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Revision as of 19:24, 11 August 2006
Michelle Malkin (born October 20, 1970) is an American columnist, blogger, author and political commentator. She is a social and political conservative. She makes frequent guest appearances on national syndicated radio programs and on television networks such as MSNBC, The Fox News Channel, and C-SPAN, and is currently a columnist for Townhall.com.
Background
Malkin was born Michelle Maglalang in Philadelphia to Filipino parents, Dr. Apolo and Rafaela Maglalang, in the United States on a work visa. She grew up in Absecon, New Jersey, and graduated from Oberlin College. In 1993, she married Rhodes Scholar and RAND Corporation economist Jesse Malkin with whom she has two children. Her husband now looks after their children, as well as helping her with her work for a few hours each week.
Career
She began her career at the Los Angeles Daily News, working as a columnist from 1992 to 1994. In her column, she once described her early career thus:
- "How can anybody live on $25K/year?? When I was 24 and making less than that, I did it by eating Spaghetti-O's, Ramen noodles and Swanson pot pies for dinner; driving a Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning; and sleeping on a $30 futon."
In 1996, she moved to The Seattle Times before becoming a nationally syndicated columnist in 1999. Malkin's column, syndicated by Creators Syndicate, appears in over 200 newspapers nationwide as of 2005. She is also a frequent commentator for FOX News Channel.
In June 2004 she launched a political blog which quickly became highly popular, at most times residing among the top five conservative political blogs. Like many political bloggers, she has disabled comments on her blog because of a torrent of obscene (and, in her case, racist) comments.
Malkin's blog occasionally highlights investigative reports from other sites, most notably an investigation into financial irregularities at Air America Radio. She is frequently used as an example of the blurred line between bloggers and reporters, given such investigations and her widely distributed columns and appearances on multiple media outlets.
Her first book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces, was published in 2002 and was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2004, she wrote In Defense of Internment, defending Japanese American internment by the United States Government during World War II and relating this theme to the contemporary War on Terrorism. A group of professors calling themselves the "The Historians' Committee for Fairness" condemned the book for not having undergone peer review and containing a central thesis which they argued was false. Opponents also attempted to ban the book from the Manzanar relocation center National Historic Site but failed when the management refused to "censor dissenting viewpoints".
Malkin's third book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild was released in October 2005.
On April 24, 2006, Hot Air, a "conservative Internet broadcast network" went into operation, with Malkin as founder and CEO. She has a daily newscast on Hot Air called "Vent With Michelle Malkin".
Viewpoints
After the arrest of alleged spy Leandro Aragoncillo was announced, Malkin wrote, "If it means now that the White House will be applying extra scrutiny to naturalized Americans of Filipino descent working at the top levels of government and in the military, well, yes, I support that. It's obviously overdue."
Malkin has criticised the media for being preoccupied with cases in which attractive white girls go missing, and referred to this phenomenon as "Missing Pretty Girl Syndrome" or "Damsel in Distress" Syndrome.
Despite being born in the US to parents visiting on a work visa, Malkin is outspoken in opposition to the granting of automatic U.S. citizenship to babies born to tourists and temporary workers (so-called "anchor babies"), saying, "Citizenship is too precious to squander on accidental Americans in Name Only." Malkin articulated her position on "anchor babies" with regards to the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen born to Saudi parents who were working in the United States on temporary work visas.
Malkin has expressed support for Joshua Belile, the Marine who has been investigated for composing and performing his controversial song Hadji Girl.
In 2004, Malkin and several other bloggers accused blogger and columnist Andrew Sullivan of making bogus fund-raising claims. Shortly thereafter, Sullivan created a parody Malkin Award for "cliché-ridden writing from the left and right intended to insult."
When University of Kansas religion professor Paul Mirecki claimed to have been beaten up by two male attackers because of his criticism of creationism and "intelligent design", after linking to a newspaper report with a photo showing Mirecki's injuries, Malkin (along with others) raised the possibility that the claimed attack was a hoax.
Negative reactions to her viewpoints
Malkin occasionally posts hate mail she received, which often consists of racist or sexist epithets. According to Malkin, she has been labelled an "Aunt Thomasina and a sellout and a race traitor" by some Asian-American liberals. Others have accused her of "bleaching her skin," or trading in her Asian ethnicity for acceptance by Caucasians.
In November of 2004, the Norfolk, Virginia-based Virginian-Pilot ceased running Malkin's nationally syndicated column. Fellow columnist Bronwyn Lance Chester explained, "I think habitually mistakes shrill for thought-provoking and substitutes screaming for discussion. She's an Asian Ann Coulter." Malkin responded "I'm not Asian, I'm American, for goodness' sake. I would take the comparison to Ann Coulter as somewhat of a compliment. I have a lot of respect for Ann Coulter."
