Post September 11 flying-off-the-handle has already derailed the career of one previously unaccountable female GOP pundit -- Ann Coulter. In an apparent fit of rage, Coulter infamously wrote of those celebrating the World Trade Center attacks abroad: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." The comment eventually resulted in her column being dropped by the mainstream conservative clearinghouse National Review Online -- proof to many that she had finally gone too far. (Though if you consider Coulter's career in all its fullness, the crusader remark actually doesn't seem so entirely unprecedented.)
But there is another Coulteresque pundit also in desperate need of accountability, to say nothing of restraint: Michelle Malkin. Malkin's syndicated column appears regularly in such newspapers as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, The Washington Times, The Houston Chronicle and The New York Post. She also shows up as a commentator on Fox News and has an editorialist background from The Los Angeles Daily News and The Seattle Times. Unlike Coulter's unadulterated spinning, Malkin's columns commonly draw upon at least some interviewing and investigation. But this reportage does very little to temper the extreme language and ad hominem rhetorical abuse characteristic of her finished product.
One of Malkin's favored -- and most irresponsible -- rhetorical techniques is a time honored one: guilt by association. And she adds her own unique flavor to this device: The associations made in her columns are frequently of her own idiosyncratic creation and not necessarily existent in real life. For example, in a November 2 column about a meeting of the New Black Panthers -- what Malkin called a "Muslim marathon of malevolence" -- she gave this physical description of event leader Malik Zulu Shabazz: "He wore his usual garb -- a dark Goebbels-like uniform with patches and stripes, close-cropped hair and Malcolm X designer glasses." Now, certainly there may be much to criticize about Shabazz's behavior or statements. But comparing his clothing to that of the Nazi propagandist and Hitler confidant Joseph Goebbels is not a rational method of criticism. It's highly doubtful, after all, that Shabazz deliberately dresses like Goebbels. Yet by constructing such an association in her own head and then transferring it into print, Malkin manages to smear Shabazz as Nazi-like without giving any evidence that her analogy has any basis in reason or reality.
This is hardly an isolated incident. Indeed, Malkin actually appears to think that merely describing what someone looks like on television, and then disapproving, constitutes adequate grounds for an ideological attack. Witness a recent Malkin column that trashed Hillary Clinton for her composure during George W. Bush's speech to the nation on September 20. ". . .Sen. Clinton shunned patriotism for petulance," wrote Malkin. "She grimaced. She sighed. She rolled her eyes. She fidgeted like a five-year-old at an opera." Malkin then went on to cite letters to the editor from a few newspapers as proof that some other observers also found Clinton's mannerisms bothersome. In this way she attempted to give her own subjective observations some veneer of objectivity.
Joshua Micah Marshall has called Malkin's Hillary Clinton column "one of the most vicious and indecent pieces of writing I have ever read." Basically, it appears to be the work of a pre-September 11 Clinton-basher trying to adjust to the post-September 11 world, and using below-the-belt rhetorical techniques to do so. Consider another sentence, this time analyzing Clinton's physiognomy at a Yankee stadium prayer memorial: "Hiding behind sunglasses -- guess she can't control the rolling eyeballs any more than Al Gore can control his heaving sighs -- Mrs. Clinton posed for photos with a strange sneer frozen on her stony face." Here Malkin moves unabashedly from an observation of Senator Clinton's facial features -- hardly a precise science for someone with an anti-Clinton background -- to speculation about what her eyes are doing behind her sunglasses. This, of course, is pure conjecture. But Malkin cheerfully compares Clinton's "rolling eyeballs" to Al Gore's "heaving sighs" even though the former probably has no basis in reality.
Consider one further recent example -- possibly the most egregious -- in which Malkin smears a political opponent, not based upon anything that individual has said or done, but merely through the creative use of her imagination. On October 24, Malkin included the following passage in an op-ed arguing against jury trials for terrorists:
This is the kind of "justice" the American apologists for terrorism seek. They believe all will be right with the world when Osama bin Laden is whistling behind bars, growing his beard to the floor, writing his memoirs, and breaking bread with kindred congressional visitors like Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney and Jim McDermott.
This is deeply irresponsible. As the rhetoric-monitoring website Spinsanity.com put it: "Malkin is attempting to link those opposed to the war with opposition to the death penalty for terrorists in an effort to discredit both. Rhetorically linking a particular person or position with a unfavorable group or cause is a common tactic of the new school of political jargon." If Malkin has a problem with U.S. representatives Barbara Lee (the only member of Congress to vote against giving George W. Bush the power to retaliate for the terrorist attacks), Cynthia McKinney, and Jim McDermott, she ought to explain why and take each of them on, fairly, in her columns. Suggesting that they would be likely to visit Osama bin Laden in jail is simply a way of avoiding rational argument. And again, Malkin's smear is based upon an imaginary construct in her own head, an image of an event -- three congressional leaders breaking bread with a mass murderer -- that will surely never come to pass.
In its simple rhetorical unfairness, Malkin's willingness to use her imagination as grounds for real world political criticism is matched only by her affinity for flinging insults. Here are a few examples, just since September 11th. She has called Dan Rather a "blow-dried TV blowhard." She has called the University of California at Berkeley "the People's Republic of Berkeley." She has accused a student at the University of Arizona of reading from the "Tawana Brawley/Al Sharpton Self-Help Guide to Racial Hoax Crimes." These broadsides occur in columns that are not necessarily devoid of rational commentary. But they cheapen and undercut that commentary, seriously throwing into doubt whether Malkin is genuinely interested in true journalism and debate or simply in ad hominem attacks.
Moreover, there's a clear pattern to the more bitter and vicious aspects of Malkin's writing, especially in its tendency to draw sweeping and indefensible connections between, say, Osama bin Laden or Joseph Goebbels and her domestic political opponents. Hewing consistently to an "if you're not with me, you're against me" mode of thought, Malkin seems incapable of detecting a range or diversity of opinion among those who don't share her opinion. A typical example came in her latest media-bashing column, a conservative rite of passage since September 11. After giving three examples of media personalities who cited objectivity concerns as reasons to avoid displaying the American flag, Malkin writes:
These TV news directors and newspaper editors act like they're lethally allergic to red, white and blue. Do they plan on boycotting the Fourth of July, too? Wouldn't want to give the appearance of endorsing either side of that little armed struggle between Mother England and the rebel colonies, right?
It's hard to tell whether Malkin fails to grasp the distinction between being anti-American and being a journalist who feels that flying the flag across the news screen would be compromising, or simply ignores it. She blithely conflates the two very different positions, however, by writing that these journalists "act like" they're not patriots -- which is, yet again, a subjective determination. For Malkin, though, it's enough to justify a series of rhetorical questions that seem progressively more unfair to journalists, such as suggesting they might "boycott" the Fourth of July.
It's hard to imagine what such a boycott would mean, journalistically speaking. Yet by the end of her column, we find Malkin speaking of a "media backlash against public displays of patriotism" as if she had proved the existence of such a phenomenon. There's a big difference between not wanting to splash an American flag across the banner of The New York Times and actively lashing out against the public's patriotic sentiments. Yet Malkin seems unable to detect such a distinction. She's already conjured the bad guys in her own mind -- and they're all the same.
