I really can’t decide who should get the American Jiang Qing award anymore. It’s gotta be Malkin or Coulter, but it is really a toss up.

February 7, 2007 @ 12:23 am | Comment

Coulter is a joke, an entertainer. Malkin is sincere, which makes her far scarier. She gets my vote. And I’ll bet my life savings she doesn’t even know who Jiang Qing is.

February 7, 2007 @ 12:31 am | Comment

What that a close-up of her mouth? It’s as ugly as the verbal vomit that spews from it. I hit the back button about halfway as I couldn’t watch or listen anymore.

February 7, 2007 @ 9:17 am | Comment

Malkin is mad, barking mad, as is Coulter. But when I read comments like the following from Amanda Marcotte, I think Malkin may have found herself a “screeching like a harpie on crack” soulmate:

“In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good [obscene progressive participle] god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and [obscene past-tense verb] her against her will–not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”
http://proteinwisdom.com/index.php?/weblog/entry/22262/

February 7, 2007 @ 10:05 am | Comment

It’s really easy to go through someone’s online portfolio – posts, comments on her blog, comments she made on someone else’s blog, etc. – and find all sorts of shit. The important thing is consistence and what that person stands for. If the example you quoted above typifies Amanda and if it gives a fair indication of what she stands for, I’ll agree with you that she, too, is a harpie on crack. I’ve been reading her stuff for more than a year and usually find her fair, but sometimes not – I have disagreed with her.

With Malkin, just about every post she puts up is a rehash of the one before. The video clip indeed gives you a bird’s eye view into a typical day in the life of Michelle. This is who she is – read her blog and see. Does the quote you pulled from Protein Wisdom do the same for Amanda? Is it pulled because it’s typical, or because it’s something extreme she foolishly wrote in a moment of passion (as each of us does sometimes)? It’s interesting to see where you found the quote, because Jeff Goldstein is so much in the same boat as Malkin. Don’t you see, they’re working hand in hand to smear Amanda, just as they did John Murtha and so many others. Go read Dan Riehl, another member of the Malkin clique – he’s is firing on all cylinders trying to destroy Amanda, when no one has been more wrong about so many things, and so reckless in his blogging than Riehl.

February 7, 2007 @ 11:13 am | Comment

“Go read Dan Riehl”

I must have ticked you off, Richard, but read Dan Riehl? Surely I don’t deserve that much punishment. Read Malkin’s blog? No thanks. Why give her the attention she craves?

I googled “Marcotte rape Duke” to find that quote. Does it really matter from which site I pulled it? Apologies for that- I try to read some conservative blogs (no doubt saw the Marcotte at one of them), but Protein Wisdom isn’t one of them; tried for a while, couldn’t bear it. At any rate, Marcotte made that comment- has she renounced it? If not, it seems to me that such a vicious remark should preclude her being taken any more seriously as a thoughtful commentator than Malkin, particularly so because she made that comment after the rape charges had been dropped. From all indications the sexual assault charges are groundless as well. It doesn’t seem to bother Marcotte that the lacrosse players are in all likelihood innocent of the rape/assault. Their class/sex/race seem to make them guilty enough in her eyes. A comment such as that is revealing enough, irrespective of her ability to be reasonable at other times, unless one is willing to apply a double-standard to those with whom one agrees about many other matters.

Malkin is just screaming into the echo-chamber, and no-one in their right mind is going to take her seriously; or, questions of sanity aside, no-one possibly inclined to vote for Edwards is likely to take Malkin seriously. Let Malkin make an ass out of herself. Marcotte, on the other hand, has the potential to damage the prospects of a very good Democratic presidential candidate. Surely the Edwards campaign can do better than someone all too willing to see young men’s lives ruined on the basis of at best flimsy evidence, and at worst sheer lies?

