In Defense of Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin, the author of the controversial book, In Defense of Internment, speaks from University of California at Berkeley, fiercely trying to defend her position against the loud and angry demonstration outside protesting her appearance. Malkin’s views are incredibly unpopular, especially on such a liberal campus. Her take on the racial politics of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is quite outrageous, especially for an Asian American. Even though she has a white name, it doesn’t make her so.

She is living proof that bigotry has gone multicultural. She claims that the comparison of internment to the current racial profiling of Arabs and Arab Americans is unfair and a foolhardy tool of the left, who are gambling with the safety of America in order to remain politically correct. Advocating racism in order to secure our borders is part of life during a war, and Malkin is here to remind us again and again how we are at war.

She ponders why affirmative action is perceived as a good thing and scrutinizing the Arab names on airline passenger lists is a bad thing. She is infuriated that the left keep on playing the internment card, seriously compromising homeland security with their insistence on those pesky civil rights.

Malkin tries to speak louder in to the microphone to drown out the chants of the protesters. The American flag taped up behind her falls down. This gets a smattering of ironic applause among the confused and scared looking audience. I don’t blame them for being scared. I am scared for her. The protesters keep breaking into the hall at intervals, interrupting Malkin’s train of thought. She hunkers down and keeps going, tough and diligent. She is a lot like me I think, an “Anti-Cho.” They chant “SHAME!!!SHAME!!!SHAME!!!” but she refuses to be shamed by their taunts.

I feel kind of proud, that racial politics have progressed to the point where we can have a young Asian American woman who doesn’t have to live within the constraints of a minority identity, which presumes liberal bias just by nature of the fact that if you are oppressed by the majority, you would want to place yourself against the majority. Malkin’s position is actually a kind of genius, and a new way to look at our role in American politics. We don’t have to take on the mantle of distressed minority. We can be as prejudiced as whites!

Race really doesn’t matter. Malkin is both a revelation and revolution. It is fairly obvious that she is being courted by conservatives, fussed over and groomed as the all new Manchurian Candidate. She fits their need to diversify like an orthopedic shoe. It is a match made in GOP hell. The unholy union works to everyone’s advantage. The right wing gets a brand new bag, a Skipper to Ann Coulter’s Barbie. Not only that, she’s Asian, so that liberals will have a harder time calling her a racist even though she has completely racist views. Malkin gets a lot of publicity and talk time for her book, which will generate sales on both sides. The right will buy it to support their own, the left will buy it to see what all the screaming is about. Boy, there is a lot of screaming. Not since Salman Rushdie released The Satanic Verses have people been so pissed off at an author. I would love to issue a fatwah against her, but I am not sure how to go about it.

The protests are counterproductive, because the right wing loves it when the left gets angry. The off camera shouting makes us look like savages, and that is the exact image that they love to show again and again. Malkin bravely pushes forward. She seems like an intelligent and interesting young woman, albeit misguided, and I feel protective towards her. I hope the right treat her well, and don’t throw her away once the fury has died down. Perhaps she will write a follow up book about how the Holocaust didn’t happen.

Her story reminds me of the documentary by Errol Morris, Mr. Death. Mr. Death is a nerdy electric chair specialist who boasted an expertise on all things related to execution. He was hired by a white supremacist organization to go to Germany and disprove the existence of concentration camps. Dr. Death had never had attention in his life. He was this dorky academic who had spent most of his life under the radar. Suddenly, he was thrust into the spotlight. Never mind it was the gaze of racist, hateful, ridiculous white supremacists, The accolades were no less seductive. It is a tragic tale of a man deprived of recognition to the point where he will attempt to revise history in order to receive some kind of acknowledgement. Dr. Death becomes the authority of Holocaust revisionism. He serves the white supremacist agenda by backing up their hokey theory and he gains redemption for his years as a who cares nobody. Who could blame Malkin for wanting to follow in those footsteps?

The terrible thing about invisibility is the lengths that we will go to in order to be seen. If spouting racist propaganda and being a tool for the conservatives are worth the right to exist in the monochromatic world of right wing political pandering then I applaud Malkin’s effort. She inflames the need to uphold the ideals of equality and fairness, and she puts a new face on hate. I’d be happy to argue with someone who looks a bit like me for a change.

African Americans have Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice. There’s a new race traitor on the block, and her name’s Michelle!

2 thoughts on “In Defense of Michelle Malkin

  1. you are so brilliant! your feelings towards Michelle remind me of how I feel about Jack Malebranche as a gay man. Thanks for bringing conciousness to comedy – and to pop culture in general!

  2. OK, so this is a really old entry I’m commenting on…. but I had to! I’m not a fan of Condi Rice (I don’t know enough about Justice Thomas to defend him without a thorough googling), but you do her a huge injustice, and I honestly don’t believe there is any exaggeration there, when you compare them with Michelle Malkin.

    OK, so Malkin hasn’t made life-and-death decisions for thousands of people throughout the world, as Rice has. But when it comes to spouting Uncle Tomism’s or even general racism… Rice hasn’t done it. The really pissed off feeling I get when I read what Malkin’s words, and the magnification of that feeling when I realize she is a Filipina and saying this stuff? That doesn’t apply to Rice. She hasn’t condemned affirmative action, she hasn’t even gone off on a ‘the culture of victimhood’, or on anything, ever. She didn’t use her role in the government to advocate for African Americans, but she didn’t use it to single them out for oppression. You can make the argument that Condi turned her back on her own people, but she never attacked them. I always pictured her as a quiet, competent, and culpable part of the Bush team. Dubya’s silent guardian, the cool and collected former virtuoso.

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