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March 05, 2007
To Fight For The Right Without Question Or Pause
[litbrit says Good Morning!]
Ah, Monday fun. I can't imagine how Max Blumenthal of The Nation was able to get himself and his cameraman into the CPAC to-do this weekend, but they managed to secure some excellent footage, including a little smackdown of Ann Coulter and a meet-'n-greet with Flipper, the anti-Romney dolphin. The pièce de résistance, though, was Blumenthal approaching Michelle Malkin and asking her to autograph a black-and-white photograph--one showing dozens of Japanese Americans standing behind a tall, barbed-wire fence in an internment camp--along with her notorious book, In Defense of Internment. Malkin bristles, becomes unhinged--saying she was "all for honest, intellectual debate" and had published an errata page afterwards--and then, when asked if she's admitting she'd made mistakes, says Yes, I made a lot of errors, and storms off into the crowd, abandoning her Hot Air booth and ignoring questions about whether she'd learned anything journalistically. It's interesting that her blog post describes the incident somewhat differently:
Two punks from The Nation with a camera stopped by my book signing to ambush me about In Defense of Internment. Have they bothered to read the book? No. I look forward to their butchering of my comments and the predictable unhinged reaction.
Heh heh. Blumenthal clearly introduces himself, but is referred to as a punk who hasn't read her book (I'm uncertain how she'd know what he has and hasn't read). And of course, there's no mention of that heart-wrenching photograph. But the film clearly shows that the only butchering going on is Malkin's time-honored treatment of the, er, facts.
Perhaps she'll issue another erratum.
March 5, 2007 in Republicans | Permalink
Comments
hey, you didn't mention the Tancredo supporter with the Confederate Flag pin.
Probably because you hate the South.
Posted by: Count Cant | Mar 5, 2007 10:26:11 AM
Hey Count, I live in the bloody South! But yes, that was hilarious, too. I loved how he tried to cover up his chest with the file folder (or something). As they used to say in the Young Ones, I wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall...
Posted by: litbrit | Mar 5, 2007 10:30:11 AM
Blumenthal sure looked silly asking who wants to preserve "white culture". I really had a good laugh. He's like the male version of Melissa McEwan except he has the brains to stay with a radical group and not associate himself with mainstream liberals.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 5, 2007 10:32:47 AM
Fred, if you're implying that Melissa doesn't have brains, you're horribly mistaken. That's nothing new, though.
Posted by: litbrit | Mar 5, 2007 10:36:30 AM
Well, she apparently didn't see that one coming or she never would have accepted the position in the first place. It was a grave error in judgement and one that I predicted with eerie accuracy. Now, I'm no political genius, but even *I* saw that train coming down the tracks and even made that prediction on this board (and I am not in the habit of preditcting events).
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 5, 2007 10:40:15 AM
I think the hiding confederate flag was a "revealed" acknowledgement of offensiveness, much like revealed preference in economics. If someone thinks to hide the Confederate flag they revealed their understanding of how it might offend someone regardless of what they might say in explanation of why they choose to wear it.
Posted by: ChrisB | Mar 5, 2007 10:41:31 AM
I got a good laugh from the guy (short, flat-top haircut and hair-trigger anger) who responded to the question about preserving white culture by saying 'this isn't about white culture', when it pretty clear that it is about that. He had on a suit, but he looked and sounded like he'd be more comfortable in faux-military fatigues beating up on and delivering some fist (or ballbat) sandwiches to anyone who wasn't pure enough to join the Klan or some Aryan Brotherhood kind of group.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Mar 5, 2007 11:07:28 AM
I like the way she thinks that printing errata somehow counterbalances writing a book arguing in favour of ethnically based internment of American citizens. Next up, The Elders of the Protocols of Zion gets a thorough proofread!
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Mar 5, 2007 11:23:29 AM
I've resisted watching this - I've been seeing it around yesterday and today, but I decided to give it a whirl. Turns out it's well observed and slyly funny. Nice work. I don't think Malkin's the best part - I will give her credit for being honest ("I made a lot of errors") and I think she's fair in her assessment about being baited (and I don't, necessarily, blame her for walking away rather than engaging in a prolonged episode that no one would find satisfying). Just as an aside, it's why I think people are wrong to lump Malkin and Coulter into the same definition - Malkin's smarter, better spoken, and sometimes listens to her better angels. Blumenthal wasn't looking for an in-depth discussion of her book or internment (and that's not to say I agree with her, just that in-depth discussion was not the point here).
