It’s only a matter of time before Herr Frau Malkin is pictured smiling alongside a swastika.

Like much of the international press, the Malkins fell for that story about Comrade B. Hussein O. X. gifting a $30k ring to his wife. It’s not true, and although all the sites linked to in the MM.com post have updated to correct the story, Michelle put up a glib, “Update: Not true?”

A few things:

• The Malkins sarcastically asked, “How long before someone screams RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST?” referring to the hard-right position that racist criticisms of Barack Obama shouldn’t be called racist. I don’t think the fake story itself is racist, but Michelle’s use of “Bling” as a caption for the jewelry graphic is: Would Michelle have chosen “bling” had this been President-elect Clinton purchasing her husband a comparably priced watch? No.
• Michelle Malkin is displaying a remarkable bitterness stemming from the abject failure of her savior, The Gov. Palin, and she’s taking it out on her own credibility. When something so trivial as a tale about a fake ring comes up, and Obama doesn’t merely decline to comment, but denies the report, she can’t take him at his word. Yes, Pres. Bush received similar treatment, but only after building a strong reputation as a poor manager and a liar. Michelle could at least let Obama do that first.
• Michelle’s post actually has the word “criminey” in it. This term falls slightly ahead of “fiddle sticks” but behind “tarnation” on the Absolute Profanity Scale published biannually by the American Enterprise Institute in concert with Charles Krauthammer’s upper lip.

Michelle shares an email with us…

• Race traitor card-playing e-mail of the day

From: Leilani Albano
To: writemalkin@gmail.com
Subject: don’t forget you’re brown

i’ve read your stories throughout the years.

and i have to say, from one pinay journalist to another, you embarrass me and you embarrass our people.

i’m sorry the US media has used you, larry elders and other conservative drones of color to bolster their quota numbers.

what we need are more conscious journalists of color, not just another mainstream token acting as a cheerleader for the conservative right.

hopefully someday, you will find genuine connections with others and see how much damage you have done with your recklessly crafted pieces.

Unlike she does with Obama, I don’t pretend to know what Michelle is thinking or feeling. I don’t know her. I only know the persona that is Michelle Malkin. (Fun fact: Michelle still copyrights her books under the name “Michelle Maglalang.”) I’m guessing, though, that this email really stung. Michelle didn’t grow up in a strong Filipino community like the Filipinos I knew growing up, so it’s no surprise that the “our people” comment was taken as an extreme insult. MM was never “accepted by them” to begin with, so how could she “turn her back”? It’s an interesting aspect of the blogger’s life.

The part I emphasized above is of particular importance. If asked how her own skin color has impacted her career, I would guess Michelle to either take the indifferent stance or concede that it’s helped her. I highly doubt that a woman of Michelle’s viciousness would allow anyone to “use” her. To the contrary, her race is a platform to attract an audience that can’t distinguish differences among Asians–or realize that Michelle sees herself as a white American.

Today’s moral: Don’t bait Michelle and Jesse Malkin with issues of race. It only disrupts the hornet’s nests that are their troubled minds.

I’m really at a loss over Westmoreland calling Obama “uppity.”

Next, someone’s gonna tell me McCain still refers to Blacks as “Negroes” behind closed doors.

A sustaining din of indignation has a steady source in the blogging collective surrounding Michelle & Jesse Malkin.

It appears to be getting more shrill as the group grows. This week saw a raising of stakes of sorts: paranoia of media manipulation in the coverage of the continuing slaughter in Lebanon, Joe Lieberman’s primary loss to a political fish, and the arrests of alleged violent jihadists in Britain.
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It appears that Michelle is somewhat upset over a high ranking California politician using the word “cracker” to describe San Diegans who wish to deny civil rights to immigrants. Capt. Queeg has reduced himself to calling it a “racial slur.”

I use the term myself: on this blog and in everyday conversation. I generally don’t follow the accepted denotation of the word, i.e. “poor white Southerner,” but in the sense that Malcolm X used it, namely “white racist,” especially the potentially violent variety. Therefore, I do not consider the word to be a “racial slur,” but a “racist slur,” or a pejorative meant to attack the racial bigotry of an individual or group.
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Michelle and Jesse have compiled a seemingly nonrandom gallery of dark complexioned Muslim individuals who were determined by authorities to have been lone gunmen (except, of course, in the case of the beltway snipers).

Here in Indiana we were recently struck by a case of an interstate sniper who took the life of one motorist and injured several others. Turns out that he’s white and has a Hebrew name. Compound these with the fact that after having admitted to the crime, he is maintaining his innocence. Makes you wonder why he didn’t make the list. Must be because it’s a “random” sampling.

buffalonews.com:

“[Zachariah Blanton] said he in fact did do the shootings, however, only with the intention of relieving pressure,” John Kelly, an Indiana State Police crime scene technician, testified at a hearing Tuesday.

The teen apparently had been arguing with relatives over gutting a deer during a hunting trip about 20 miles south of Seymour, Jackson County Prosecutor Stephen Pierson said.