February 7, 2007 @ 12:17 pm | Comment

I hate Amanda’s comment as much as you. But I am trying to make a case for differentiation along the following lines: Malkin is a never-ending stream of such comments and worse. Amanda fucked up big time, more than once. This quote is despicable. But unfortunately, if you google enough you can find dumb things that each of us has said, though that doesn’t let her off the hook. With Malkin, it’s ubiquitous – no need to google, just go to her site. With Amanda, most of her stuff is level-headed left-center and smart. Maybe she should be fired from Edwards’ team. But I don’t believe in holding up one or two foolish posts someone made and branding them for all time. It’s easy to make anyone look bad using that technique. She has deleted the post and explained why, and all the comments are there intact – unlike Malkin, she’s willing to hold her own feet to the fire.

I don’t believe she ever said or implied that she was “all too willing to see young men’s lives ruined on the basis of at best flimsy evidence, and at worst sheer lies.” The fact that you say that is a bit alarming. I think she was saying she thought the lacrosse players were guilty and deserved to be punished. Very bad, very stupid, totally wrong, though it’s something Nancy Grace and Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson do every day – which doesn’t make it right, but surely underscores just how hypocritical their feigned outrage over Amanda is.

February 7, 2007 @ 12:50 pm | Comment

I don’t see much contrition in Amanda’s “explanation”- the prosecution in the Duke case fumbled the ball? What ball?

It’s true that foolish remarks can be found at any of the best blogs, but I don’t recall seeing anything quite as venomous as that posted at Digby’s, Atrios’, or your site, for example (other than among the comments!). I don’t understand why you found what I said “alarming’, when your reading of her remarks- that the “lacrosse players were guilty and deserved to be punished”- is more or less the same as mine. People guilty of such a heinous crime as gang rape deserve extreme punishment, such as would amount to ruining their lives. The problem is that from Marcotte’s point of view it seems the burden of proof in accusations of rape against privileged white males needn’t be especially onerous; the accusation itself is apparently enough.

“Very bad, very stupid, totally wrong, though it’s something Nancy Grace and Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson do every day”- I agree with you entirely here, and about the right-wing hallmark trait of “feigned outrage” as well. Nevertheless, while I’m not trying to change the subject, I don’t think it is good idea for the Edwards campaign to have someone around liable to serve up gimmes to these and other right-wing hypocrites.

February 7, 2007 @ 1:57 pm | Comment

Actually, robuzo, we basically agree with one another. I question whether she is the best candidate for the job as well. But as I said, using ggogle you can crucify just about anyone because in the frantic rush to update our blogs and reply to snarky comments we sometimes use poor judgment. An asshoe post written fast and carelessly is freeze-framed forever, a yoke around our necks. It’s a cheap trick both sides use, though Dan Riehl and his ilk get the gold star for using it with the most venom and recklessness. (Not sure if you’re aware of how he tried to smear the “macaca man.”)

February 7, 2007 @ 2:30 pm | Comment

Riehl- at long last, he has no decency, you know.

As a more-or-less unrelated side note, I can’t help but conclude that we have reached a point in the history of the Bush Administration at which there is simply no point in taking seriously anything a current supporter of this administration has to say. To be honest, I think that probably was probably true a couple of years ago, but until around spring of last year I was still willing to listen- not necessarily to the Riehls and Malkins of the world, but maybe to Hitchens. By this point, anyone who hasn’t come over from the dark side, so to speak, has in my opinion missed the boat- the boat John Cole at Balloon Juice was on, I suppose. Of course, the problem with drawing that conclusion is that it precludes dialogue, and when people who can’t avoid each other stop talking they usually start throwing things or shooting.

I don’t mean to attempt to hijack this comment section, but it is a question that came to mind because, while it is true that “Dan Riehl and his ilk get the gold star for using [the google for dumb remarks technique]”, at this point I don’t care at all what they or their supporters think. I do care about strategy, but what sort of minds remain to be changed about the issues, like the war and the Constitution, that really matter? (To Americans- trying not to forget, this is the Peking Duck.)

February 7, 2007 @ 3:05 pm | Comment