“The mission of the United States military is not to accommodate behavior, and definitely not to accommodate sexual behavior. But right now, what is most important for us to be talking about?
“In this past week, we had the Taliban infiltrate a gentlemen into the Afghan security forces who shot six American soldiers. Killed them. What we should be talking about are rules of engagement and the strategic objectives that will lead to our victory and our success against this enemy.
“Instead, we are worrying about who is sleeping with who in the military. That’s crazy. So I think right now don’t ask, don’t tell is not the thing the American people expect the House and the Senate and the senior military leadership to be talking about. What they want to know is how do we protect our sons and daughters on the battlefield, how do we make sure that we are promoting victory, and how do we make sure that we take this fight to the enemy and not allow them to bring the fight to us.”
Year: 2010
You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself
What kind of misogynistic pervert would collect seven women, dress them in nothing but lacy underwear, call them the “Cup Size Choir” — labeled A through G — and then compel them to sing “Deck the Halls” in order to create a video commercial for La Senza™ lingerie? What sort of blogger would post that sacrilegious video on his site? And what kind of readers would click the link to spend two minutes watching such a disgusting sexed-up travesty? Continue reading You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself →
Sexist Racist Hate Group Exposed
Yeah, I’m talking about al-Qaeda:
Back in 1949, Sayyid Qutb, the ideological father of al-Qaeda, spent the better part of the year studying education in Greely, Colorado. Greely, at the time, was the kind of town you’d expect neo-fundamentalists to approve of: its puritanical city government, notably, had outlawed booze.
But it wasn’t conservative enough for Mr Qutb. In his memoirs, The America I Have Seen: In the Scale of Human Values, which were published in the Egyptian journal al-Risala in 1951, Mr Qutb railed against what he saw. “The American girl,” one passage reads, “is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, in the expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs – and she shows all this and does not hide it.”
He also hated jazz – “music”, he explained, “that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy on the one hand and to excite bestial tendencies on the other.”
It seems to me that Mr Qutb had issues with sexuality that transcended the purely ideological. . . .
Read the whole thing. Strange how those of us in favor of blasting violent Islamic extremism out of existence are the ones who constantly have to defend ourselves against accusations of “hate.”
Blogger Gets 2 Million Hits Because of His Insightful Commentary and Lucy Pinder’s Enormous Breasts, But Mainly . . .
. . . it was the insightful commentary. Given his current average of more than 3,000 visits per day, he should record his 2 millionth hit sometime Sunday evening, or earlier if he can score an Instalanche. Congratulations to Professor Donald Douglas of American Power for his successful implementation of The Rules.
UPDATE: In case ginormous tatas aren’t your cup of tea — like maybe you’re gay or something, NTTAWWT — Piece of Work in Progress offers a video tribute to studly matinee idols.
If Charles M. Blow Never Wrote Another Word About Sarah Palin . . .
. . . it would be nearly as good as if he never wrote another word, period:
This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive.
The biggest problem with these useless overpaid pundits is their arrogant belief that nothing really matters until it’s written up by the New York Times.
(Via Memeorandum.)
BREAKING: Rumored Secret U.S. Weapon Causes Taliban Surrender
Shocking news from Afghanistan:
KABUL — Thousands of Taliban fighters have surrendered to Allied forces after rumors spread among the militants in Afghanistan that the United States was prepared to deploy a devastating new secret weapon, NATO commanders said Saturday.
As frightened former members of the Afghan insurgency streamed into Allied encampments, tearfully pleading to be rescued, NATO troops noticed that many of the surrendering Taliban were covered in urine.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said one U.S. official in Kandahar. “They are quite literally pissing themselves in fear.”
Pentagon sources say the panic that led to the mass surrender was inspired by rumors — spread virally over the Internet — that the U.S. Navy was prepared to unleash a weapon that could permanently disrupt the Taliban’s online command-and-control channels, exposing the terrorist insurgents to complete destruction by the Allied forces.
While details of the Navy weapons program are classified, rumors circulating in Afghanistan say that it would switch jihadist Web sites from easy-to-use Blogger software to a WordPress custom platform, which the primitive Pashtun tribesmen could not possibly understand or use effectively.
