I know far-right blogger Michelle Malkin has a book coming out, but ABC providing her a platform to help her sell books on a panel with far more credible individuals is puzzling at best and indefensible at worst. Was it because she was selling a book and making the media rounds to drum up publicity for the shots she is taking at the Obama Administration? Like some other bloggers, I too found it almost shocking to see her on ANC’s “This Week” trying to talk politics with George Stephanopoulus, Cynthia Tucker, Al Hunt and Gerald Seib. In that group, the almost irrationally-partisan Malkin sticks out like a sore thumb just hit by a hammer.
It’s been 10 years since Michelle Malkin, then a Seattle Times editorial writer and columnist, disparaged Unity ‘99 in her column, saying, “I am not a brown jelly bean. . . . For better or worse, I want readers to know me for my ideas, ideology and idiosyncrasies — not for my Filipino heritage. This is why, after more than a half-dozen years in the newspaper business, I refuse to join race-based organizations such as the Asian-American Journalists Association.”
Malkin moved to Washington and wrote such works as “In Defense of Internment: The Case for “Racial Profiling” in World War II and the War on Terror” (2004)
By and large, however, Malkin was considered a rather fringe, Ann Coulter-type character — until Sunday, when she was invited to share the reporter’s roundtable of ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, with mainstream veterans Cynthia Tucker, Al Hunt and Gerald Seib.
It was her first time. “She’s a provocative conservative voice with a new book,” ABC spokeswoman Emily Lenzner explained to Journal-isms.
“There’s no shortage of wingnuts out there, so why would George Stephanopoulos invite on someone too crazy for even Bill O’Reilly?” John Amato asked on his Crooks and Liars blog.
“Only people with a Malkin brain would believe and push across the notion that Americans would rather collect three hundred dollars a week on unemployment insurance rather than get a job that supplies benefits and pays a salary,” as Malkin did on “This Week.”
“The Huffington Post adds:
“‘Everybody just sort of looked at Malkin, like she was INSANE, and George Stephanopoulos very politely said, ‘Uhm . . . I don’t know if I follow that.’ To which Malkin replied: ‘BUT IT WAS A CLINTON ECONOMIST, BLARGLE!’ Stephanopoulos was still a bit dumbfounded, wondering why anyone in their right mind would take unemployment benefits ‘when a job was available.’”
Certainly she is a provocative voice with a new book, but is this where the bar is set to earn a spot on a show that is supposed to be as prestigious as ABC’s “This Week” is nowadays (selling a book and coming across as provocative)?
To some extent, she tried to hide her partisanship (or at least turn down the volume on it), but it was apparently too difficult for her.
Crooks and Liars gives an example of how obsessed she has become with attacking the Obama Administration (in an interview she did on Fox News with another right-wing extremist, Sean Hannity):
Especially the complete and utter loss of perspective:
HANNITY: Now that you’ve done all this research — and I’ll let the audience, because you really, with great specificity and detail, go into the corruption — how corrupt is this administration compared to others?
MALKIN: Well, I think you have to judge them by their rhetoric. And if you look at the gap between the rhetoric and the reality, this has to be one of the corrupt, most corrupt administrations in recent memory.
Hmmm. I dunno about you, but when I look at the levels of corruption within an administration, I look for actual things like, you know, corruption. Things like Halliburton and Enron.
Apparently, Malkin has a short memory for presidential administration scandals.
I wonder if Malkin will measure Dick Cheney’s rhetoric against the reality of Bush Administration scandals.
Remember these words from Cheney:
We can restore the ideals of honesty and honor that must be a part of our national life, if our children are to thrive. When I look at the administration now in Washington, I am dismayed by opportunities squandered. Saddened by what might have been, but never was. These have been years of prosperity in our land, but little purpose in the White House. Bill Clinton vowed not long ago to hold onto power “until the last hour of the last day.” That is his right. But, my friends, that last hour is coming. That last day is near. The wheel has turned. And it is time. It is time for them to go.
George W. Bush will repair what has been damaged. He is a man without pretense and without cynicism. A man of principle, a man of honor. On the first hour of the first day he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office. He will show us that national leaders can be true to their word and that they can get things done by reaching across the partisan aisle, and working with political opponents in good faith and common purpose. I know he’ll do these things, because for the last five years I’ve watched him do them in Texas.
George W. Bush came to the governor’s office with a clear view of what he wanted to achieve. He said he would bring higher standards to public schools, and he has. Walk into those schools today, and you will see children with better scores, classrooms with better discipline and teachers with better pay.
Uh, right.
What say you Michelle Malkin? …
How about the gap between that rhetoric and these scandals (to name a few):
Halliburton’s Corruption
Iraq’s Decline
Weapons of mass destruction
Mission Accomplished
Abu Ghraib Prison Torture
CIAPre-9/11 Intelligence Failures
HHS Deceptive Ad Campaign
HHS Scully Scandal
Government-wide Accounting Problems
Real Costs of the Iraq War
