I Feel Left Out

This little blog barely matters. You know how I can tell? I don't get THIS kind of hate mail.

It's a fact of life on the internet that when you are mentioned (and linked to) unfavorably by certain high traffic right-wing bloggers, you promptly start receiving some of the most remarkable hate mail you've ever seen. It begins immediately, peaks overnight, and continues usually for about 72 hours or so. Then everyone forgets about it or gets bored and only a few wackos send you the odd death threat for another week or two. (That cycle of mass hatred is not exclusive to pissing off the far-right—obsessive fans of certain celebrities act in much the same fashion!—but Malkin-readers are the form's purest expression.) For your edification, we've run some numbers on keywords used in the hate mail sent to us after we reprinted some of Sarah Palin's emails, an act of malicious terrorism that got us called all sorts of names by Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilley, and presumably many more.

Without quoting the mail itself, let me quote a paragraph from Kathleen Parker, a conservative columnist who expressed an opinion that maaaaaaaaaybe Sarah Palin might consider stepping down after a few disasterous interviews.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk.

And she's on THEIR SIDE!

Gawker's opinion is this: Liberals get a great deal of justified ribbing for their constant outrage over every little thing, and political blog commenters from both sides are guilty of disgusting rhetoric, but in our experience it's the Malkinites and Little Green Footballers and their Brethren who hands-down win the violent, stupid, and hateful hat trick. Which has been my observation too.