"Taxonomy"

Via Ace. Lefty blogger Mithras clearly doesn't understand the concept of taxonomy (you can follow Ace's links if you want). A list of ten "conservative" bloggers, along with petty attacks and non-constructive criticism, is not a taxonomy. A true taxonomy would be a great idea, and would consume much more time and effort than any reasonable person should have, so I'm a little surprised it hasn't been done before.

Rightwing Nuthouse comes a little closer, given that there's some kind of a classification system at work, but still I'd be generous to call it a taxonomy. Also, he's got a poor translation of Dante's famous "lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" (Inf., Canto 3:9). But hey, now I'm just getting pretentious.

I don't have anything to add to what Ace, Goldstein, and their commenters have to say about Mithras' latest demonstration of liberal racism/sexism. You see, Michelle Malkin makes the list, and it's not enough to simply disagree with Malkin; one must also remind the readers that she's an Asian whore. Hence Ace's conclusion: "If it weren't for double-standards, many on the left would have no standards at all."

I'm linking the story to highlight an angle which didn't get much attention. Over at Protein Wisdom, a commenter called Citizen Journalist says:

"Defending Michelle Malkin - a woman who not-so-subtly suggested that the Muslims better watch it, or we’ll 'start a discussion' about putting them in camps - by accusing her critics of being the real racists.
Yeah, I’d say that pretty much sums up the modern Republican party. "

CJ is roundly criticized for the statement by those who defend the central thesis, that lefties are hypocrites because of their racist views about how minority groups ought to think and act. In response, the best CJ can do is continue to assert that Malkin is a racist (without ever arguing that Leftist racism is okay when directed against other racists, perhaps with good reason).

Here's the problem. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Michelle Malkin is a racist, with stupid ideas, how exactly does that lead to the conclusion that all criticism levelled against her must ignore the substance of her claims, and focus on her race? It simply does not follow.

But there's another problem, and this one cuts the other direction. I've just spent some of the most hellish hours of my entire life searching through old posts by the top ten Lefties linked on Right Wing Nuthouse, and I'm simply not finding the data to support the contention that all or even most Malkin criticism is directed at her race or gender.

From Americablog: "What's wrong with this picture? Oh, I don't know. Maybe that an Asian-American WOMAN could be so bigoted against Asians and women?" That's as close as we'll get from Aravosis. Granted, it does suggest a biased view that Asians and women can't hold certain opinions, but there's nothing concrete here.

Again: "What Malkin unfortunately doesn't realize is that the kind of America she's promoting is the very kind of America in which she'd be one of the first to be locked up (but I guess that would be ok to her, since the accomodations in prison camps are so swell, and in any case, whatever her alleged crime she'd obviously be guilty since she's not white like the rest of us - you never can be too safe)." Given the context, I don't see anything about this comment that is out of bounds. In the 1940s, Malkin might have been subject to the same internment she discusses in her book (although she's Philippino, rather than Japanese).

Atrios refers to "Ms. Maglalang." It's a link to a post where Malkin's Tagolog middle name is wholly irrelevant. But that's Atrios' only hit for a search for "Malkin" in 2005. By way of information as to my methodology, Atrios' archives are searchable by week, and I frankly don't have it in me to go back any further than the beginning of the year. Also, unlike Kos (for example), Atrios' and Aravosis' blogs don't let me automatically search the comments, and frankly, there's just no way I'm doing that one post at a time.

A search of the more user-friendly Daily Kos showed not a single hit that referred to Malkin by race, and nothing about her gender other than to refer to her as "her" - certainly not a mortal sin by any standard.

I got no hits on Oliver Willis' site, but it doesn't look to me like I was searching his whole archive. So there may be stuff there that takes more effort to find than I'm willing to put forth.

Anyway, that's as far as I got into RWNH's list, but it seems to me that, statistically, there's no way to argue that Lefties only or usually respond to Malkin by referencing race or gender, although it clearly does happen.