Students Against War controversy
In April 2006, Students Against War, a campus group at University of California, Santa Cruz, staged a protest against the presence of military recruiters on campus, and sent out a press release containing contact details (names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses) of their three-person "ad-hoc press team" for use by reporters. Malkin included these contact details in a blog post criticising SAW and UCSC. Malkin claims the contact information was originally taken from SAW's own website, but that later SAW had removed the information and had "wiped the info from the cashed version." SAW "politely asked" her to remove the contact details; Malkin refused, writing in her blog "I am leaving it up." Furthermore she wrote "As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility." Malkin noted that none of the three students contacted her with that request, and posted a screenshot from one of several Indymedia websites where the complete press release was still available. After Malkin's post, the three SAW contacts received abusive emails and phone calls, including death threats. Malkin also received hostile e-mails.Subsequently, Malkin's opponents published her private home address, phone number, photos of her neighborhood and maps to her house on several websites, mainly as blog comments. Malkin has stated that this forced her to remove one of her children from school and move her family.
Footnotes
- Just a Yellow Woman Doing a White Man's Job, MichelleMalkin.com, 19 November 2005
- The Skanks on Capitol Hill, MichelleMalkin.com, 26 May 2004
- List of highest-traffic blogs and traffic details for Malkin's blog at The Truth Laid Bear; Malkin's blog at Alexa
- http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000342.htm Comments, Trolls, and the Left's Continued Whore Fixation], MichelleMalkin.com, 8 February, 2005
- Inside Air America: An Investigative Blog Report, Michellemalkin.com, 17 August 2005
- Open Letter to Michelle Malkin from the "Historians' Committee for Fairness", signed by 40 professors
- A Book-Banning Dodged--Thank You! MichelleMalkin.com, 7 May 2005; has links to Malkin's responses to criticisms of In Defense of Internment
- Conservative Internet Broadcast Network Debuts, PRWeb.com, 24 April 2006
- Espionage in the White House, MichelleMalkin.com, 5 October 2005
- Missing Pretty Girl Syndrome, MichelleMalkin.com, 11 June 2005
- What makes an American?, Michelle Malkin, Jewish World Review, July 4 2003
- Vent with Michelle Malkin (video), hotair.com, June 15 2006
- Sullivan's Gold-Plated Bandwidth?, MichelleMalkin.com, 26 July 2004
- The Real Dish on Andrew Sullivan, MichelleMalkin.com, 3 February 2005
- The Malkin Award, AndrewSullivan.com, 8 December 2004
- What Happened to Paul Mirecki?, MichelleMalkin.com, 10 December 2005
- Professor blasts KU, sheriff’s investigation, Laurence Journal-World, 10 December 2005
- The Mirecki Files, MichelleMalkin.com, 14 December 2005
- Minority Conservatives And The Sellout Smear, MichelleMalkin.com, 12 January 2005
- Maglalangadingdong this, MichelleMalkin.com, 3 December 2004
- Malkin: Liberal Bigotry on the Rise, NewsMax.com, 28 November 2004
- Pilot error, MichelleMalkin.com, 24 November 2004
- Michelle Malkin dropped by Virginia paper, Media Matters for America, 23 November 2004
- Malkin: Liberal Bigotry on the Rise, NewsMax.com, 28 November 2004
- Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America, MichelleMalkin.com, 12 April 2006
- More Thuggery from Santa Cruz, MichelleMalkin.com, 17 April 2006
- ^ SAW on Malkin and abusive e-mails, 14 April 2006
- Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America, MichelleMalkin.com, 12 April 2006
- The contact details were removed "as per request" after Malkin posted this
- Malkin on SAW and abusive e-mails, MichelleMalkin.com, 17 April 2006
- Cyber war over UCSC protest heats up, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 22 April 2006
Books
- Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild Regnery Publishing,2005, ISBN 0895260301
- In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War On Terror, Regnery Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0895260514
- Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces, Regnery Publishing, 2002, ISBN 0895260751
External links
Malkin's sites
- Michele Malkin's Townhall.com column archive.
- Malkin's official site, which hosts The Immigration Blog
- The Hot Air site
Anti-Malkin
- A series of blog posts by professors Eric Muller and Greg Robinson critiquing In Defense of Internment
- Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: Michelle Malkin, from a Center for American Progress website
- One of many claims by Malkin's more energetic detractors that she lies about the authorship of her blog and columns
- Is Michelle Malkin a Journalist? - journalist David Neiwert says no
- Malkin(s)Watch - a site devoted to critiquing Malkin's blog posts