Big Mouth Strikes Again

Posted by Melissa McEwan at 7:09 AM on April 18, 2006.

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking

When I said I'd like to smash every tooth

In your head

Oh ... sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking

When I said by rights you should be

Bludgeoned in your bed…

-- “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” The Smiths

The heir-apparent to the heinous little niche of unhinged hatemongering which Ann Coulter has carved out for herself, Michelle Malkin, is really making moves to unseat the queen these days. Her latest attempt to ascend to the throne is a real stunner. Ezra Klein describes the carnage:

[A] crew of students at UC Santa Cruz, my alma mater, protested some military recruiters, and Malkin got hold of a press release with their personal contact information -- a poorly conceived inclusion on the students' part, but then, these are undergraduates, not trained media flacks. Rather than calling and speaking to them herself, which is what members of the press are supposed to use such releases for, Malkin published their personal information on her website, prompting her hordes of orcish mouth-breathers to brandish their pitchforks and inundate the unsuspecting students with death threats (some of which you can read here). When the students frantically called on Malkin to remove their numbers, she posted their contact information again.

The invaluable John Amato, who's got some video from the scene, gets it right. Malkin, he writes, "crosse[d] the line of decency..the death threats are emanating from her blog and she knows it. Malkin understands the nature of the fear and outrage she causes. Will she take responsibility when somebody gets hurt?"

Of course she won't--because one of the hallmarks of movement conservatives is a bull-headed determination to sustain the cognitive dissonance that allows them to sing the praises of The Ownership Society (a carefully designed social Darwinist philosophy that blames anyone who struggles for their own troubles) while simultaneously shirking accountability for any of their own actions. People stuck in a desperate cycle of endemic poverty, filers of bankruptcy due to staggering medical costs, black folks stuck on rooftops in New Orleans, gays bashed to their deaths--they have no one to blame but themselves. College students receiving death threats? Progressives being widely regarded as traitors? It all happens in a void, according to people like Malkin.

Which is technically true, if we're talking about a void of ethics and intellectual honesty.

Malkin should be ashamed of herself...but she isn't, and she never will be. There's too much celebration from her collection of worshipful minions, too much infamy, too much fun to be had to let a slip of conscience get in the way.

TBogg's got more.

(Ezra Klein, Michelle Malkin, Crooks and Liars, USCS Students Against the War, TBogg)

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Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.