October 03, 2006

Blogometer Extra

BLOGGER VS. BLOGGER: What's A Little Photoshopping Among Bloggers

  Be forewarned that some of the following links contain images that may not be safe for work.

  Michelle Malkin is no stranger to personal attacks.  Someone last week posted a picture of her clad in a bikini at a Flickr page (you can view the pic here).

  Malkin dismisses the photo as not only a fake, but a bad one, and a deliberately hurtful attempt to smear her.  Captain Ed at the Quarters says the "pretty obvious photoshop" was done in response to Malkin's recent "cultural critique about the potential effect of trashy chic on young girls" that is available here.  The Cap'n in particular rips on Wonkette, who took great glee--in a post entitled "Michelle, You Ignorant Slut"--knocking Malkin's hypocrisy.  Wonkette:

Michelle Malkin has a new column about the slutification of very young girls.  For a Malkin column, it’s downright mainstream.  Other than certain Washington Times employees and the usual cops and congressmen, nobody is particularly happy about seeing 13-year-old girls covered in cheap makeup and hair product, with their rhinestone-studded thongs riding high on their fat asses and their “Porn Star” baby-Ts making it about halfway over their french-fry-stuffed navel-pierced guts. ... OK, do you want to see Malkin allegedly gettin’ skanky, spring-break style? After the jump, obviously... Malkin doesn’t like these young sluts flashing their skin like the basic Whore of Babylon.  And yet … there appears to be a picture of Malkin doing the “Girls Gone Wild” semi-boob flash, while cavorting about in a string bikini like a common hussy, from 1992!

  Malkin herself pointed the finger at Eric Muller of Is That Legal?, who subsequently apologized to both Malkin and to "the woman whose images were stolen to create the bogus flickr page to which this post linked."

  Yet Wonkette held on, which prompted a sarcastic lashing from Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall:

Here's the playbook.

Throw up a questionable/obviously Photoshopped picture of an allegedly bikini-clad female, conservative pundit.

Put the picture up the same week she writes a column mourning the lost modesty of a formerly admirable teen idol.

Rage about the hypocrisy of it all, thereby proving yourself more sexually repressed and prudish than the Republicans you're intent on bashing since you seem to have missed the recent cultural development that one can manage to don a bikini and smile without, in fact, being a whore.

Ignore clear evidence that the photo is a fake.

Do not correct the post or apologize. Just suggest that the pundit is lying!

  You get the picture.  Ham wrapped: "Ta-daaa!  Can I work for a left-leaning gossip blog, now?  I could do this all day long."  RightWingDuck at IMAO took the levity train even further down the track, with his own collection of obviously (and intentionally ridiculous) altered Malkin photos.

  Malkin does her best to take events in stride and in a subsequent post mixes seriousness with bemusement, anger with resignation, disgust with a dash of defiance.  To wit:

There are many unhinged people who would like me to shut up.  There are those who engage routinely in active defamation and empty ad hominem attacks.  There are also those who enable, excuse, and snicker at these attacks. ... There seem to be some very dense people who don't understand that this is not just about a bikini Photoshop.  It is about disseminating the fake photo to cast me in a false light and "prove" that I'm somehow a hypocrite. ... Nobody would fall for such obvious fakery, right?  A law school professor did.  Major gossip sites took the bait.  Some people still refuse to believe it's all fake.

  After a "j'accuse!" section in which she rips into the perpetrators and their "enablers," she continues:

[O]utside of Manhattan and Los Angeles, not all of us think blogging is a for-profit enterprise founded solely to tear people down with gossip, rumor-mongering, and damaging lies disguised as "satire."  Funny how some of the loudest voices decrying the lack of civility in the blogosphere are the biggest promoters of the bottom-feeders and debasers... I've been attacked regularly as a whore and a c**t and a puppet and a dupe and a sellout, etc. ... It comes with the territory--particularly when you happen to be a woman, a minority, and a conservative.  The extensive arguments and blog posts and columns and books I've written are reduced to bumper-sticker putdowns by critics and their fellow travelers who couldn't be bothered to actually read what I've written day in and day out for the last two years on the blog and the past 14 years in my books and columns.  I poked fun at this pathology in my last book.  I think what drives a lot of the haters crazy is that despite their ceaseless sniping, they can't shut me up.  So, I'll be back here the next day and the next cheerfully doing what I do.  And the haters will be back in their pigpens doing what they do.

  "The wonderful thing about the Internet," Malkin concludes, "is that there is room for both."

  Tim Blair slips in one last observation, bringing Andrew Sullivan into the fray, so to speak:

Andrew Sullivan found himself the target of left-wing unpleasantness a few years ago.  Essentially, he was accused of being a slut and a hypocrite.  Sullivan was understandably distraught over this.  In response, he condemned his attackers for their “sexual McCarthyism”.

Michelle Malkin currently finds herself the target of left-wing unpleasantness.  Essentially, she is accused of being a slut and a hypocrite.  Malkin is not amused by this.  You might expect Sullivan to empathise.  Instead, he writes: "Michelle Malkin does not have a sense of humor."

Just laugh it off, Michelle.  You know, exactly like Andy did(n’t).

Posted by Conn Carroll at October 3, 2006 03:06 PM