Employing sophisticated technology, the weapon would then install the Disqus commenting system, inhibiting the ability of Taliban site owners to moderate comments. It would further impair their communications network with a barrage of disruptive messages, urging the Islamist militants to cease using Twitter.com and instead install the high-tech TweetDeck program, which is incompatible with antiquated computer systems used by the insurgents.
Several jihadist Internet sites featured a photo of the so-called “REMF Stealth Ninja” system, although officials in both the U.S. and Afghanistan denied any knowledge of . . .
Continue reading BREAKING: Rumored Secret U.S. Weapon Causes Taliban Surrender →
Letter to a Damned Fool
Tim Rogers, executive editor of Dallas magazine, decided that my flame war with Barrett Brown (which has provoked the threat of legal action) was a fit subject for a blog post that linked Max Blumenthal — of all people — as the authoritative source on me. Which is damned foolish, considering that I’m rather authoritative about myself. At any rate, the folly of Tim Rogers seemed to require correction, which I provided in an e-mail sent at 11:16 a.m. today:
You really, really need to learn a thing or two about journalism standards. Or at least learn to use Google. Also, your reading comprehension skills seem less than adequate.“From what I’ve read about McCain” — and then you link to an error-riddled article by that notorious idiot Max Blumenthal and call me “one of the ghostwriters of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue“? Time does not permit the refutation of every error made by Blumenthal, a leading contender for the world championship of producing fact-impaired nonsense. It might be simpler to say, as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, that every word Max writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.” But two important facts ought to be made clear:1. Sarah Palin didn’t have a “ghostwriter” on Going Rogue. Palin had a collaborator, Lynn Vincent, a professional journalist and author who has collaborated on many books, including two New York Times bestsellers. The difference between a collaborator and a “ghostwriter” is vast and important, in that the latter term suggests a species of deception.2. I had no role in Going Rogue. I have only met Sarah Palin in person twice, very briefly, once in Pennsylvania while covering her during the 2008 campaign, and once while covering the March 2010 Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nevada.However, I suppose I might claim some small credit. My blog on January 26, 2009:Clark Stooksbury at The American Conservative suggests me (tongue-in-cheek) as ghost-writer for Sarah Palin’s $11 million book. Actually, I’d think my Donkey Cons co-author Lynn Vincent might be ideal for the job, since she’s already co-authored the bestseller Same Kind of Different As Me.As I later learned, Lynn saw that blog post, had her agent put her in for the job and was selected from among the many top writers vying for it. Lynn’s contract with Harper Collins, of course, included a confidentiality clause and so Lynn has made little or no public comment about her work with Governor Palin since then.Max Blumenthal’s article at The Daily Beast was an attempt to do a third-hand guilt-by-association smear on Sarah Palin, using “white supremacist” accusations against me that I have addressed at some length elsewhere. To summarize briefly: I am a conservative, which means that I disagree with liberals about everything, including their dogmatic fanaticism about race. In the course of discussing these disagreements, I have sometimes unwisely written things that have been malevolently misinterpreted by others, who have attributed to me hateful sentiments that I neither feel myself nor advocate to anyone else. “White supremacy” and “racism” are terms that have actual definitions, neither of which could be properly applied to me.In the age of Obama, many Americans have grown tired of the lazy imputation of racism to everyone who disagrees with liberalism. I’ve made a running joke of this: “There are 5 A’s in ‘raaaaacism!‘” I have learned to be indifferent to the damage done to my reputation by such nonsense. “With enough courage, you can learn to live without a reputation,” as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara. Yet I cannot permit lazy writers such as yourself to inflict political damage on innocents by repetition of the cheap guilt-by-association smears employed by Max Blumenthal and others.Over the course of a journalism career now spanning nearly a quarter-century, I have “associated” with thousands of people — colleagues and acquaintainces, politicians, activists, authors, etc. — of every race, creed and ideological orientation you could possibly imagine. For you or others to play a six-degrees-of-separation game, attempting to make me an instrument of journalistic prestidigitation that falsely attributes to some people the controversial beliefs of other people they’ve never even heard of, is shabby and unprofessional. I’d call it “McCarthyism,” were it not for my concern about unfairly maligning the late senator from Wisconsin.If you had bothered to do any research, Tim, you might have learned all this yourself. My e-mail address is publicly available on the “about” page at my blog, TheOtherMcCain.com, and I would have been only too happy to clarify any misunderstandings. As it is now, I hope that you will do me the kindness of publishing this communication in full.Robert Stacy McCain
Co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of
DONKEY CONS: Sex, Crime & Corruption in the Democratic Party
Thanks to Dave at Point of a Gun for the e-mail tip about this idiot Rogers. And a friendly reminded to readers that they can contribute to the “F*** You, Barrett Brown” Legal Defense Fund. In the 99% likelihood that my legal expenses in the case of Brown v. McCain are exactly zero, proceeds will go to help repair the deer-damaged KIA and buy my six kids Christmas gifts.
