Michelle Malkin's Minions Go All "PETA" on Me

I may have cast a metaphorical stone at Michelle Malkin, it just wasn't the first one thrown... She's been in the stone-casting business much longer than I have and she's mastered the curve ball.

So, I've had a little bit of fun with Twitter lately, but overall, I've been unimpressed.  In the Southeastern United States - where Twitter is waaay more popular than it is anywhere else, you just have way too many knee-jerk conservatives using it as a place to rant about Barack Obama or black people in general...  When filling all 140 characters of a "tweet" seems like a daunting task, Twitter is just your size. It's a "safe place" for people who have been bullied on the playgrounds of their own imaginations.

Now don't let me mis-characterize good southerners and twitter users as racist unnecessarily... They hate lots of things aside from black people.  One thing that I've learned about them is that they  REALLY  hate an organization  called PETA.  Now, I've been wanting to talk about this guy who started the "We Hate PETA" movement for quite some time now, but the subject is so overwhelming that I usually just end up linking to his wikipedia page and hope that people "get it".  

He's a lobbyist for every industry that relies on the mass, unregulated killing of animals (and sometimes people) without compassion. With some sort of satanic stroke of brilliance, he decided to start the "PETA Kills Animals" website... Now he didn't have any sort of foundation for this claim, initially, but that had never stopped him before... Eventually, people filled in the gaps for him and now "PETA is sorta connected to some people who may or may not partake in the occasional observance of animal death".

Now, let's introduce healthcare-hater Michelle Malkin to those of you who are not familiar with her... Those of you who don't have Twitter accounts, that is...  Malkin is best known as America's least professional yet most noteworthy Twitter user and Fox News' "go to girl" for any adverse coverage of non-white people in America.  She's been described as a "self-hating", "unstable", "Tea Party mouthpiece" and "liar" on more than one occasion by more than one person.  (Don't disappoint me... follow those links I just gave you!)

She says horrible things about people and makes sweeping generalizations about liberals, welfare recipients and Obama supporters all the time... She's turned it into an art form.

Now, the other day, I know all 40 of my Blogger followers just clamored to read my post about how Twitter can be used for cyberbullying... In it, I mentioned Michelle Malkin but I should have gone into more detail... she actually sort of invented it and turned it into an artform with a website called "Twitchy.com"....

Twitchy.com harnesses the power of Twitter and uses as a Human Flesh Search Engine to inspire people to attack others on Twitter based on their most thoughtless and insensitive tweets.  Of course, since the site is run by Michelle Malkin and her Andrew Breitbart adoptees... their most offensive tweets are missing from the front page.  They will tweet something so outlandish (like the idea that liberals are praying for the fire in Colorado to consume good Christians) and then filter through all the angry responses in order to find the most ill-conceived "loss of cool" commentary and repost it for the Tea Party to gawk at and use as a "hit list".  It is what I call... "Michell Malkin's Pretty Hate Machine".  Here's a post where she even holds Zach Braff accountable for what other people are randomly tweeting to him and falsely accusing racism on the part of Braff who apparently sees what we all see in Clarence Thomas.

Fans of Michelle Malkin are likely to believe the following "truths" to be self-evident:

1. Guns should be purchased, used, sold and waved around without any regulation.
2. Liberals, Blacks, Gays & Democrats are all in the same category of "undesirables" who are seeking "free stuff" from them.
3. The aforementioned "libtards" don't deserve healthcare or really even to live. They are "sick", "diseased" "sycophants" and hateful, racist non-people.
4. All animals except puppies are best served on a bun.
5. PETA Kills Animals and that's unforgiveable...

Do we see a glitch here?  I hope so...

Now let's skip right along to the comment I left and why...  After personally triggering what she hopes will be the new "monicagate" for President Obama,  Malkin got distracted by a forest fire in Colorado... This forest fire is serious business and there have already been many victims... Not the least of which, Malkin will have you know, is her little Zebra-Striped Finch named "Tweety" (not-so-ironically). 

"Sad News" she tweeted... Tweety died, supposedly from smoke inhalation. Now, I'm gonna go out on a limb here (see what I did right there?) and say that Malkin tweeted about Tweety more for the benefit of her insurance policy than for her followers to be "sad" about.

But nevertheless, a finch named Tweety has expired and the world must know about THAT.

So the following day, when Malkin discovered that the Red Cross was posing some competition to her with their coverage of #WaldoCanyonFire, and while those who were tired of praying for her bird decided to look elsewhere on Twitter for solutions to the disaster, she decided to tweet about those "despicable" liberals again. Twitchy/Michelle said it was all about those liberals who were sending their gay prayers to the dark one for good Christians to be consumed in the very fires that claimed dear Tweety's life!

I took the bait... I tweeted back...

Oh, the faux outrage and concern for humanity that ensued! I won't re-post the death threats. But here are just a small FEW of the hundreds of tweet-backs that I received in what had instantly become the busiest night my sad little twitter account has ever seen...

Comments written in GREEN are my thoughts added while reading them...

but wait... there's more... (click to view larger)...

In almost every single case where the Twitchy.com fanatic had claimed that I was insensitive, heartless, crazy, and death-worshiping, their preceding and following tweets were hypocritical examples of exactly that.  I won't repost the racist and homophobic ones... but trust me, they're filed away in case any of these folks become the next George Zimmerman...

