Insulting One with Praise

Nationally syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin is spreading lies, again. If you’re unfamiliar with her, she is the author of a book called In Defense of Internment, where she attempts to justify the American internment of Japanese prisoners during WWII. She adorns the cover of the book with the picture of a Japanese detainee beside a picture of Mohammed Atta, seemingly acquainting innocent Japanese civilians with the leader of the September 11^th hijackings. I have no idea if Ms. Malkin’s book is filled with the lies that perpetuate Ann Coulter’s books, or if she simply tries to justify the internment of hundreds of Americans and the detrimental effect this had upon the rest of their lives on the basis of the threats a few individual Japanese might have posed to the country. Although I haven’t read the book, either way I’d label her wrong and that this attempted justification sets a dangerous precedence to accept the erosion of civil liberties.

My current problem with Ms. Malkin, whose column is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers nationwide, stems from what she wrote yesterday. In her column criticising the media’s “bias” towards Barack Obama, Malkin makes the following quote:

Tran and Jindal are remarkable rising stars, but as New York Times editorial writer Adam Cohen seemed to suggest in a derisive profile of Jindal, minority conservatives are regarded by the mainstream media elite as "freakish" -- no matter how impressive their resumes or resounding their electoral victories or moving their personal stories are.

<>Now, that appeared strange to me. It seemed terribly out-of-character for Adam Cohen to label Bobby Jindal, a Republican Indian-American son of immigrants running for the governorship of Louisiana, as freakish. On a side note, Jindal lost that race, but was elected to Congress on November 2^nd.<>

I got curious about this so I decided to look up the article online at our school's library, which has a subscription to the New York Times, which you need to access archived articles online. The link is here, but you’ll need a subscription online, so I’ll quote you the relevant part of Cohen’s article, not-very-ominously entitled, “A New Kind of Minority is Challenging Louisiana’s Racial Conventions.”

California's new governor been grabbing all the headlines, but Mr. Jindal's odyssey has been nearly as remarkable. At the age of 32, he has an almost freakishly impressive resume: at 24, he was running Louisiana's hospital system. But perhaps more notable, in a state where an ex-Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, David Duke, made a real run for the governor's office, Mr. Jindal is the dark-skinned son of immigrants from India.

Notice the relevant part of the article, “almost freakishly impressive resume”, as in his resume is so impressive, I’m almost freaked out by it. In other words; wow, he has such an impressive resume it’s almost beyond comprehension. That’s very different from labelling one as “freakish”, which is obviously meant as an insulting and derisive comment.

It’s amazing how some columnists like Malkin will severely distort the truth in order to back up their opinions. The supposed insult towards Jindal is actually high praise. I hope that she used better evidence for her book than she does in her column. It’d be much more interesting if a theoretical debate resulted from it; as opposed to an evidentiary one.