No, the one I think is revealing is David Hrowitz, with Dinesh D'Souza a close second, who animate the anger and partisan bitterness that goes into the conservative movement, convinced that somehow it's a "conspiracy" of "stupidity" that Americans don't embrace their every wacky idea, blaming "the media" for making them look bad. It doesn't really work that way... you look that bad all on your own. And I still say it's the bitterness and simmering anger of conservatives that their leaders need to confront - otherwise, the field is wide open for sarcastic harridans like Ann Coulter.
Posted by: weboy | Mar 5, 2007 11:27:21 AM
David Horowitz seems to have an...obsession...with his nose that might help to explain his insane paranoia.
Posted by: Antid Oto | Mar 5, 2007 12:19:12 PM
I'll admit, I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on it, but for those who have, what sort of errors were in it? And could a page of corrections possibly justify its thesis? I remember when it first came out, two historians who specialize in this era were appalled because it was so awful.
Posted by: Brian | Mar 5, 2007 1:42:39 PM
Bob Barr made more sense than anyone else on that video.
Good god.
Posted by: Chares Pierce | Mar 5, 2007 2:01:13 PM
Brian, I haven't read it either. But dear heaven, that title...one can build a potent argument against that alone.
And I did read the title.
Which leads me to ask why, if Malkin not only wrote In Defense of Internment but also did press for it and was, and is, willing to sign her name on copies of it, she would refuse to sign a photograph that depicts exactly what she's proposing: the internment by American government of ethnic-Americans. That was the point of Blumenthal's exercise: to underscore Malkin's hypocrisy. If you're down with the concept, down with the book and down with its title, why the faux disgust when people assume you'd be down with a real, honest-to-goodness photograph of the concept as it was actually implemented?
Posted by: litbrit | Mar 5, 2007 2:06:54 PM
Bob Barr made more sense than anyone else on that video.
Good god.
Posted by: Chares Pierce
Whew. Thank God someone else thought that. I was about to report in to Liberal HQ for de-programming.
Posted by: Mack | Mar 5, 2007 2:09:22 PM
I agree with some of weboy's observations, but not the overall. I detest this kind of "journalism" or entertainment or whatever it's supposed to be. I've never liked it on 60 Minutes and its many inferior spawn either. It's slimy and smug and seldom shows what it purports to. Perfect for demagogues of all stripes.
There's a pretty obvious reason Malkin might claim the twit hasn't read the book. He starts off with a wildly inaccurate description of it. I also detest Malkin's work, but she looks better in this piece than 60 Minutes Junior does; he actually makes her look reasonable. Junior baits the Tancredo supporters like he thinks he's Borat (who was awful too, but at least good at what he did). And he manages to make Coulter, who's an extremist jackass, look merely clever. But he obviously thinks all this works for him. It apparently does among many liberals. Ugh.
The lack of self-awareness in what Horowitz said is striking, of course, but that doesn't mean liberals should be laughing all that much. There's plenty of hate and faith driving the Left, as there is on the Right. Any differences would be more of degree than kind.
Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 5, 2007 2:11:24 PM
That was an oddly depressing piece of film. Actually, Malkin comes off rather well. The questions I'd like to see posed to her are about the aftereffects of massive imperialistic violence. Born in a city, Manila, that was razed by the Japanese in 1945, leaving 100,000 dead, she obviously bears a lot of rancor - and though her book is despicable, it comes from roots that should be understood in just that liberal way that drives conservatives nuts. When the U.S. committed the war crime of razing Falluja (another imperialist crime) obviously they were starting another cycle of violence all over again - with unpredictable consequences. To see a white boy pursuing her on the weekend in which the Japanese Prime minister denies the reality of "comfort women" and the Governor of the Tokyo Province praises a film depicting kamikaze pilots as heroes, one wonders again about American airheadedness. Are we really this disconnected from the world?
Posted by: roger | Mar 5, 2007 2:33:59 PM
...and though her book is despicable, it comes from roots that should be understood in just that liberal way that drives conservatives nuts.
I'd like to understand the roots, in just that liberal way, about Barak's family owning slaves.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 5, 2007 2:36:30 PM
I got a good laugh from the guy (short, flat-top haircut and hair-trigger anger) who responded to the question about preserving white culture by saying 'this isn't about white culture', when it pretty clear that it is about that. He had on a suit, but he looked and sounded like he'd be more comfortable in faux-military fatigues beating up on and delivering some fist (or ballbat) sandwiches to anyone who wasn't pure enough to join the Klan or some Aryan Brotherhood kind of group.
