As for questions about his immigration status, some news outlets have reported that he is a U.S. citizen, but I still have not received confirmation of that from either the Glendale P.D. or the L.A. County D.A.'s office.

Boy, those pesky hispanic surnames really cause confusion, don't they, Michelle? Maybe we should assign all new US citizens new last names the moment they take the oath. That way, the Glendale train wreck might have been caused by Juan Albertson and you'd be able to get some work done.

Oh, no you didn't!

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There's a real he said - she said going on between Malkin and Greg Robinson about an event at Emory University in Atlanta. Orcinus weighs in, and Atrios names her wanker of the day.

Both sides make realistic arguments, and it appears that where their accounts differ is probably just a matter of Robinson being misinformed by the Emory Young Democrats, who in turn were misled by Young Republicans' advertising.

Malkin and Robinson have a history, which basically consists of Robinson (along with Eric Muller) taking "In Defense of Internment" out to the woodshed, in the face of which Malkin naturally claimed victory and everyone adjourned to the smoking room for port and Macanudos.

Whether Robinson was misinformed about the purpose of Malkin's visit or not, Malkin has a history of resorting to bombastic character assassination when she gets flustered (see Matthews, C.); meanwhile Robinson is asking for the tape to be released as soon as possible.

If anyone's taking bets, my money's on Mr. Professor Robinson. (Whoops!)

Pot, meet kettle

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Will Matthews retract his comments and express his regrets to the Norwoods, especially now that his own Hardball reporter David Shuster blogged his conversation with Mrs. Norwood confirming that the hug was spontaneous?

Chris Matthews? Apologize? Hah. Slimeballs don't do apologies.

Now seems like an appropriate time to mention that it's day 5 of the Juan Alvarez followup watch.

Chris Matthews does seem to have been overly cynical in this case, but let's not forget that Michelle isn't Tweety's biggest fan to begin with, and the feeling is mutual.

Sounds of silence

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I am having ridiculous problems with my computer. Ended up having to do (well, having a friend do) a reinstall of a different Linux flavor, and all the kinks are not yet worked out.

For now:

Shorter State of the Union:

In order to avoid massive borrowing and rate cuts, we must implement rate cuts and massive borrowing.

Shorter Michelle Malkin:

I heart snipers.

Like an industrial accident is fascinating

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Malkin wins a poll for most fascinating blogger of 2004.

Great. If that secret gets out, everybody's gonna read her directly instead of relying on me to do it for them.

Shh! She's boring! Shh!

Unbelievable

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Write this down: The lesson of Jacko and Snoop Dogg's America is not that this nation is too intolerant, but that it is not nearly intolerant enough. - Michelle Malkin, 2005
Considering the last few weeks, I'd say that if America's too tolerant, it's not for lack of her trying.

Also:

Public revulsion over Jackson's descent into plastic surgery madness?

"It's racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.

The chimp and Elephant Man bone fetishes?

"It's racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.

The racism claims may be a little over the top, but as far as "public revulsion...remind me how "The Aviator" did at the Oscar nominations.

Apparently Howard Hughes is less revolting.

The rest of this post lost to a computer crash, and I don't have the energy to repolish it. Sorry, folks. However, it included a paraphrase from the classic sitcom Newsradio (Link is to best thing about that show):

"An editorial about gangsta rap? That'd be groundbreaking - if this were 1991."

It's not plagiarism if you admit where you got it

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In honor of Malkin's "Top Ten Post-Iraqi Election Sourpusses", and stolen directly from the Liberal Avenger without permission (better to ask forgiveness than...), we present the "Top Ten Corners Turned in Iraq":

1. The statue of Saddam was torn down
2. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo op
3. The killing of Uday and Qusay
4. The capture of Saddam Hussein
5. Bremer installed
6. Chalabi named
7. Chalabi discredited - Allawi named
8. The handover from the CPA to the caretaker government in June
9. "Breaking the back of the insurgency" in Fallujah in November
10. [The] election

Welcome Philadelphians

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And thank you Eric Raske, whoever you are.

The main Raya post is here , but by all means, look around. Stay awhile.