Eric Muller “reports”:http://www.isthatlegal.org/archive/2005/05/nine_months_lat.html that Peter Irons and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga have “extracted a retraction and apology”:http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002489.htm from Michelle Malkin, after she smeared them in her book and on her blog last year. At least in some of its parts, the self-correcting blogosphere still needs the threat of legal action to kick it into gear.
{ 20 comments }
george 05.18.05 at 3:17 pm
Is it relevant that Malkin’s source for the incorrect info was incorrect, and also retracted it? Would seem to take some of the heat off
Malkin (though not all).
I’ve no opinion on Malkin, and know nothing about this dispute other than what’s linked here.
Bithead 05.18.05 at 4:04 pm
So, lemme see, here.
If the info you get is inaccurate, you’re not lying.
Hmmmm.
Iraq, anyone?
As Sam Cooke once said… twist the night away…
nick 05.18.05 at 7:22 pm
Is it relevant that Malkin’s source for the incorrect info was incorrect, and also retracted it?
Well, it’s amusing that she managed to fulminate on the Newsweek saga just a few days ago, given that that arose from a source that apparently retracted its assertion.
Base irony, as Bill Hicks might put it.
Jon 05.18.05 at 11:39 pm
Michelle Malkin might want to join the post-Newsweek Mea Culpa Watch.
jet 05.19.05 at 7:23 am
Nick,
You’re cracking me up. You’re comparing bad info form a Cal-State Fullerton professor in a published article, to a shady anonymous “Pentagon informant” who thinks he saw a document, which he can’t name, talking about flushing Korans? Add in the potential consequences of each publication and you’re relaly talking about tortured logic. Unless, of course, it is your point that you should take academic articles with as much credence as anonymous Pentagon sources.
bill 05.19.05 at 11:59 am
Yeah, I hate Malkin as much as the next reasonable person, but reading the e-mail exchange and her posted retraction and apology, I don’t think she did anything wrong. Grasping at straws here.
Gary Imhoff 05.19.05 at 2:00 pm
Muller’s attacks on Malkin descend well beyond normal academic disagreement into personal venom — and Muller’s animosity toward her even resulted in such bad behavior as his recent unsuccessful attempt to have her book on Japanese internment banned from sale at the government-run bookstore at the Manzanar Relocation Center. The comments about Malkin at Muller’s blog (by commentators, not by Muller himself) descend well beyond personal venon into racial and sexual invective.
There’s something strange going on in the degree of hatred displayed toward Malkin by the left. Except at sites like the Democratic Underground or Atrios, where irrational expressions of over-the-top hatred are common, this degree of personal animosity toward a conservative intellectual opponent is unusual. What is it about Malkin that inspires mean-spirited, personal attacks?
Uncle Kvetch 05.19.05 at 2:08 pm
What is it about Malkin that inspires mean-spirited, personal attacks?
Hard to say. I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with things like her going on Chris Matthews’ show and insinuating that John Kerry deliberately shot himself in order to get a Purple Heart…because that’s certainly within the bounds of reasonable political debate, isn’t it?
Must be that liberal racism again.
Paul 05.19.05 at 3:04 pm
Unless, of course, it is your point that you should take academic articles with as much credence as anonymous Pentagon sources.
Indeed. I don’t believe anything I hear from the Pentagon, either.
Gary Imhoff 05.19.05 at 3:15 pm
“Uncle Kvetch” gives a link to a good example of what I’m talking about; be sure to watch the video clip. On “Hardball” Michelle Malkin reports that the book “Unfit for Service” makes the charge that one of John Kerry’s wounds in Vietnam was self-inflicted. In the first part of the clip, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown talks over Malkin all the time that she is speaking; in the second part host Chris Matthews engages in thuggish bullying of her, demanding that she answer questions, all the while never giving her a chance to answer a question before he yells at her again and misrepresents her answers. Even if Matthews were just a flack for Kerry (and while he was obviously pro-Kerry he was never merely pro-Kerry), it would be outrageous behavior on his part, and I’m curious as to the motivation for what seems to be such personal animosity toward Malkin.
Uncle Kvetch 05.19.05 at 3:36 pm
Even if Matthews were just a flack for Kerry
And he most certainly was, in that corner of the space-time continuum where I’m the Dutchess of Windsor.
y81 05.19.05 at 5:12 pm
So what Uncle Kvetch is saying is that if a person makes somewhat over the top accusations about a candidate for president, all manner of sexual and racial crudities are permissible? I have heard any number of women and members of religious minorities make rather outlandish accusations against President Bush, but it hadn’t occurred to me that bigoted and offensive responses were appropriate.
Uncle Kvetch 05.19.05 at 5:20 pm
No, Y81, if you’ll look at what I wrote, I didn’t say anything about what is and isn’t “permissible.”
