Comments on: A note on Cal, a movie recommendation, and a surprisingly vigorous defense of Michelle Malkin

By: The Liberal Avenger

The Liberal Avenger — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 20:50:11 +0000

What Michelle has done here is intellectually dishonest.

There is no doubt that she receives some of the worst hate mail anywhere insulting her based on her race and her sex. Nobody is arguing that.

What her post does, however, is rolls those unforgivable attacks in with legitimate criticism and dissent.

I am one of Michelle and Jesse’s biggest critics and indeed I was involved with the “Ghost Blogging” story that revealed the extent of Jesse’s participation in the background. That story did nothing more.

Michelle mines Eschaton and DU threads for hateful comments about her - and they are there, for sure.

Assigning responsibility for those comments onto her other critics is dishonest.

By: stanton

stanton — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:35:13 +0000

Hey, all you Malkin-haters out there…

I’m trying to find examples of Malkin’s vitriol and spitefulness from her web site and random browsing of her column archives, and I am striking out. I have not found a thing that would even put her in the category of Pandegon for biliousness. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place. Would one of you be so kind as to provide a few links to the worst of her nastiness? Or is this view based primarily on her book about the internment camps in WWII?

By: badteeth

badteeth — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:56:10 +0000

If Malkin didn’t regularly defend the indefensible, she wouldn’t get the reaction she gets. It’s not just “minority group conservative” reaction - Armstrong Williams originally was not vilified or thought insincere, merely accused of getting on the conservative-pundit-of-color marketing bandwagon. NOW he’s vilified for taking **direct payments** from the US government (Dept Education) for espousing specific policies on education and passing them off as his independent opinion. He deserves the whore word, used figuratively. Malkin is getting the kind of nasty personal comments that tend to be used towards people who make a habit of nasty comments. This is not necessarily restricted in race or gender, though the mode of insult may be gender/race based. Rush Limbaugh famously made a comparison of Abu Ghraib torture to fraternity hazing. Therefore, I consider him fair game for attacking his wholly unnecessary (he could have corrected it with minor surgery) anal pilonidal cyst deferment from Vietnam and current hawkishness, his 4 marriages (considered by some to be “beard” marriages by a man on the “down low”), his “I have an unfortunate addiction to pain meds and deserve therapy, while those other folks are degenerate drug addicts who need 5 years in the pen” attitude, his weight (while he calls feminists ugly hags).

Ad hominem attacks are always a sign of weakness to me. It means you can’t attack somebody’s argument you attack the person instead. The implication is that the argument is to strong to be attacked. So I really don’t get what advantage is gained by homophobic accusations against Rush Limbaugh.

By: Sally

Sally — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:31:05 +0000

And on another note, which Chris already alluded to…why are so many people on the left apparently so enamoured with the idea of “Asian” as some sort of monolithic identity, and so oblivious to the conflicts and general lack of unity between the many different Asian cultures?

I’m not arguing that Asian people are all the same. I’m actually not making an argument about identity. It’s a massive mistake, I think, to talk about race in the U.S. as if it’s just a matter of identity, rather than a way that the dominant culture has deployed social and legal power. I’m arguing that “Asian” was a legal and social category in the United States in the early 20th century: all “Asians” were subject to legal disabilities to which other people were not subject. This was true of both Japanese and Filipino people, despite their very different relationships to the U.S.

Internment was only possible because of these legal and social disabilities, which were predicated on a system of racial classification that lumped “Asians” together. So even if she rejects the identity “Asian,” when she defends internment, she’s defending a system that was ultimately based on racism against a group that would have included her. It would make sense if she didn’t support that system of classification: it was used to oppress people like her. But the system still existed.

She can, of course, make of this historical fact what she wants. But as far as I can tell, she deals with it by denying it and claiming that Japanese internment had nothing to do with racism, that it was just a coincidence that the only ethnic group to be interned was also the only one made up of people who were racially barred from naturalizing. And that strikes me as intellectually dishonest. It may be that she believes that internment was justified and therefore wants to ignore its racist underpinnings, but the racist underpinnings are still there.

And that may be my last contribution to this discussion, beause I’m going away for Thanksgiving!