Perhaps “random” is just the new cover-your-racist-ass adjective for getting around chronic confirmation bias.

Update: (8/1, early evening) Neiwert has a great takedown of the post alluded to above. Great read.

…and crackerdom ensues.

I’m not entirely sure what possessed A la Pundit to cover this, considering the rabid racism of his base audience.

And he doth proclaimeth (with a healthy dose of ye olde verbal irony):

It’ll cure blacks’ sense of grievance and make whites more sympathetic to the injustice of slavery by driving home the economic costs.

I don’t believe the author of this sentence has the capacity to sympathize with the man who couldn’t patronize a store owned and operated by a person who looks like him if he so desired. Granting small bits of humanity such as this to a people oppressed for the good part of 500 years is beyond a dollar amount. Who cares how angry a bunch of racists get?
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I recently came out in support of any government proposal that provides amnesty to the millions of undocumented laborers who would be considered criminals under current statutes — no strings attached. The comments I received ranged from predictable to illuminating.

By “no strings attached”, I mean that such a proposal would be wholly separate from any legislation meant to reform the current immigration system. That is something for politicians to debate and compromise on. As far as I’m concerned, no one who is truly conscious of human rights should be willing to compromise over the amnesty issue. For in its purest essence, bigotry is the denial of human rights based on an individual’s natural condition: be it because he is born black, brown, yellow, or red; born homosexual; or born, as discussed here, into poverty outside of the United States of America.

Forget briefly that the U.S. has for its entire history had quite the record when it comes to the institutionalized exploitation of her minority groups — particularly the black, brown, yellow, and red. If it applies to you as it does to me, this will require looking beyond the privileges bestowed upon you for having either by choice or force assimilated fully into white society. Now it should be safe to continue…

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The next time some wingnut starts whining about MEChA and Cruz Bustamante (favorite Malkin targets), have them read this.

David Neiwert has an excellent post up on the latest developments coming out of the Minuteman Project, most notably the divisions at the leadership levels and the rumblings coming from their easily confused donors.

One of the really fortunate aspects of the far right in America is that it is constitutionally predisposed to fracturing: the combination of latent paranoid tendencies, controlling personalities and gigantic egos makes it nearly certain that its various components can never form an effective, long-term coalition.

[Link]

(When the first paragraph is that good, you can tell it’s going to be a great read.)

What is somewhat ironic about groups like the Minuteman Project is that they refer to themselves as conservatives but take on revolutionary labels. They also seem more than willing to fling mud at each other over trivialities, such as money and how it’s spent. Obviously, revolutions without coherent, realizable goals are doomed for failure.

I suppose one could say that Michelle and Jesse Malkin are cut from the same cloth as the leaders of these far-right groups. After the ghostblogging charges began to diffuse through the blogosphere, the two cobloggers may have become increasingly paranoid about even more damaging leaks making their way to sundry blogs of ill-repute.

And given Michelle’s propensity for lashing out at critics, one wonders if they suspected people who know them well. On top of that, Jesse’s [alleged] tendency toward violent behavior suggests that his enormous ego clashing with Michelle’s comparably enormous ego is no pretty sight. Fer sure.

Eric Muller posted an excerpt of a 1998 Seattle Times Malkin column. This should put to rest any claims that Michelle is herself not a racist. Before she became the vile one she is today, her racism was a source of defensiveness and a quite obvious inferiority complex.

Here’s the whole thing:
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It seems that Michelle’s chance to shine during the midterm elections has passed. Over the last year, her pet issue, immigration, has been sidelined by her obsession to uncover a pattern of “unhingedness” emanating from The Left. As a result, her poorly touted Immigration Blog project is something of an utter failure — much like its main author.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, June 20 — House Republican leaders today put the brakes on efforts to overhaul immigration laws, saying they would hold hearings this summer around the nation on the politically volatile subject before trying to compromise with the Senate on a chief domestic priority of President Bush.

…

The unusual decision to set a new round of hearings on legislation already passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate puts the prospects for enacting a final bill this year in jeopardy despite Mr. Bush’s call for Congress to act.

The timing means that formal Congressional negotiations would not begin until September, just as Congressional campaigns are entering their crucial final weeks — a time when lawmakers typically shy away from difficult issues.

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Word:

The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently has passed. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I’ll get nonviolent. But don’t teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent.

[Also see this May 1964 Monthly Review interview.]

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skippy alerts us to some Closed Border Lobby Hypocrisy.

If you’ve never seen the meat of Michelle’s “Swift Boat” appearance on the August 19, 2004 episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews, please take a look.

Long-time reader Rev. Mykeru (that’s “Mike-a-roo”), sent the following in an email as part of a discussion we were having concerning our favorite blogger. I’ve done a bit of editing and added links, none of which are absolutely necessary for context or continuity.

One of the things you have to get used to when dealing with Malkin is something that is common with all purveyors of nonsense, and that is the breathless padding around a non-claim.

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