Um, well....no. That guy's visceral reaction disassociating Tancredo's partisans from the code-words for modern day white supremacy movements was, how to put this.... Uplifting? I disagree with Tancredo's anti-immigration policies on literally every level, but it was actually a good thing to note that his supporters are horrified at being associated with the Stormfront crowd. And no, that reaction was a political two-step with a wink and a nod. That was a guy who _knows_ the "western civilization and white culture" crowd and is horrified at being identified with it.
Tancredo's policies are vile enough on their own merits, but it was actually kind of nice to see the visceral need of his group of supporters to put serious space between themselves and the neo-nazis that spout similar lines.
Posted by: Sam Hutcheson | Mar 5, 2007 2:53:02 PM
Tancredo's policies are vile enough on their own merits...
If you are speaking about his agenda for enforcing the current immigration laws that were instituted through a democratic process, debated and voted upon by duly elected representatives, then you look like an extremist.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 5, 2007 2:57:58 PM
"Tancredo's policies are vile enough on their own merits"
Care to mention them?
Or you get off on drive-by shooting your mouth?
Posted by: mik | Mar 5, 2007 3:26:23 PM
here is an article on Malkin and her historical revisionism with links to why her internment book was not very accurate.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/09/malkin-and-historical-revisionism.html
Posted by: BillCross | Mar 5, 2007 3:35:01 PM
Hey Count, I live in the bloody South!
Does America's todger really count?
As for Tancredo, it's curious that a Coloradan ends up telling white-supremacist groups in Greenville that the South Will Rise Again. I think that he, like Little Awful Annie, appeal to the juvenile fantasies of the modern GOP.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Mar 5, 2007 3:58:53 PM
As for Tancredo, it's curious that a Coloradan ends up telling white-supremacist groups in Greenville that the South Will Rise Again.
Exactly what is it that Tancredo said that could possibly be paraphrased as "telling white-supremacist groups in Greenville that the South will rise again"?
Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 5, 2007 4:32:10 PM
I'm always disappointed when columns like Ezra's that are otherwise thoughtful, analytic, fair-minded, and poignant post links to things like Blumenthal's piece, which is none of the above. It's just slapstick, or "gotcha!" journalism. I consider it very similar to what I hear on Democracy Now!, which is why I don't tune in.
I completely disagree with the politics of the people Blumenthal taunted, but I also completely understand their response. He was baiting them. Did he expect a thoughtful conversation on internment, given his approach? Of course not.
These kind of stunts don't really help further understanding. They just make the divide wider. Does it feel _good_ to people to watch Malkin bristle and storm off? Not me; I felt sorry for her. Disagreeing with someone's beliefs doesn't give you license to deliberate set them off and video tape it for your friends. To what end?
Posted by: Clint Popetz | Mar 5, 2007 8:01:30 PM
Clint, I am the contributor responsible for posting the link to the above video, not Ezra. Please feel free to criticize me for my slapstick, gotcha jourmalism, if you like, but not Ezra, who does indeed write thoughtful, analytic, fair-minded pieces.
As an aside, though, the video was featured on numerous sites today, not just this one and mine. As I stated earlier, I saw Blumenthal's stunt as an exercise in pointing out Malkin's hypocrisy (ooh, I bet she'd never had anyone accuse her of hypocrisy before). She will self-promote, doing press for and signing books that include the Internment tome referenced, but will not sign a photograph that depicts the very real end result of mindsets and policy recommendations like hers.
I'm sorry, I was raised to be a thoughtful, diplomatic, turn-the-other-cheek person, and normally when I disagree with someone's beliefs, I let it go at that: I disagree with his or her beliefs. However, in some cases--certainly in this case--I think the person should be mocked, ridiculed, and publicly called to account for the hateful garbage (not, I submit, mere "beliefs") that she disseminates, which in the case of In Defense Of Internment, is outrageous racism and the government-sanctioned violation of civil and human rights.
You're free to play nice whenever you like. Go ahead and try to "further understanding" with folks like Malkin.
I have no plans to "set off" nonspecific people in order to tape it for my friends. Should those who are in a position to do so continue to shine a light on Malkin's hypocrisy, though? I, for one, believe they should.
Posted by: litbrit | Mar 5, 2007 8:33:50 PM
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