By: The Gonzman

The Gonzman — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:06:26 +0000

Heh. I’m just glad - as an “Uncle Tom-Tom” - to have once again the confirmation that the ersatz outrage over racism from most of the left is mere posturing and grandstanding by political poseurs, and not really the deeply held principle that they claim. The rationalizations are most entertaining, especially in the shrill and bitter defense and reaching jusifications of using racism, sexism, et al to attack political foes. “Politically correct for thee, but not me!” What a hoot.

By: BritGirlSF

BritGirlSF — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:42:07 +0000

Also, in regards to Nancy’s point, it may indeed be true that most white Americans are oblivious to the fact that all Asian people are not one and the same. Do you really think that gives those on our side of the political fence an excuse to be equally stupid, ignorant, racist or sexist? If anything we should be holding our own side to higher standards, as frankly we ought to know better and really have no excuse for not doing so.

By: BritGirlSF

BritGirlSF — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 04:07:45 +0000

I’m continually puzzled by the “Jesse is making her do it” stuff aimed at Malkin. Don’t misunderstand me - I think she’s wrong about just about everything. I also think that she’s allowing the bad blood that still exists between the Phillipines and Japan to short-circuit her sense of morality. Racism isn’t any prettier when it’s aimed at the Japanese from a Filipina than it is in any other situation.
BUT…even if we think she’s a stubborn, wrong-headed moron, why not acknowledge that she’s perfectly capable of being a stubborn, wrong-headed moron all by herself? Why the assumption that her husband is spoon-feeding her ideas? If you look at Malkin’s history, she seems to have been an outspoken conservative from a young age. There’s really no reason to assume that her husband is pulling the strings. Even if we disagree with her (which I do on just about everything), that doesn’t mean that the basic rules of respect and polite discourse do not apply. And going after her family is totally unnacceptable. Attack her ideas by all means, but leave her family out of it.
I’m disturbed by the distinctly unlovely combination of racism and sexism directed at Malkin. It bothers me that so many people on the left feel the need to use repulsive racist stereotypes to attack her. It’s pretty easy to criticise her ideas themselves, there’s really no need for the racial/sexual slurs.
And on another note, which Chris already alluded to…why are so many people on the left apparently so enamoured with the idea of “Asian” as some sort of monolithic identity, and so oblivious to the conflicts and general lack of unity between the many different Asian cultures? Anyone with even the most basic grasp of geography and history shouldn’t be assuming any kind of fellow-feeling between the Phillipines and Japan. That’s what bothers me about the “she’s betraying her own people” stuff…the Japanese are not in fact her people. That doesn’t make her defense of the internment any less loathsome, and we should be calling her out about it, but we can do so without pretending that “Asian” is a homogenous identity, which it isn’t. Honestly, this apparent inability to tell the difference between a Filipina and someone Japanese, or to recognise the fact that the scars of the Japanese occupation of the Phillipines probably have a lot more to do with her stance than anything her husband might believe, looks pretty damned racist to me.
We can criticise her without acting like she’s a puppet with no agency of her own, and without resorting to demeaning stereotypes of the submissive and/or overly sexualised Asian woman. The left needs to take the moral high ground on this, or how can we expect anyone to take us seriously?

By: Auguste

Auguste — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:41:50 +0000

I’m biased and self-serving, since I’m one of the two people Malkin is ostensibly responding to here, but let’s be careful about allowing Malkin’s conflation of the racist comments many so-called liberals are making, and the actual accusations being levelled at her.

Racist and sexist epithets never were and never will be acceptable, but I’m not going to stop criticizing someone because some other asshole is being an asshole.

By: Hugo

Hugo — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:24:02 +0000

Oh, and Jill — I haven’t read Bee Season, but am planning to now. It is hard to buy Gere as a Jew, frankly…

By: Chris Clarke

Chris Clarke — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:38:29 +0000

Malkin is American-born, and certainly much too young to have direct contact with the war, and while she might resent Japan for the war, the cold hard truth is that to most US white people, she is lumped together with other Asians

White people lumping Filipinos in with Japanese people in the category “Asian” is not racist… because white people lump Filipinos in with Japanese people in the category “Asian.”