Michelle Malkin!
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My column, now syndicated by Creators Syndicate, appears in nearly 200 newspapers nationwide. My first book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (Regnery 2002), and second book In Defense of Internment were New York Times bestsellers.
Launched michellemalkin.com as a blog in June 2004. As of July 2006, currently averaging more than 4 million page views per month. Forbes magazine and The Week magazine both rated michellemalkin.com one of the best political blogs in 2005.
Launched a second website, HotAir.com, in April 2006.
Other: Fox News Channel contributor. Oberlin College grad. Philadelphia-born. South Jersey-raised. I live with my husband and two children near Washington DC. Reach me via e-mail at writemalkin -at- gmail -dot- com.
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Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang) (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, Fox News Channel, and C-SPAN. As well as her written blog, she posts regular video blogs. Her syndicated column "appears in nearly 200 newspapers nationwide."
Michelle Malkin Biography
Michelle Malkin Background
Malkin was born in Philadelphia to Filipino parents, Dr. Apolo and Rafaela Maglalang, in the United States on a work visa. Her maternal grandfather fought under General Douglas MacArthur. 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.Michelle Malkin Career
She began her career at the Los Angeles Daily News, working as a columnist from 1992 to 1994. Years later on her blog, Malkin recalled these days in her reaction to Jessica Cutler when Cutler claimed to be unable to live on a $25,000 salary in Washington:"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 Seattle, where she wrote columns for The Seattle Times, and participated in a panel at an Asian American professional conference with John Carlson debating Initiative 200, a ban on racial preferences. She became 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. After initially allowing reader comments, she disabled them, attributing her decision to an intolerable level of obscene and 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, taking some heat from Asian American civil rights organizations who had been uniformly opposed to this historical policy. The "Historians' Committee for Fairness", a group of professors, condemned the book for not having undergone peer review and containing a central thesis 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."
Michelle Malkin Viewpoints
After the arrest of the 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 girls go missing, and referred to this phenomenon as "Missing Pretty Girl Syndrome" or "Damsel in Distress" Syndrome.
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... Hamdi was raised in the Saudi kingdom. He spoke their language, not ours. He went to their schools, not ours. He embraced their culture, their religion, and their way of life. Not ours." 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 blogger accused blogger and columnist Andrew Sullivan of making bogus fund-raising claims. Shortly thereafter, Sullivan created a parody Malkin Award for "shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric."
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.
On The O'Reilly Factor on December 4, 2006, she declared that San Francisco is "a hate filled city". Mr O'Reilly disagreed with her opinion. On February 16, 2007, while guest-hosting for O'Reilly, Malkin said "I have to tell you, in general, Im skeptical of anything that has Bill of Rights tacked on to it in discussing a proposed Passenger Bill of Rights. She later explained and defended her comment by quoting from a liberal blog
Michelle Malkin 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 "attacked as an 'Aunt Thomasina and a sellout and a race traitor' by liberals of Asian background".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 Malkin 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."
Michelle Malkin Students Against War and publishing personal information
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 cached 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, people opposed to Malkin published her private home address, phone number, photos of her neighborhood and maps to her house on several websites. Malkin has stated that this forced her to remove one of her children from school and move her family.Michelle Malkin Alleged leftist intimidation campaign
On 30 June 2006, David Horowitz noted on his blog that the New York Times had printed photos and other details of the summer homes of Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The next day, Malkin referred to this incident and alleged that "there is a concerted, organized effort to dig up and publicize the private home information of prominent conservatives in the media and blogosphere to intimidate them." Two days later, the Center for American Progress reported that Rumsfeld's office had given permission for the Times story and that the Secret Service said there was no security threat.Michelle Malkin YouTube videos
Malkin created a "Conservative YouTubers" group at the YouTube website in July 2006. In October 2006, she stated that "nti-jihad YouTube users have reported having their videos yanked and accounts suspended" as a result of a campaign by "members of the religion of Perpetual Outrage". Later she noted reports that YouTube had failed to remove recruitment videos for street gangs posting recruitment videos and "jihadi propaganda".In February 2007, Malkin accused YouTube of double standards after Nick Gisburne, a member of the "Rational Response Squad" who had posted videos critical of Christianity without any difficulty, was suspended for posting material critical of Islam.