Nothing Says ‘Merry Christmas’ . . .
. . . quite like the threat of a libel action:
Libel
Friday, December 3, 2010 5:02 PM
From: “Barrett Brown”
To: “Robert McCain”
I’ve just spoken with my entertainment lawyer concerning your libelous article about myself and my relationship with Michael Hastings as well as well as my allegedly violent character. You’ll receive an e-mail from [name redacted] either tomorrow or Sunday.
—
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Readers will kindly peruse the blog post that prompted this response, and judge for themselves whether there was anything actionable in it.
Mr. Brown has not demanded a retraction of any particular part of the post, but I suppose that’s what lawyers are for.
God bless us, every one!
UPDATE: Thanks to those readers who have noted in the comments the implausibility of Brown’s threat, although nothing is stopping you from contributing to the “F*** You, Barrett Brown” Legal Defense Fund. In the 99% likelihood that my legal expenses in the case of Brown v. McCain are exactly zero, proceeds will go to help repair the deer-damaged KIA and buy my six kids Christmas gifts.
Meanwhile, you’ll find Brown in the comments of my aforesaid allegedly libelous post, asking that I link his own response at another blog. Let’s ponder this request for a minute, shall we?
“Link me, or I’ll sue!”
Yeah, but he’s not crazy or anything like that. Nudge, nudge.
Athough I have no intention of linking Brown’s response, I printed it out and skimmed through it, making a few notes in the margin and, if I were the litigious sort, by God, I’d be suing him for libel. But since Brown assures me that he is willing to be the plaintiff — thus assuming the burden of proof — I will be glad to have as Exhibit A for the defense his response, which is false and defamatory, beginning with the very title:
R.S. McCain accuses me of being a violent militant
No such accusation was made by me. Various articles and book passages were quoted and linked in my post, and certain possible interpretations were suggested, but I am certain I did not accuse Brown of any such thing as he (libelously) accuses me of doing.
Given that he asserts — by threat of libel — that I have maligned his good reputation, Brown unwisely begins with this admission:
So, I wake up this morning all hung over and whatnot and thus decide to spend the day doing nothing . . .
This statement would, I believe, constitute evidence that Barrett Brown has substance-abuse issues of such severity as to cause him to spend entire days unable to do any meaningful work. Perhaps I could find a qualified professional to testify as to the correlation between alcoholism and other anti-social behaviors.
Brown then follows this with another admission:
The main point seems to be that I’m arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people . . .
Brown, the admitted drunkard, thereby verifies my observation and analysis of the “main point” and I ask — ladies and gentlemen of the jury — if this testimony to my credibility, which the plaintiff himself has provided, should not also be considered in regard to the various secondary points of my argument? Remember that the subject of my post was the relationship between Internet “trolls” and narscissism, as you consider what Brown next confesses:
And speaking of trolling, a very old friend of mine who’s a news producer at an affiliate back east appears to have left a couple of comments over there in the guise of Marvin Olasky . . .
Brown here tells us that he is a close associate of someone who engages in troll behavior, posting comments under assumed names. The defense would ask the plaintiff to provide the name of this person, so that we might subpoena them for possible testimony for the defense.
