Michelle Malkin’s publisher has done something very smart with her new book, Unhinged – it has printed actual hate e-mails sent to Malkin, and the addresses from which they came, on the back cover. For those who haven’t yet seen the back cover, it’s worth a trip to the nearest bookstore.
Malkin, a Filipino, is a called a wide variety of colorful things … you know, the kind of things a conservative would be chased out of town for saying, but for some reason can roll off liberal tongues without the slightest misgiving. (E.g., those black Democrats pelting another black man – Republican Michael Steele, Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor and candidate for US Senate – with Oreo cookies, referring to him as Uncle Tom and Sambo. Seen that story on Hardball yet?)
Malkin does mention Right-wing zealotry in her book, and on her website: “I’ll probably have to say this a million times, and those predisposed to attack the book (without reading it) will ignore it, but I do not argue that we on the Right have never gone overboard in political word or deed. The book is about turning [the mainstream media’s] conventional wisdom on its head and showing that the standard caricature of conservatives as angry / racist / bigoted / violence-prone crackpots is a much better description of today’s unhinged liberals than of us.”
There are angry, racist, bigoted and violence-prone conservatives, of course, but none of them perform on conservatism’s main stage. (Michael Savage may be the notable exception. He’s a kook, but he may have just enough listeners and has probably sold more than enough books to make some legitimate claim to that stage.) By and large, conservatism’s bad apples aren’t all that dissimilar from most of the Left’s bad apples, in that they’re relegated to writing columns no one reads and blogs no one sees … which sounded a lot like me when I thought about it. So I began thinking about the worst things I’ve ever said about the Left, wondering whether those things, when gathered together, make me “unhinged.”
Before going any further, you should know I’ve always suffered from Ann Coulter’s Disease, an affliction that renders useless the part of my brain responsible for self-censorship. Coulter’s Disease is why those close to me cringe when they hear relevant media has been looking at or speaking to me; they’re genuinely afraid I’ll end up on television or radio and ruin everything. (By the way, Coulter’s Disease tends to be much less charming when you’re not Ann Coulter, as my former editors at IntellectualConservative.com will tell you.)
For example, the last time I was invited to appear on a radio show, I was asked about the Abu Ghraib prison photos. If anything more sinister ever came to light I would scream for those responsible to be imprisoned and insist they never see another blue sky, I said, but what we had seen to that point was “no worse than a fraternity pledge clenching a Bing cherry between his butt cheeks and dropping it into a shot glass.” Good thing Media Matters wasn’t around back then. (Or was it? Who cares?)
The worst thing I’ve ever said about another public figure, in public, was about Bill and Hillary Clinton at a January 1999 round table impeachment debate. I explained: My ‘Al Gore in ‘98’ campaign wasn’t so much about sex or lies as it was about the 25th Amendment. How so? asked the moderator. Well, I doubt anyone as mentally ill as Bill Clinton can ever really be fit to serve as president. Not even in this political climate can we expect the Clintons to admit they’re swingers, though I think sophisticated people know it when they see it. Clinton wouldn’t have had to tell the grand jury they’re swingers, but he didn’t have to build complicated lies around Monica Lewinsky, either. That’s a tip-off; something’s wrong with him.
Combine this with some things I’ve written in this space – Arab terrorists only understand being blown to pieces and dogs barking at their crotches (ala Abu Ghraib); if Scott Peterson had performed a partial birth abortion on his wife and killed his unborn son, the worst charge NOW would have agreed to levy against Peterson would have been practicing medicine without a license; no one in their right mind would buy a stock if its dividend were based on action born from “outrage in the Arab street” – and I start hoping not to turn up in someone’s Conservatives Unhinged.