If you think I’m going to rush to the defense of some comments on some blog that I haven’t read, you’re mistaken. If you think I’m going to express sympathy for poor widdle Michelle because people are being mean to her, you’re equally mistaken.
We still haven’t been told just what those “bigoted and offensive responses” were, by the way…only that Gary and you found them to be so.
Gary Imhoff 05.19.05 at 6:13 pm
Two quick examples, “Uncle Kvetch,” from the Media Matters posting that you yourself cited. Media Matters, by the way, asks, “that your posts be on topic and respectful of others.”
“What a total worthless loser and Asian Ann Coulter want-to-be. . . . What’s the deal, Fraud O’Neill tired of smelling his own BS doing these daily talk shows for his buddies George Bush and Tom ‘Going to Prison’ DeLay, so he has to hire this SBVT ho and scumbag to do his dirty work! Boy, these SBVT scum of the earth can sure dish it out but they cannot take it when it comes to the facts and the truth. I say round this GOP paid for ho up, and send her over to Iraq for a year and let her have a taste of the ‘Bush life’ so she has a clue what she is talking about!”
“Also, if the kind of immigration controls Ms. Malkin advocates were in place when her parents came to this country, the only way she would be interacting with Americans on the Internet would be as a webcam girl on IFriends.”
Is there anything personally offensive in calling a woman a whore and scumbag?
Also, two quick corrections. First, I misstated the title of the book that Malkin was citing — it was “Unfit for Command,” not “Unfit for Service.” Second, “Uncle Kvetch” repeats Chris Matthews’ incorrect accusation that Malkin or the book claimed that Kerry wounded himself deliberately. The book’s charge is that Kerry received one Purple Heart for a wound that he accidentally inflicted on himself, not that Kerry wounded himself deliberately.
y81 05.19.05 at 8:52 pm
Uncle Kvetch, Malkin wrote a column herself about the e-mail she receives. LBFM (Little Brown F—- Machine) was the most common epithet. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t speak up to defend someone who was subject to that kind of abuse, rather than adding your own mockery, but your conduct certainly exemplifies the American left.
Norman Normal 05.19.05 at 9:10 pm
Malkin, as a woman and a racial minority, is not supposed to be conservative, and therefore is subject to greater hostility from the left than the many white men who hold the exact same, or even more conservative views, than she does.
Uncle Kvetch 05.19.05 at 10:54 pm
Whatever. You still seem to think I’m responsible for the words of complete strangers, because they’re my allies on “The Left.” So live the fantasy, and enjoy it…whatever blows your skirt up.
For the record, Gary asked the question “What is it about Malkin that inspires mean-spirited, personal attacks?” My response, in a nutshell, was to point out that mean-spirited personal attacks are pretty much what MM does for a living. It may be inexcusable, but it’s certainly not unexpected.
Malkin’s really no different than those idiotic, hateful commenters you dredged on some blog or other…except for one crucial difference. Somehow she gets to go on TV and act like somebody worth listening to.
And still you piss and moan about some mean things somebody or other said, and then expect me to join in your little display of pique.
Second, “Uncle Kvetch†repeats Chris Matthews’ incorrect accusation that Malkin or the book claimed that Kerry wounded himself deliberately.
In the transcript in question, Matthews invites her repeatedly to back away from the charge. She refuses to do so. We don’t know, she says. We don’t know if John Kerry shot himself in the leg. We don’t know if John Kerry participates in Hillary’s satanic covens where they feast on the flesh of aborted babies, either. We just don’t know.
Yeah, she’s a class act, is our Michelle.
david tiley 05.19.05 at 11:35 pm
IN HER APOLOGY she says that “Although Fujita-Rony did not explicitly say that Herzig-Yoshinaga behaved “surreptitiously†or that the documents in question were “confidential,†I believe these were reasonable inferences on my part given what he wrote.”
They are not.
She also says She is apologising for her statement that Irons “had engaged in similar activities before”. The actual words were “By the way, this was not the only time Irons engaged in these sort of shenanigans.”
She did not refer to this statement again, to offer any explanation of the source of the allegation or to give the retraction of this larger claim the same weight as the smaller.
The basis for the whole attack is very trivial. The original source only said that permission was not granted because the relevant official was off sick – not that the government was deliberately concealling the papers. So, he is accused at most of a minor procedural irregularity.
What is Malkin attacking him for? Wanting access to documents which “provided proof for the first time of Justice Department misconduct in the cases that upheld the exercise of presidential war powers under the Constitution”, as Fujita-Rony puts it.
The executioner is a bad, bad man. He had dirty shoes.
David Sucher 05.20.05 at 10:23 am
“What is it about Malkin that inspires mean-spirited, personal attacks?”
Malkin.
corbetti 05.20.05 at 6:12 pm
[quote]this degree of personal animosity toward a conservative intellectual opponent is unusual.[/quote]
i’m sorry. who is the conservative intellectual? Malkin? lol.
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