Not that there was ever any doubt, but the fire-breathing Ms. Maglalang once again proves that she’s purely bad news, a reckless bullying demagogue who has abandoned even the pretense of human decency. And I mean it. She represents the worst of the worst of the right-wing Wurlitzer. Let’s take a look at her latest crusade:
Right now, the dark-haired, lashy, Ann Coulter understudy is happily wrapped in one of her typical controversies: a crew of students at UC Santa Cruz, my alma mater, protested some military recruiters, and Malkin got hold of a press release with their personal contact information — a poorly conceived inclusion on the students’ part, but then, these are undergraduates, not trained media flacks. Rather than calling and speaking to them herself, which is what members of the press are supposed to use such releases for, Malkin published their personal information on her website, prompting her hordes of orcish mouth-breathers to brandish their pitchforks and inundate the unsuspecting students with death threats (some of which you can read here). When the students frantically called Malkin, asking that she remove their numbers, she posted their contact information again.
The invaluable John Amato, who’s got some video from the scene, gets it right. Malkin, he writes, “crosse[d] the line of decency..the death threats are emanating from her blog and she knows it. Malkin understands the nature of the fear and outrage she causes. Will she take responsibility when somebody gets hurt?”
….A skilled and experienced rhetorical warrior, she saw the pale, white flesh of their throats and lunged. The vicious always seek out the weak. Rather than forgive their poorly-written, too-revealing press release, she published their oversight, opening them to danger and harm….
Malkin has created an identity of outrage, she trades in hate because she proved unable to achieve recognition for anything more elevated. It’s a sorry fate for a pundit who, once upon a time, must have been an idealistic college student herself; learning, experimenting, seeking out an identity of her own. I wonder if her younger, better self ever once entertained the notion that she’d soon be a peddler of anger, successful in nothing but demagoguery and appeals to the reptilian brain? I wonder if she saw it foreshadowed in her own darker moments, if she feared it? Malkin may have hurt some idealistic young college students at Santa Cruz, and I loathe her for it. But I pity her, too, because somewhere along the way, she murdered her own.
Say what you will about the big leftie sites like Daily Kos and Americablog and Eschaton – yes, they can be quick on the draw at times, and too outspoken; but they never, ever descend to the type of badness that typifies Malkin’s daily rantings. There is simply no comparison on the lefty side of the blogosphere (and no, I don’t mean the commenters; you can always find deranged commenters on both sides, whether you’re looking at Democratic Underground or Front Page). I have more to say about Maglalang’s inherent badness, lots more. Stay tuned.
Update: Oh, and just in case you forgot what she looks like:
1
By Brainster
What is the point of using her maiden name? It characterizes you more than it does her.
The SAW tried (and succeeded) to prevent other students from getting information. We might think of them as Google China.
Malkin pointed out information that was readily available on the web. We might think of her as Google USA.
April 18, 2006 @ 6:54 am | Comment
2
By BangaloreGuy
Some people just dont know where to draw the line, do they?
April 18, 2006 @ 8:49 am | Comment
3
By OtherLisa
Publishing high school students’ personal information and exposing them to death threats is crossing a line. Snarking about her hypocrisy is fair game.
April 18, 2006 @ 11:17 am | Comment
4
By OtherLisa
Excuse me, college students. Under-caffeinated…
April 18, 2006 @ 11:19 am | Comment
5
By Brainster
So OL, where is the line? Okay at 23, not at 22? Okay at 35, not at 34?
April 18, 2006 @ 11:24 am | Comment
6
By OtherLisa
Malkin’s posting those names on her website was an open invitation to her fans to harrass those students. Death threats are a step beyond snark.
Clear enough for you?
April 18, 2006 @ 1:58 pm | Comment
7
By Chairman Yao
Who the hell is she? Anyone want to sum her up in a paragraph ;o) ?
April 18, 2006 @ 3:24 pm | Comment
8
By davesgonechina
Chairman Yao,
Malkin has one of the most heavily trafficked and demagogic blogs in the U.S. She specializes in demonizing those she identifies as her ideological enemies, goading them to wallow in the cess pit of righteous indignation and preventing anything that you and I might recognize as a rational adult conversation.
Her site is her name, .com. Richard doesn’t like to link to it, and frankly, neither do I. Personally, I believe Malkin is a lesser order of demonic hell-beast, the sort that vanishes when you refuse to fear it or pay attention to it. I think they showed how to destroy her subspecies in an episode of “Angel”.
April 18, 2006 @ 4:22 pm | Comment
9
By Ivan
Chairman Yao,
Summary description of Malkin:
“Populist Nationalist in the tradition of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose principal appeal is to the unexpressed grievances of the sinking former middle classes who are desperate to find scapegoats for their disappointed expectations of what used to be the American Dream.”
April 18, 2006 @ 8:56 pm | Comment
10
By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
And Brainster, I’m almost positive that she hasn’t legally changed her name, so the only time she uses “Malkin” is as a pen name. Why does she choose to use “Malkin” as a pen name rather than her legal ethnic-sounding name?
