THIS MODERN WORLD

A couple weeks back, I put out the call for “perverse products” — a sort of all-encompassing category of items whose common element is appalled bemusement. Things that leave you wondering what someone could possibly have been thinking.

I’d say this carnival ride, snapped by reader Mike H. at a small village festival in the south of Mexico, qualifies.

Less appalling, but no less bemusing: the inflatable church.

But I still like mine better. The word “razor” indicates something applied with precision and forethought, after all.

Good grief. Ms. Malkin, to her eternal shame, couldn’t do a post about the cross-destroying dickhead on her side without turning it into an attack on the left :

Nice to see the far Left finally outraged about the desecration of crosses.

Don’t seem to recall their outrage about this or this or this, though. Or, of course, this.

I’ll spare you the hyperlinks, but suffice to say, they’re as contradictory as the rest of her oeuvre. The first three links are to news stories of desecrations of pro-life protests that used white crosses and the fourth is, hilariously, a link to the infamous art piece “Piss Christ”. Perhaps Michelle and Michelle will need to have a second debate on whether or not they support the first amendment’s freedom of expression?

And since we’re playing the childish “you didn’t denounce it on your site, therefore you support it” game, I don’t seem to remember Michelle making an effort to denounce the cross burnings in North Carolina, not that I’d expect any less from the writer of a racist book. (via Atrios)

That book, of course, was In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror. Think about the title alone for a minute or two. Turn it over in your mind. Then focus on this: what Malkin defended for the length of an entire book was internment based on one characteristic alone: a person’s ancestry. This is the most blatant and repellent form of racism. Due to Malkin’s efforts, the “acceptability” and “defensibility” of racism achieved great prominence in our society. It was, and still is, a “respectable” topic of conversation. Racism as the basis of government policy was an “acceptable” subject on which to offer an opinion — and a range of opinions was encouraged. Perhaps it was bad policy, perhaps it wasn’t. Who can know for sure? The historical record is complex. Certainty on this question is impossible of achievement.

Add these further facts to your consideration of this matter. As Eric Muller and Greg Robinson examined and proved in great detail, Malkin plays fast and loose with the actual historical record. Her research methods were contemptibly shoddy. The arguments she offers cannot withstand even casual scrutiny. Her book and her subsequent arguments defending it are filled with dishonesties. In short: there are no facts or arguments to sustain Malkin’s position. The policy of internment was irrational at its foundation, and it destroyed many lives. It stigmatized a large group of people for no legitimate reason, and changed many lives forever. For nothing.

Malkin’s failures were both predictable and unavoidable. An irrational policy cannot be defended with rational arguments. Facts cannot be marshalled to support delusions. And note one additionally ugly aspect of the history of internment in World War II, pointed out in the Muller-Robinson discussion: nothing similar happened to those of German or Italian ancestry, although those countries were also our enemies. It was only those slant-eyed yellow people — those people who are not “really like us” — who were singled out. This is the lowest, most primitive, and subhuman version of racism. Racism in any form is immoral, irrational and always to be condemned. In that sense, degrees of immorality do not apply. But in another sense, this may be the worst kind of racism of all.

By the way, does anyone know how internment camps and an APB on any “swarthy” looking Arab men would have helped aid in the capture of Richard Reid , Jose Padilla, or John Walker Lindh? It seems to me that the (suspected) terrorists have already found a loophole in the “arrest any brown people with funny names” plan.

There’s an additional, and somewhat amusing, disagreement between the two Michelles over the term “grief pimps” :

The Los Angeles Times graciously admits it was wrong when it said I disdainfully called activists supporting Cindy Sheehan “grief pimps”. . .The Times has appended the correction to its original article. I’ll be looking for corrections from all the other papers that repeated the Times’ false allegation.

Where could the Times have gotten the bizarre idea that Michelle Malkin thinks the activists supporting Cindy Sheehan are “grief pimps”? Could it be the letter she reprinted without comment a letter from a reader that expounds on the term “grief pimps” or the fact that the post in question is actually called “grief pimps”? Perhaps the title of the post was referring to something else entirely? Since she didn’t technically use the term “grief pimps” on her own to explicitly reference the supporters of Cindy Sheehan, I guess she’s right in saying that the Times use of the words “disdainfully called” represents a “false allegation”. Perhaps they should have said “callously suggested” instead. There was a time when this sort of hyper-parsing was called “Clintonian”, but these days I prefer the term “Malkinized”.

A reader sent an email to Grand Heritage’s Regional Director of Operations for the Northeast concerning my little overbilling problem at what some of you have very unkindly begun to term the “Bilkmore.” (This site, of course, in no way condones such irreverent disrespect.)

This is the response he got:

I appreciate your taking the time to express your concerns about an email you saw on the internet. I do wish that you would consider that there could be more to this than what the person wrote on the site. Every day we focus all of our intention on guest satisfaction. In any instance where a guest feels that we have not met their expectations, we make every effort to rectify the situation. That is our business and we take it very seriously. I would encourage you to come and visit us. In fact, I would love to have you as my guest so that you can experience what we believe is a 100% effort every day to be at your service. I do believe that fairness knows both sides of the story and I am sure you would agree.

Apparently by “every effort to rectify the situation” they mean “refuse to admit error and then threaten to sue the guest.”

At any rate, I’ve gone ahead and filed with the credit card company. It’s an open-and-shut case, so there’s no question that I’ll get the money back — it’ll just take a little longer. But it saves me any more wasted time dealing with these people.

Update: do you think the invitation to stay as this exec’s “guest” means she’s offering the guy a free room? Layers upon layers of irony if so.

Tangential update: here’s somebody who knows how to file a complaint.

From the front page of this morning’s NY Times.