Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The "first lady" of hate

The other day I heard a left-wing commentator on the radio admit that she despised Michelle Malkin even more that she did Ann Coulter. While Coulter is little more than a right-wing shock-jock, Malkin is a serial hater—she really did believe all the hateful things she said. Malkin also suffers from rampant hypocrisy: she constantly rails against immigrants, yet she herself is an “anchor baby” born of parents who were Philippine citizens, in the U.S. on a work visa program. Malkin also claimed that after being called racist names at school, her mother told her that everyone is racist, and that she was “eternally grateful” for that “wise” counsel. Apparently Malkin uses this “counsel” to justify her own ugly racism. Malkin demeans other people's intelligence, referring to Barack Obama’s “ignorance” on nuclear issues; yet it was her own ignorance that was on display: like all right-wing commentators, she herself was completely unaware of Sen. Obama’s teaming with Richard Lugar on nuclear arms control issues. If anything, the nuclear issue was Obama’s principle area of expertise as senator, and certainly far beyond Malkin's superficial notions. Nor would Malkin back-away from a bald-face lie, such as repeating the claim by the Swift-Boaters that John Kerry had deliberately wounded himself while serving in Vietnam.

Malkin, married to a white man of the same right-wing stripe, first worked for the Los Angeles Daily News in the early 1990s, which until recently had a lousy minority hiring record, but apparently had room for a ragingly conservative Filipino. My introduction to Malkin was in 1996, when at the age of 26 she was hired on as an op-ed columnist by the Seattle Times without ever having had to pay her dues as a reporter. I figured that the Times’ editorial page editor at the time, Mindy Cameron, had no clue about Malkin’s fanaticism, but she was a gender politician and wanted to add more “diversity” to the editorial board. Malkin’s lack of qualifications and contempt of facts apparently played no part in her hiring, but she did add more “diversity” than was bargained for: a racial minority, a woman—and borderline insane to boot. Any claim that the Times had to intelligent editorial discussion went out the window whenever a Malkin column appeared. Bill Clinton was a favorite target, as were “liberals” in general, but her columns were generally the ramblings of a hate-filled schizophrenic. You were constantly asking yourself “What the (bleep) is she talking about?” One day she was blathering on about racism and when it did or didn’t apply, when I finally figured her out. I wrote a letter to the Times in which I observed that Malkin was one of those people, like Clarence Thomas, who was filled with self-loathing because she wasn’t white, and because of the racial attitudes inherent in American society, felt anger toward other people who were not white for “dragging her down”--into their “gutter” when she herself was just as good as any white person. Couldn't white people see that, and not her (very) brown skin?

In other words, she hated being linked to those “other” people. She was not one of “them,” and she hated “them” for “shaming” her--by applying to "them" as a "group" the very stereotypes and prejudices that a white person might use. In order to "fit-in," she out bigots the bigots. It never occurred to her that we live in a superficial society where skin color is the first order in a de facto caste system. Most minorities take another tack to this dilemma—fighting (or at least butting heads with) the racism rather than joining in it, as Malkin has. Malkin, like other right-wing minorities, is so wrapped-up in self-loathing and hate that even the fact that it is these very characteristics that are used by the otherwise wholly-white right to undermine equal opportunity for the vast majority of minorities is a complete mystery to her.

Malkin left the paper to become, at the age of 29, a nationally-syndicated columnist. Right-wing egomania and fanaticism clearly is the fastest way to a media job for a racial minority. She has since often made extreme right “commentators” like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Williams sound positively reasonable. The titles of her books are pretty much self-explanatory as to her state-of-mind:

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

“Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, And Other Foreign Menaces To Our Shores”

“In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror”

“Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild”

“Unhinged” is, of course, a word that many people would use in regard to Malkin. Her hate seemingly knows no bounds; besides constantly railing against “Mexicans” as one mass of violent subhumans, in the book approving the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, she suggested that there was “justification” in similarly interning all Muslim-Americans now.

Many people snicker at Geraldo Rivera, who managed to make people forget his Willowbrook State School exposé with “exploits” like the “Al Capone’s Vault” fiasco and infamous chair-throwing incident (which put his broken nose ignominiously on the cover of one of one of the weekly news magazines), but I credit him for taking on the racism of Fox News, unafraid of shouting down Bill O’Reilly when necessary. In an article in the Boston Globe from 2007, Rivera also had some interesting thoughts in regard to Malkin. "Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I've ever met in my life. She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people. It's good she's in D.C. and I'm in New York, I'd spit on her if I saw her."

The insensitive Malkin, who can dish it out without regard to another’s feelings, apparently is too sensitive to take the heat back. She subsequently refused to reappear on the “O’Reilly Factor” because she felt that she wasn’t adequately defended by Fox News; she showed the immature nature of her mind by referring to Rivera as “Mr. Moustache” in a rambling “rebuttable” on her website. Immaturity and hate—that is what so people in this country allow themselves to be influenced by. How can one expect an information-challenged populace to “grow-up?”

No comments:

Post a Comment