Blogland

Michelle Malkin

Slash-and-burn conservative blogger Michelle Malkin– who gets full-fledged feature treatment in Friday’s Washington Post– is an occasional linker to this blog.

I expressed my contempt for Malkin’s views a few years ago after she published a book justifying the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Last June wardytron noted how she pounced on an error in The Times as evidence that the conservative paper was among the “America-bashers and troop-smearers in Europe.”

I don’t read her blog regularly, although I suppose there are times when our views happen to converge. I can’t help that any more than I can help the approving links and comments we once got from lenin of the Tomb.

It turns out Malkin is a former liberal, with all that implies.

It was at Oberlin College that she began working on an alternative newspaper founded by Jesse Malkin, her future husband. When they co-authored an article questioning the value of affirmative action — and outraged students dumped bundles of papers in the trash — “it was an awakening” for Michelle, says Jesse. She soon converted him from a Michael Dukakis supporter to the conservative side.

One result of this sort of conversion seems to be a kind of politics motivated by hatred of liberalism (real and imagined) as much as by a commitment to conservative values.

But yes, of course: some of the personal attacks on her are disgusting.