THIS MODERN WORLD

Profiling: “Hey, look at that dark-skinned driver! We’d better pull him over and make sure he didn’t steal that car!”

Not profiling: “Hey, look at that hereditary oligarchy with ties to Osama bin Laden! Perhaps it would be a bad idea for them to control a vulnerable piece of our national infrastructure!”

I hope this helps clear things up. I’m all about bridging the gulf of understanding.

(Hat tip: Atrios.)

…context. Contra Malkin, this isn’t about liberals suddenly recognizing the wisdom of profiling. It’s about conservatives acknowledging blatant corruption and incompetence, for once.

Reading Arianna’s account of her appearance on Hannity and the Other Guy reminded me of a debate I’ve had over the years with a few friends who are occasionally invited to appear on these shows. The argument in favor of doing so is that it’s important to make the noble, if futile, effort to counter the relentless flood of utter bullshit Fox unleashes upon its viewing public each night. And I’m not unsympathetic to that view — attempting to counter relentless floods of bullshit is pretty much what I do for a living, after all. Still — I can’t help but wonder if the Fox evening lineup wouldn’t be irrevocably crippled if everyone of a left/liberal persuasion simply stopped accepting the invitations. No one’s ever going to keep Hannity and O’Reilly from bloviating, of course, but they’ll certainly look a lot sillier doing it in a vacuum. And face it, Arianna: the few masochistic liberals watching these shows already mostly agree with you, and as for the rest of that audience, the ones who don’t understand that “fair and balanced” is meant as ironic Orwellian doublespeak, not literal truth — you’re not going to win them over. You’re just not. So why keep feeding the beast?

Just say no to Fox News.

What White House staffer wrote a memo saying this?

No written communications from the White House to the Departments — all information about the program would be transmitted verbally… documents prepared would not indicate White House involvement in any way.

That was by Fred Malek, during the Nixon administration. His official title was “Special Assistant to the President.”

Malek was writing to H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff, about Nixon’s “responsiveness program.” This was a scheme to politicize as much of the federal government as possible in support of Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. As the memo shows, Malek was extremely concerned that the program not be traced back to the White House. Unfortunately for Nixon, it was discovered and investigated as part of Watergate. (More details can be found in a recent Colbert King column.)

So, what’s Malek doing these days?

Well, he’s long been an influential member of the Republican establishment. (His rise was only slightly slowed when it turned out he’d carried out an order by Nixon to tally the number of Jewish staffers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in search of a “Jewish cabal.”)

And as Scooter Libby’s new website shows, Malek is part of the Libby Defense Fund’s “Advisory Committee.”

Which raises a natural question:

Why does Scooter Libby want the support of a political hatchetman from the Nixon administration who not only engaged in extremely unsavory activities, but then was caught trying to cover them up?

Is it because Fred Malek has completely changed since 1972, and Libby’s completely innocent, so they can have long discussions about the importance of ethics in governmental service?

Or…is Libby hoping for advice from Malek on how to avoid the mistakes he made?

In any case, the hubris of the Republican machine is flabbergasting. Again, Malek was Special Assistant to the President…while Libby, in addition to being Cheney’s Chief of Staff, held the title of “Assistant to the President.”

You’d think—just for the sake of PR—they’d want to keep Libby away from predecessors who’d done horrible things for presidents who later had to resign to escape impeachment. But apparently, no.

BONUS FOOTAGE: It takes a special kind of man to write a memo saying “be sure not to write anything down.”

Jonathan mentioned this one a few weeks back. According to the back copy:

THE YEAR IS 2040. New York and Washington are nuclear wastelands. The nation is divided between an Islamic Republic across the north and the Christian Bible Belt in the old South. The shift was precipitated by simultaneous, suitcase-nuke detonations in New York City, Washington, and Mecca, a sneak attack blamed on Israel, and known as the Zionist Betrayal. Now alcohol is outlawed, replaced by Jihad Cola, and mosques dot the skyline. Veiled women hurry through the streets. Freedom is controlled by the state, paranoia rules, and rebels plot to regain free will…