And it says something that the Ma-ding-a-ling Marriage write they don’t condone “death threats” being made by their readers, but they won’t come out and condemn their readers for doing it. Can’t bite the hand that feeds ya.
April 18, 2006 @ 10:05 pm | Comment
11
By Filthy Stinking No.9
She is blogger and political commentator. She is also the constant target of repeated emotionally based attacks from the Left. Basically, it seems to be based on this: she is female, and she isn’t white, therefore she should be a lefty. Instead, she’s a conservative, and therefore she is not only evil like all people who disagree with the Left, she is a traitor because non white females are supposed to be on the Left.
This attack, like all the others I have read, says a lot about the person attacking her, and nothing at all about Michelle Malkin herself. The assault by silly photo, a really popular instrument of the Left these days (see also Bush, Cheney, etc), again says a lot about the attacker, and nothing at all about the object of attack.
On the subject of this particular story … let me give you a counter example. A bunch of other people on a US campus decide they object to another group of people, and through intimidation and threatened violence, they succeed in driving the opposing group from campus, because they consider them objectionable and immoral. Got it? Well, now let’s fill in the blanks … perhaps it’s a group of KKK members abusing ethnic students, or perhaps it’s a pro-life group driving away a pro-choice group. Still happy to leap to their defense? Still happy to abuse the person who widely published their personal contact details (which they themselves advertised) , so that those who are outraged by their actions can let them know through personal correspondence? Yes? No?
The last quoted paragraph in particular about reptilian brains etc … my god. “I loath her and I pity her”? I can’t gather up enough enotion to care enough to loath the person who wrote it, but I certainly do feel pity. It drips of slime, prejudice, hatred, in fact all the things that seems to have got him/her so worked up about Malkin. Great … it’s only evil if the other side does it, but it’s fine if I do it, because my cause is just? Right?
April 18, 2006 @ 10:34 pm | Comment
12
By richard
She herself uses Maglalang inside her evil and discredited book, In Defense of Internment.
Just because you can find something using google doesn’t mean it should be broadcast to the world with a scarcely veiled invitation to go forth and harrass. Some psycho found my own info using google and spread it everywhere, causing me a lot of heartache. So that argument – “anyone could find it on google” – is bogus. As Lisa said, Maglalang didn’t simply print their contact info, she invited her readers to harrass them (whether she actually said that in so many words is irrelevant; we all know what she was doing). It’s one thing giving the name and contact information of a public figure like a news reporter or a senator and urgining you readers contact them. it’s another to do this to kids who foolishly left themselves vulnerable.
April 18, 2006 @ 10:47 pm | Comment
13
By richard
FSN, you have no idea what you are talking about. I won’t engage this time, because the last several times you made spurious claims about the media and i took the trouble to do the research and show you were wrong, you simply disappeared. (It was regarding the NY Times, in case you forget.) Malkin’s sex or race are irrelevant. I am just as hard on Rush Limbaugh and Powerline and Charles Johnson, haven’t you noticed?
I agree with Ezra Klein, and I loathe and pity Michelle. She runs a gang that’s the digital equivalent of a lynch mob, firing up her readers emotions and stepping back to watch them inflict great damage on the red meat she throws their way. There are lots of specific examples of this, from the Red Crescent insanity to the World Trade Center freedom museum – she was instrumental in having both projects changed (closed down altogether, in the case of the museum). She’s a real demon, and she cannot be defended.
April 18, 2006 @ 11:11 pm | Comment
14
By Ivan
I wonder how many of those who sent the death threats have actually gone to any recruiting station?
Like, zero. I’d bet a thousand dollars on it.
Chickenhawks.
April 19, 2006 @ 2:17 am | Comment
15
By Lao Lu
Let me get this straight:
So there is this institution, called university, high-school or whatever it is called in the U.S. (I always get mixed up in this terminology), that community is paying a lot of money for so we can train our youngsters to become the engines of the economy, culture, science of the future generation.
Then there is that other organisation, called the army, coming to the campuses, basically asking you to enlist to be sent to the Killing Fields.
At what point in time did “making sense” loose it’s meaning ?
I am fully aware that a country like the U.S needs a strong army, and I’ll even subscribe to the policing role it plays in the world to a certain extent (as a European, we should not forget also the role the U.S has played in freeing us from the Nazi’s), but let them convince people in other ways (televised campaigns, information booths at public manifestations) making sure that they target the entire society with the same means and making it for anyone a free choice whether they want to go over and join.
April 19, 2006 @ 5:20 am | Comment
16
By themole
The anti-racist One People’s Project website has released her details which the say are publically available on the Internet. Someone took it a step further and used live.windows.com and yahoo maps to do a Graphic. Payback’s a bitch Malkin.
April 19, 2006 @ 9:05 am | Comment
17
By helpsfo
I don’t know why all of you are getting worked up in to a big lather over this woman.
Personally, I think she’s hot! I fantsize about spending a romantic, candlelight dinner with her followed by hours of passionate lovemaking between the sheets. I bet she’s a real tiger when the clothes come off!
April 19, 2006 @ 2:49 pm | Comment