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July 5, 2007
Book Review: Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
Liberals, or at least a goodly portion of them, have come unglued these past 7 years. I don't mean that they're just mad at President Bush over Iraq or Katrina, or at Republicans in Congress over the Terri Schiavo affair.
I mean some of them have absolutely gone nuts.
Michelle Malkin documents this phenomenon in her 2005 book Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. It's 170 pages of, well, unhinged actions by liberals.
Just so we're clear, the purpose of this book was not to do some soft of scientific study of the left and right to see which side is worse. There's no "balance" in this book simply because that's not the point. And truth be told, this is not the type of book that I normally don't buy or review here. I picked it up mainly because she was at CPAC 2007, and wanted her autograph. I already had In Defense of Internment, so I chose this one.
Read the title again if you don't get it; her purpose is to "expose liberals gone wild". And expose she does.
Malkin provides example after example of one nutty liberal after another doing absolutely crazy things. Here are some of the subject areas.
- Racism and sexism. Some of the most vile attacks are on Condolezza Rice, but Malkin has received her share. "You are one sick gook" is among the nicer things they say about her. Most of what she reprints in the book is vile beyond description. Conservtives who happen to be minorities are regularly called an "oreo", "coconut", or "banana" (black/brown/yellow on the outside but white inside, if you're not familiar).
- For some reason many on the left seem not be able to communicate without resorting to foul language. I've seen much of this myself at many "anti-war" demonstrations.
- Ever since at least the 80s it has been typical of leftists to try and prevent conservatives from speaking at public events. As of late it has become fashionable to ambush and throw a pie at the face of the speaker.
- Assassination fascination. You don't have to go far on left-wing sites to read people wishing Bush or Cheney were dead. But we're not just talking about Internet posts. One Sarah Vowell even wrote a book about her fixation called Assassination Vacation. Another wrote a play called "I'm Gonna Kill the President!" the president, of course, being George W Bush. Yet a third example is Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint, another fantasy about murdering you-know-who.
- Hollywood. Sigh. We've always known that they're mostly a bunch of leftists, but ever since the election of George W Bush they've become... unhinged.
- Colleges and Universities get another big sigh. Ward Churchill may have gotten much of the media attention, but believe you me, he's not alone in his opinions.
- The hard left absolutely does not support the troops. Stories of stolen or vandalized yellow ribbons, keyed cars (ones that displayed an American flag or support the troops sticker) and such are legendary in places like Seattle. Leftist administrators and professors wage unrelenting war on military campus recruiters.
And all this was before the Amanda Marcotte affair.
The book is entertaining to read, though you can only take so much of it at any one sitting. Page after page of one crazy liberal after another gets to be a but much after awhile. If you want documentation on the above without buying the book, just go to her website and type "unhinged" into the search tool. Enjoy.
Michelle Malkin herself drives some liberals crazy.
Not like Ann Coulter, to be sure, who taunts liberals and so brings much of it on herself.
Only chapter of this book is about the hatred that is directed towards Malkin herself. No doubt that anyone in public life will receive death threats, and will receive messages of hate. But but with Malkin so much of it is racist and sexist in nature. Perhaps because she is an attractive woman, the sexual nature of the attacks is particulary vicious. And we all know that any minority (Malkin's parents are Filipino, her maiden name is Maglalang) conservative comes in for especially rude treatment. In 2005 she posted a sample of the hate mail that she receives every day. I'm sure nothing has changed.
This book has driven some liberals crazy. It's obvious fromt he reviews on Amazon that there's a war being raged by the left to bring the *star* rating for the book down. I suppose you can say the right is equally trying to drive the ratings up, my point is simply that if you read some of the left reviews I'll think you'll agree that some of them are, well, unhinged.
Interestingly, the author of the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon also can't resist taking a gratuitous shot at the book, saying that she
...scoured blogs, speeches, media commentaries and even transcripts from Oprah for material, though she misses the boat in a number of instances, most notably in her obliviousness to sarcasm and irony, and she overextends her analytical prowess by offering shallow, shoddy critiques of theater, literature and modern art.
"sarcasm and irony"? What a joke. The examples of unhinged behaviour she cites are pretty clearly from people who have gone round the bend.
Avoiding the Temptation
It's always tempting to think that "the other side" is worse in every respect; they're more corrupt, hypocritical, unreasoned, nasty, unhinged. It's also tempting to excuse certain behaviors when they occur on your side, while condeming it on the other. This temptation to be avoided.
An equal temtation to be avoided is falling into habit of throwing up your hands and saying the "both sides do it". Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn't. There are times when Republicans, as a whole, are more corrupt than the Democrats, and vice versa. Likewise, there are times when one side is more nasty than the other. I believe we live in a time where as a whole the left is nastier than the right.
Some of this, I think, is simply due to the fact that liberals were out of power in both houses of Congress and the presidency. We shall see what happens if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008 and they retain the House and Senate.
Yes It Occurs on the Right
When Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin says that "Whenever I appear on TV shows such as Hannity and Colmes or Bill O’Reilly, I receive vicious messages on my phone and threatening emails that scare my children and anger my husband with their variations on the theme of “Die, you ugly, communist, lesbian, American-hating bitch.”" I believe her.
When Ralph Peters says he gets email from the Islam-hating right telling him that Islam is evil and that he is "a foolish "dhimmi," blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam", I believe him too.
And we've all been to websites in which authors or commenters go too far in attacking the left.
Lastly, yes I recall the 1990s when it many on the right fell for every Vince Foster/Waco/ dead bodyguard/case of sexual harassment case out there. I felt the temptation, but always found myself backing off when reading "the other side".
The Final Analysis
In the end I have to agree with Malkin that these past several years the left is more unhinged than the right. The insults at Christians, the racist and sexist attacks, are simply unparalleled on the right. The outlandish behavior and outrageous statements come mostly from the left.
I also know this; that when (and it's always only a matter of time) the Democrats control the White House and at least one house of congress, I'll get out Unhinged and vow not to become a right-wing equivalent of the liberals that Malkin exposes. And I'll try and hold other conservatives to the same standard.
Michelle Malkin blogs at MichelleMalkin.com Her ground-breaking video blog is HotAir.com
July 26 Update
Michelle documents more unhinged leftist behavior. You won't believe some of this stuff. Given some of the stuff they say about her, I'd say she's one of the the bravest woman around. Keep on bloggin'!
Posted by Tom at July 5, 2007 8:35 PM
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Comments
Assasination Vacation is not actually about Sarah Vowell's desire for the president to be assasinated.It's mostly about exploring the history of presidential asssasinations. I mean, her dislike for Bush is blatantly on the table, but it's not the focus of her book , which is actually very funny and informative.
Posted by: Kirchhaus at July 9, 2007 4:09 PM