Michelle Malkin and Jamil Hussein
Along with bloggers Curt of 'Flopping Aces' and Bob Owens of 'Confederate Yankee', Malkin has questioned the existence and veracity of Jamil Hussein, who has been used as a source by the Associated Press in over 60 news stories about Baghdad. In November 2006, she expressed doubt about an AP report that six Sunni civilians had been burned alive as they left Friday worship services as part of an attack that destroyed several mosques. Malkin later visited Baghdad herself, and verified that the mosques are still standing and there were no independent reports of the burnings.On January 4, 2007, the Associated Press reported that Hussein did exist and was now in danger of being arrested due for his activities with the press. Malkin later wrote:
As I noted on the 4th, the AP reported that the Ministry of Interior in Iraq has now said a Captain Jamil Hussein does work in the al Khadra police station. I regret the error. But no blogger should apologize for raising legitimate questions about AP's transparency, its reliance on local foreign stringers of dubious origins, and information that sources such as Hussein have provided the AP. I will continue to pursue some of the unresolved issues related to this.
No other journalists have managed to talk to Hussein, and Owens now claims to have evidence that "Jamil Hussein" is a pseudonym.
The Associated Press has questioned Malkin's attack on their credibility. AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll has said "I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story... AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq." Carroll pointed out that critics like Malkin should be more concerned with the fact that Hussein could face imprisonment for being a source to journalists, than with how AP handled the situation. "I think a little perspective is warranted here," she said. "While this has been going on, hundreds if not thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and hundreds of serviceman have died." AP itself has lost four employees to violence in Iraq to date.
To your average Howard Stern fan, the Philippines is nothing more than a carnival land of shoe-crazy, dog-eating jungle dwellers who are a perennial source of cheap jokes.
Some Americans know better. Just ask the thousands of surviving U.S. soldiers who fought in the trenches with Filipinos against the Japanese during World War II. Many have returned to the Philippines to mark the 60th anniversary of the fall of Bataan and the commencement of the Bataan Death March. "Despite our bittersweet memories, we still see the Philippines as our second home," writes death march survivor Steve Raymond in a series on his return to the country for the Tampa Tribune.
Veterans from both countries, says retired Maj. Richard M. Gordon, another death march survivor, share a common belief that "Freedom is not free." Gordon is a member of the "Battling Bastards of Bataan," an organization that reminds us "that the precepts of courage, devotion to duty and sacrifice displayed by the men and women of Bataan, both Filipino and American, have not and will not become outmoded." As many of our so-called allies go wobbly in the continuing war on Terror, it's worth remembering who in the world has stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the past - and who walks the talk today.
Over 100,000 Filipino soldiers joined the battle against the Japanese under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, including my maternal grandfather. Thousands of other Filipinos took up arms as guerillas, providing intelligence to General MacArthur's forces and rescuing downed American airmen. On April 9, 1942, some 76,000 Filipino and American soldiers were forced to surrender to Japanese troops at Bataan, located on the main island of Luzon. For the next 10 days, in insufferable heat, the Japanese marched the prisoners 65 miles through the jungles and on to concentration camps at Cabanatuan.
Japanese soldiers committed merciless atrocities against their white and brown captives -- from cigarette burns to water and food deprivation, bayonet Stabbings, fatal beatings, and decapitation with samurai swords. Some 25,000 Filipinos and 2,500 Americans died behind barbed wire. When the war ended, more than 1.1 million Filipinos - soldiers and civilians alike - had sacrificed their lives.
"In the defense of Bataan from February to April 1942, the cause to which you were called was the defense of the freedom of the United States and the Philippines," U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardo noted in a speech last week to march survivors. "Sixty years later, our governments, our two peoples and our soldiers once again stand shoulder to shoulder in that same cause. This time the enemy is not a racist, militarist aggressor empire, but international terrorism born of hate, ignorance, fanaticism, corruption and poverty."
In Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines, there is a word for that willingness to bear a shared burden, side by side: "Balikatan." It describes the spirit that united American and Filipino heroes who suffered and died together six decades ago. And it is also the codename of the joint military exercise now being held in the southern Philippines where Abu Sayyaf rebels tied to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network have been holding American missionaries Gracia and Martin Burnham hostage for more than 10 months.
Both countries have their naysayers and nitpickers - intellectual elites, media critics, politicians, and celebrities who oppose any semblance of military intervention. But among ordinary citizens, there is overwhelming support for Operation Balikatan. Polls show 85 percent of Filipinos support U.S. assistance to defeat Abu Sayyaf. Recently, an almost disbelieving New York Times report described a scene in the southern city of Zamboanga that bears repeating:
"Under a hot morning sun, nearly 2,000 residents turned out -- grandmothers, students, government employees, the unemployed. They sang and prayed, waving Philippine and American flags and placards. It was the largest rally here in many years, residents said.After two hours, the rally was over. It ended with a long line of men and women on the platform, many in baseball caps, including one with the New York Yankees logo, leading the demonstrators in a song. With their arms in the air, swaying, the demonstrators sang 'America the Beautiful.' All the verses."
That's balikatan. Would that we knew more of it here at home.
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