In this tense society beautiful young historian Sarah Dougan uncovers shocking evidence that the Zionist Betrayal was actually a plot carried out by a radical Muslim now poised to overtake the entire nation. Sarah’s research threatens to expose him, and soon she and her lover, Rakkin Epps, an elite Muslim warrior, find themselves hunted by Darwin, a brilliant psychopathic killer. Rakkin must become Darwin’s assassin—a most forbidding challenge. The bloody chase takes them from the outlaw territories of the Pacific Northwest to the anything-goes glitter of Las Vegas—and culminates dramatically as Rakkim and Sarah battle to reveal the truth to the entire world.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking. But I read my review copy over the weekend, and I concur with Tbogg: anyone who picks this up hoping for anti-Muslim warblogger porn is going to be disappointed. Admittedly, the underlying premise of a mass American conversion to Islam is silly at best, but if you can suspend disbelief on that point, it’s a fine alternate reality thriller in the tradition of Robert Harris’ Fatherland. If the author was trying for agitprop, he failed — even after reading it, I couldn’t have really told you what his personal politics were.

Which is why I’m sorry I clicked through Tbogg’s link to Ferrigno’s own blog, where we find effusive references to Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt, and gratuitious slaps at Ted Rall (Ferrigno channels Ann Coulter and suggests that Rall should enter that Iranian Holocaust cartoon competition, har, har, har!). Whether we have another Roger-Simon-the-Man-Who-Created-Moses-Wine on our hands, or Ferrigno just spent a few weeks studying the blogs and decided that sucking up to the right wingers would be an effective marketing strategy, it’s a shame either way. I think the book would have had a wider reach and a wider appeal if he’d played his cards a little closer to the vest and just let the writing speak for itself.

At any rate, you know the old saying: trust the art, not the artist. The book’s still a fun read.

1: These riots are not the spontaneous uprisings of an outraged cartoon-reading Muslim population. The cartoons first appeared in Jyllands-Posten back during in September, and there was no such upheaval — until a group of Danish imams spent a few months lobbying Islamic leaders across the Middle East for support, with a dossier that included images that didn’t even run in the Danish paper to begin with. Just look at the news photos of neatly printed protest signs, all clearly produced by the same hand, in English, for the benefit of Western cameras. The cartoons may be — probably are — genuinely offensive to Muslims, but this is manufactured outrage, and if weren’t about these cartoons, it would be about something else. A movie, a novel, the back of a cereal box, whatever.

2: American newspaper editors are in a tough position. If they run the cartoons as an act of defiance against repressive morons (i.e., the imams who stirred all this shit up to begin with), then they play right into the hands of those same repressive morons, giving them even more fuel with which to fire up their fundamentalist base. Actually, let me amend that. The newly-minted free speech absolutists demanding that American newspapers publish these cartoons as some sort of badge of ideological correctness are in many cases the same people who’ve spent the last five years denouncing the domestic publication of cartoons and commentary with which they disagree, often going so far as to declare such commentary to be an outright act of treason. Make no mistake: in this one instance only, they have become champions of unfettered free speech, but that’s only going to last until the next time some American cartoonist annoys them. (And yes, of course I understand that our homegrown wannabe censors are probably not going to be out setting fires in response to cartoons — they’ll just be out trying to get the cartoonist fired.)

At any rate, it’s probably more accurate to say that newspaper editors must decide whether to run the cartoons as an act of defiance against repressive morons abroad in order to appease repressive morons at home, playing right into the hands of repressive morons everywhere.

Update: Mikhaela has more. And I tend to agree with what Joe Sacco has to say, here.

My initial reaction was, “What a bunch of idiots those Danes were for printing those things.” Did they not think that there was going to be some sort of backlash? Cartoons like that are simply meant as a provocation…

… I think maybe the idiot cartoonist should feel a need to be a little more self-censoring, when it comes down to it, but a thinking cartoonist weighs what he or she is doing. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about these Danish cartoons. In the end, yes, there is a principle about the freedom of expression that concerns me, but I’m always sorry to have to rush to the defense of idiots.

…It’s a hot time on this planet, and tempers are going to flare, and people are going to get hurt with these sorts of things. Freedom of the press, or the idea that you can depict anything–we simply don’t subscribe to that when it comes down to it. I mean, child porn is not allowed. There are certain barriers or borders we all sort of agree, or most of us agree, where you are taking things too far. I personally don’t necessarily think that attacking a religion is taking it too far, or even working within the imagery of religion to attack it. But you have to judge each instance, and what it means.