Now, I find it necessary, before I let you go, to also tell you 3 more things... First, from the very first one, almost every reply and re-tweet that came in was at least slightly mischaracterizing what I said... some even went so far as to suggest that I was hoping Michelle Malkin's children would die...

Secondly, this was not the first time I tweeted to Michelle Malkin... I've reasonably replied to her tweets countless times in the past and never received any sort of recognition of receipt.

Lastly, I am not a bird or animal hater of any sort... I have about 8 wild birds that frequent my backyard because they know I always leave food and water out for them... They include a Mourning Dove named Lucy (for her exaggerated facial expressions like Lucille Ball), a couple of blue jays (one is named Alphie or "Alpha 1" for his similarity to Air Force One), some almost-English-speaking wild green parrots and even a couple of Cardinals...

The difference between myself and Michelle Malkin's fanbase, is that I shoot birds with a camera and they shoot them with guns...  The rest, they say... "is for the birds".

How Liberal Bloggers Are Helping Republicans

You think you are exposing a scandal, but what you're actually doing is promoting someone you hate to a better rank on Google.

On June 9th, while supposedly waiting to be interviewed by KXTV in Sacramento, Carly Fiorina (a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate) said something VERY scandalous... She called Barbara Boxer's hairstyle "so yesterday". What she (supposedly) didn't know is that her mic was on and the video of her catty comment would be "leaked".

Sounds like the perfect chance to give her a gut-punch on your blog, right? I mean, you could really spin that. You could call her a "gossip" or a "catty elitist who cares more about fashion than substance"... This could be the end of her, right?

Wrong.

This is what strategists call a "manufactured scandal". It's something that's "leaked" by the campaign itself to trigger a surge in Google searches but doesn't really do all that much to damage the reputation of the candidate in question.

Fiorina also made sure to mention that her buddy Meg Whitman decided to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. So when Politics Daily and the Huffington Post did their part and made mountains out of molehills with this "caught on open mic" scenario, this is what the results looked like:

Google Searching "Carly Fiorina Hair":
You get a story about Fiorina's Courageous Battle With Cancer.

Google Searching "Carly Fiorina Hair Barbara Boxer":
You get her wikipedia page, which presents a sanitized version of her corporate legacy summed up with another quote about Boxer: "After losing all my hair, Barbara Boxer just isn't so scary anymore." (Another reference to her cancer survivor status.)

Google Searching "Carly Fiorina Whitman Hannity Comment":
You get Carly Fiorina and Sean Hannity in a mutual admiration love-fest with eachother where Fiorina expresses profusely that she is friends with Whitman and that she was afraid Hannity would be "too tough" on her.

You see what this all adds up to?

There were THOUSANDS of liberal bloggers doing their part to advertise Carly Fiorina's spin campaign for a week after the manufactured scandal was "leaked".

The biggest mistake a Liberal Blogger can make is to assume that Republicans are all ignorant people with misspelled signs at a Tea Party or an NRA rally. In reality, if this were a game of chess, they'd already have you in check-mate.

Obama's poll numbers are in the tank, healthcare reform is a win-win situation for the Insurance Lobby (mandatory Insurance with no public option), the war rages on, Gitmo is still open for business, faith-based initiatives are funneling millions of your tax dollars into the right-wing think tanks, billionaires have that antsy-dancey feeling in their pants again and millions of dollars are being dumped into any campaign against a democratic incumbent or gay candidate.

Republicans have convinced America that there is an all-powerful "liberal media" out there, hellbent on denying the "truth" and that somehow, the most watched News channel in the world (FOX NEWS) is just not a part of this grand conspiracy. Meanwhile, "our side", MSNBC, has chosen to legitimize the Tea Party as a "grassroots movement that became a real political party" and they've completely forgotten that it is actually just tightly controlled Republican atro-turf.

You must never forget that Republicans are masters in the art of deception and propaganda - and especially today's Republicans who hail from the corporate dotcom revolution and have learned how to use facebook and adwords to their advantage.

Here are some of my suggestions for liberal bloggers to avoid unwittingly helping Republicans to spin the media in their favor:


1) Never blog about Sarah Palin. She is the media center of Right-Wing talking points and any exposure you give her is always a "freebie" to the GOP. Everything that relates to Palin is a carefully crafted device to get you to do exactly what you're thinking of doing. Remember that.

2) Find some politicians you actually like and blog about their success. Far too many liberals are going down the path of defensiveness and it gives the Republicans quite an edge. The President himself just can't seem to score a few kind words from the mainstream media even though conservatives maintain that we are talking about a "liberal media".

3) Decide what your values are and start from there. Conservatives are able to follow eachother blindly without ever worrying about back-stabbing or sabotage because they all share the exact same values. A Liberal without a clear understanding of his own values will find himself struggling to explain exactly what he is so concerned about and it does more harm to his position than good.

4) Attack someone in your own party on occasion. Decide who the bad apple is in your bunch and expose them as a "wolf in sheep's clothing". This is a great way to draw in some readers from that highly coveted "independent/moderate" group.

5) Do NOT rely on the mainstream media for all your news. Networks like CNN, FOX, MSNBC and CBS are good for an occassional glance, but you should be using the internet to its fullest capability and really digging for information that YOU have decided that YOU care about. Any first-hand information or interviews you can get are far better than recycling whatever the latest talking point is.