And your honor, at this time, defense would like to introduce Exhibit B, an article published by Barrett Brown on Sept. 11, 2009 — the jury will please note the date — with the title, “Confessions of a Phony Internet Muslim.”
In this article, Brown writes that he “created an alter-ego, becoming a devout Muslim going by the name of Ali Desu Hussein,” which he describes as “my Islamic Mr. Hyde,” in order to post provocative and disruptive messages in various Internet forums. This is self-evidently antisocial and malicious. Would any psychologically healthy person falsely represents himself under pseudonyms for such a harmful purpose?
Next, Brown pretends to disprove my skeptical remarks about his characterization of Vanity Fair reporter Michael Hastings as his “colleague.” What I wrote was that, in using this term in his YouTube video lecture to National Review editor Rich Lowry, Brown was “expressing a collegiality that probably exists mainly in Brown’s mind.”
The jury will please note the word “probably” in that sentence. Of course I could not know the extent of Brown’s acquaintance with Hastings, despite Brown’s having written sundry things about that relationship, for we have already established that by his own admission Brown perpetrates falsehoods on the Internet. (See defense Exhibit B.)
Given Brown’s confessed use of online deception (his phony “alter-ego,” etc.), his mere assertion as to any particular state of affairs — e.g., an alleged professional relationship with Michael Hastings — proves nothing, as an admitted liar has no credibility. Therefore, skepticism toward such an assertion by Brown was entirely warranted. And what does Brown say of his relationship with Hastings?
We talked on the phone several times and exchanged some number of e-mails . . .
Brown does not say, “We’re best buds,” or “We hung out and had beers together.” No, it’s e-mails and phone calls. By that standard, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’ve got a whole crapload of “colleagues,” including several members of Congress. But you’ll notice that, so far as we can tell from Exhibit A, Brown and Hastings have never met in person, thus sustaining my assertion, in the blog post that the plaintiff claims is libelous, that “while Brown and Hastings were both True/Slant contributors, it wasn’t like they were hanging out around the office coffee machine, swapping stories.”
My credibility once more vindicated, I next call to your attention this statement by Brown:
. . . the rest can be confirmed by Andrew Sullivan, with whom I discussed the events after he linked to my piece.
Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan? Does the plaintiff really wish to bring to this honorable court’s attention his professional collaboration with Andrew Sullivan? Your honor, the defense would like to introduce at this time Exhibit C, showing that this same Andrew Sullivan has a criminal record for possession of illegal drugs. We also introduce Exhibit D, a blog post from Ace of Spades HQ, containing certain relevant information about Suliivan’s other behaviors, although there is perhaps no need to discuss this information at this time.
So far, then, we have established that Barrett Brown is a confessed drunkard, by his own admission “arrogant and narcissistic,” a deceptive Internet “troll” who is friends with others who engage in similar deceptive activity online, and an associate of a criminal drug abuser, Andrew Sullivan.
Given all this, your honor, it is the belief of the defense that Barrett Brown is a person of such infamous ill-repute that any negative comments made about him on the Internet could not possibly be considered defamatory. We ask that your honor take into consideration the evidence presented so far, and grant a directed verdict of acquittal. While you consider this request, we will ask that the court be recessed.
SO ORDERED!
UPDATE II: While the court is in recess, I wanted to share with you a communication I received from an attorney who, although not in a position to offer advice to me as a client, did make these observations:
First, I read the post earlier today and thought it so fantastic (for reasons having nothing to do with Brown, of whom I’ve barely heard) that I forwarded it immediately to my wife as “must read.” . . .
I saw nothing libelous in your post and would be amazed if a reputable lawyer would feel differently. You accused him of nothing; you stated no false or private facts so far as I could see. His threatening response sort of makes your point.
For what it’s worth, anyway. Thanks to The Lonely Conservative for the link.
UPDATE III: Predictable:
Hat-tip: William Teach in the comments. By the way, notice that the title in the cross-post at LGF is slightly different. Now Brown says I have accused him of “planning violent attacks,” which I certainly did not do.
Next? Expect Sully himself to weigh in.
UPDATE IV: Letter to a Damned Fool.