Kurtz: Malkin is a "Hard Right Punch"

In a bizarrely PR-like "article" profiling Michelle Malkin, Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post talks about how "tough" she is. It's called "A Hard Right Punch," as if to suggest that she's just a strong fighter. My main objection to the article is that it caricatures the oh-so-easy criticism of her positions by painting it as racial and gender stereotypes. There is absolutely no need to resort to that kind of thing with Michelle.

The article begins with this:

Michelle Malkin has seen her head electronically grafted onto a photo of a bikini-clad body.

...and immediately the debate is reduced to some schoolchildren mocking someone they don't like, not someone whose words stifle intelligent debate and criticism.

Beyond mentioning criticism of her as being racially and gender-motivated, Howie drops this little paragraph:

Not surprisingly, it gets pretty hot in her kitchen. The liberal blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) called Malkin a racist over her views on immigration and said anyone who promotes her site "may as well be promoting the Klan." A Web site called Malkin Watch runs a cartoon of her in a Nazi uniform. In comments on her own blog -- a feedback loop she has since restricted -- one person called her "lyin' pond scum" and another asked why she believed "she will be treated as white when God chose to make her yellow?"

Come the fuck on. Mention is also made of those who post her home address - shameful and out of line, certainly - but doesn't provide the context for this event, her own posting of the contact info of students in San Francisco. An excellent recounting of the event is here. General JC Patriot, a favorite blogger of mine, was one who posted this map of the general area of her home, and he recounts his regret for the error in judgement here. Kurtz writes only:

After a few liberal sites posted her home address and phone numbers last year, Malkin received a wave of harassing calls. She responded with a defiant post, headlined "I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU." Malkin and her family have moved elsewhere in Maryland.

"No one likes to receive the kind of attacks she gets," Preston says. "She has had to take some security precautions to make sure it doesn't rise to the level of threatening her family."

I was just about getting to point where I started to realize that it was best to ignore these fanatics, but then something like this Kurtz article gets published, and I realize that it remains important to continue to expose the absurd positions that are simply called "strong" and left at that.

He ends the piece thusly:

It is as though eternal vigilance is the price of being Michelle Malkin: No slight can go unanswered, no insult allowed to stand. Blogging is an addiction, she says, but not one she is looking to kick.

"You have to accept that you'll never have many friends," Malkin says. "It's a lonely existence."

Sounds like George Bush to me.