If you've ever had the misfortune of reading Michelle Malkin's columns, you have my deep sympathy. Malkin is a "conservative" columnist who resides somewhat to the right of Ann Coulter and to the left of Satan (on her good days) whose hate speech is unfortunately a regular feature in my otherwise centrist local paper: "The Stuart News" in Florida. Despite an active letter-writing campaign by many readers to have her removed (submit here, by the way) Malkin still appears in our paper.
I really, really, really don't want to reprint some of the hate speech Malkin has written over the years, but in order to explain my point I'm going to have to reprint some pretty awful stuff. Diarists have reprinted some pretty bad stuff from Malkin before, but I'm about to do it again. So TRIGGER WARNING for those who can't comfortably read hate speech.
More below the crumpled remains of my patience with hate columnists.
Soooo..... Michelle Malkin is bad. Really bad. How bad do you say? Here is a sampler. Here is Malkin's response to the suicides of three adolescent boys held indefinitely without trial at Guantanamo Bay.
MALKIN: And really, the reaction to the suicides should be, “Boo-freakin-hoo.”
O’REILLY: Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t want anybody, you know, killing themselves, but I do believe it was a political statement. Anyway —
MALKIN: Exactly.
O’REILLY: If I were in Guantanamo Bay, and I couldn’t get out — and these guys will never get out, believe me — I might commit suicide too.
The "O'Reilly" in that interview is Bill O'Reilly. So yes, Malkin is so bad that she makes BILL O'REILLY the good guy in an interview.
Malkin's hatred towards children from other countries is boundless. Listen to some of the choice words she had to say about children who had risked death, sickness, rape, and violence across harsh desert landscapes just to escape cartel atrocities in Mexico.
San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base opened its doors as an illegal immigrant camp last month. Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura County, Calif., will shelter nearly 600 illegal border-crossing children and teens. The Fort Sill Army post in Lawton, Okla., was ordered on Friday to take in 1,200 illegal aliens despite the objections of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, who blasted the White House, saying, "The Obama administration continues to fail in its duty to protect our borders and continues to promote policies that encourage, rather than discourage, illegal immigration."
So clearly helping frightened, vulnerable children who might also well need medical care is not high on Michelle Malkin's list of priorities. Okay, I get it. I hate it, but I get it.
She goes on.
A makeshift detention center in Nogales, Ariz., is being used as the central clearing station for the latest illegal alien surge. The deluge is a threat to national security, public safety and public health -- not to mention a slap in the face to the law-abiding men and women in uniform on those bases and a kick in the teeth to law-abiding people around the world patiently waiting for approval of their visas.
Yeah! Helping vulnerable sick children is a "slap in the face" to Americans! Helping sick children isn't what the USA is about. "Give me your tired, your poor, you huddled masses," Fuck that! Let them all die under cartel gunfire in Mexico or die in the desert! Fuck children! Let them all die! That's the Michelle Malkin credo.
Meanwhile, a law enforcement source in Texas tells me this week that countless illegal aliens are being released into the general public despite testing positive for tuberculosis. "The feds are putting them on public transportation to God knows where," he said.
Another source, working in the border patrol in south Texas, tells me: "Our station, along with every other station, is flooded with women and small children. One lady yesterday had a baby as young as 8 months. And they're coming over with pink eye and scabies. So getting them medically cleared becomes a priority. They'll be here for almost a week, so we provide them with formula and diapers. We have a catering service contracted to feed them because it's too many for us to feed on our own. And of course, they end up being released because every family housing facility is full. They're supposed to show up for immigration court at a later date, but they don't."
By the way, Michelle Malkin's intention with the above paragraph is not to cause you to sympathize with the ill, exhausted women and small children. You may have been confused by that if you are someone with a soul. Malkin's intent is to have you be enraged that sick people and children are daring to try to seek help from those who can give them help. How dare parents try to desperately help their sick kids instead of obeying Fox News and dying from gang violence in Central America.
Oh, and FYI, "testing positive for tuberculosis" doesn't mean that that person has TB. It just means that that person had a positive reactive to a PPD skin test. It means that the person, some time in the past, had an exposure to TB but is neither symptomatic nor contagious. Or that person is simply having an allergic reaction to the PPD test. Detaining large groups of people over a positive PPD test reaction would be unnecessary and massively unproductive.
Anyway most people at Dailykos knows that Malkin is a piece of shit. So why am I wasting precious bandwidth condemning her? Well, I was moved to write this column after Malkin's latest column "Every Breath She Takes."
When I first read the column I assumed this was yet another dreary diatribe about Hillary Clinton breathing vipers and wormwood with each speech or some damn thing. Surprisingly, Malkin's most recent column has nothing to do with politics. Instead it is a column about Malkin's daughter, Veronica, who is suffering from a mysterious respiratory illness.
The problem is that all the various tests and exams indicate she's getting plenty of oxygen. Her lungs, heart and vocal cords are all "normal," and yet she describes a chronic feeling that she's "drowning." Every day begins with gasping beyond her control, multiple times a minute, nonstop, every hour of every day, until she reaches a point of exhaustion at 1 or 2 in the morning. After a brief respite while sleeping, the day-mare starts all over again.
Despite taking an alphabet soup of potent neuro-related meds for tics and Tourette's, Veronica's condition has steadily deteriorated. The force and frequency of the gasping -- now with loud stridor on both the inhale and exhale -- keep her in bed most of the day. She has choked on food and drink several times; aspiration is a constant risk.
Well, Ms. Malkin, I sympathize with what your daughter is going through but I have not an ounce of sympathy for you. Why?
Well, how exactly is your condition and your daughter's condition different from the profoundly ill and frightened refugees from Central America that you have constantly campaigned be sent back to the desert, away from American aid?
Why should we not feel sympathy for them but nevertheless do feel sympathy for your daughter? You have cultivated a culture of callous hate towards the helpless.... and now that you find yourself in a position of helplessness you demand sympathy from an audience in which you have, for decades now, cultivated an attitude of unfeeling disdain.
What would be your attitude, Ms. Malkin, if I tell you that that thousands, hundred of thousands, of children have chronic conditions across the US yet cannot get the medical care they need because many GOP governors whose positions YOU SUPPORT are denying medicaid expansion in the states where these children live?
Oh right.
Malkin: Boo-freakin-hoo.
So Malkin, no sympathy for you. Boo freakin' hoo. You cannot build a career mocking people whose sole wish is to make life better for America's most vulnerable people... and then ask for sympathy from these same people by portraying your daughter and yourself as vulnerable people. Sorry. Boo freakin' hoo.