Category: Atlas Shrugs

Jill Filipovic Throws Me Some Traffic; Little Green Footballs, Not So Much

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America’s Favorite Feminist responds to this morning’s provocation by accusing me of promoting the narrative, “Brown people are savages who will go after pretty white women.” A near-miss there, Ms. Filipovic, but thanks for linking me. Meanwhile . . .

It’s really sad that he’s got nothing better to do. While I’m on the hook for whatever irresponsible things I’ve said, neither Jim Hoft nor Pamela Geller can be blamed for my rantings, nor can I be blamed for their rantings. But just out of curiosity, let’s see what they had to say, starting with Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

Lara Logan is lucky she’s alive.
Her liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday. This talented reporter will never be the same.
Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea? Did she not see the violence in the square the last three weeks? Did she not see the rock throwing? Did she miss the camels? Did her colleagues tell her about the Western journalists who were viciously assaulted on the Square? Did she forget about the taunts from the Egyptian thugs the day before? What was she thinking? Was it her political correctness that about got her killed? Did she think things would be different for her?

Now Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs:

This horrible story gets worse and worse. Worse still, CBS tried to keep the whole thing quiet and was forced to get in front of the story only when it became widely known that other media outlets were on to it. Who are they covering for?
And why? Because the false narrative the media is painting of what is going on in Egypt is patently false, and this brutal sex attack points to something else entirely.
The NY Post is the only news outlet reporting that the Muslims raping her were shouting “Jew, Jew, Jew.” Obama should make a statement addressing this horror and condemning the vile Islamic anti-semitism at the heart of Islam.

Let’s stipulate that there are a lot of unknowns at this time, and the reality of the situation may turn out to be diffferent than however Geller, Hoft or I currently conceive it. For example, my friend John Guardiano thinks Logan may have been raped by pro-Mubarak thugs, rather than anti-Mubarak protesters. We don’t know enough facts to judge the incident, and may never have enough facts to do so. Continue reading Jill Filipovic Throws Me Some Traffic; Little Green Footballs, Not So Much →

Patterico: ‘Charles Johnson Doesn’t Care About Context or Truth Any More’

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“I was such a small fish at the time. I realized I was basically committing blog suicide by going against him. But he was wrong.”
— Pamela Geller, January 2010

It’s interesting how easy it has become to ignore Charles Johnson and Little Green Footballs. A couple weeks ago, Diary of Daedalus or the Blogmocracy had a post with a graphic showing the decline in LGF’s traffic since Johnson began his mad purge of commenters who didn’t cooperate with his site’s leftward shift. And I would have blogged about that, but why bother? Nobody cares about LGF anymore.

Johnson has tried to re-invent LGF as an amateur Media Matters, and Patterico caught LGF doing a phony “gotcha” wherein Glenn Beck last June supposedly told his viewers to shoot people in the head.

Patterico links the transcript of the program which makes clear that Beck never said or intended any such thing. What Beck was talking about was a “civil war” within the Democratic Party between pragmatic, mainstream liberals and the revolutionary True Believers who are intent on radical change By Any Means Necessary:

You’ve been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You’re going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you.
They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they’re revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.

You will recall that after the 9/12 March on Washington in 2009, Nancy Pelosi gave a press conference warning about rhetoric that “created a climate in which violence took place” in San Francisco in the late 1970s:

And what Beck was trying to say on his June 2010 program was that Democratic leaders, who believed they could co-opt and use the radicalism of the Left for their political advantage, should worry more about extremism from their own allies than from the conservative opposition. You don’t have to believe that assertion — or be a Beck fan — to see that what the LGF post did was to twist Beck’s meaning into the exact opposite of what Beck intended.

What’s stunning is how easily Johnson — or rather one of his second-banana henchpeople, “Conservative Moonbat” — was gulled into that error. The Beck transcript was available online the whole time. The transcript was located by the third commenter on the LGF post and the fourth commenter observed:

So he says that Dems will have to shoot left-wing radicals “in the head”

So even LGF’ers quickly discovered that the headline on the post and the context-free video clip were misleading. What remains to be learned is whether “Conservative Moonbat” got this video from Raw Story, or vice versa. But it appears that Johnson’s second bananas are increasingly third-rate. What this episode highlights is the cause of LGF’s decline. At some point in 2007, Charles Johnson decided that his conservative allies were unworthy of his allegiance and needed to be destroyed. His war against Pamela Geller was the opening salvo in that campaign. But as Da Tech Guy once advised Joe Scarborough, “Sooner or later you have to join the side you’re on.”

In coalition politics we often find ourselves allied with people with whom we disagree, with people we don’t like, with people who we find in some way embarrassing or obnoxious. It may even be the case that prominent leaders and spokesmen of “our side” appear to be exactly the sort of people with whom we normally can’t stand to associate. We may feel that these leaders and spokesmen are in some way discrediting the cause we support. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, these people are contending for the same cause and are therefore not our political enemies.

Charles Johnson has cut himself off from conservatives and made them his enemies, without actually bothering to declare himself a liberal. Liberals were happy to celebrate Johnson’s defection from the Right, but the one-time dividend of a New York Times profile hasn’t yielded any lasting benefit.

No blog is an island. If you aren’t linked by other blogs, you can’t increase your readership. That which does not grow will eventually begin to die. When Johnson decided to make war on erstwhile blog allies, he also cut himself off from their readers, and without a readership — beyond the dwindling cult of sycophants — he has become irrelevant.

And Pamela Geller “was such a small fish,” y’know? It’s amazing what a “small fish” can accomplish.

She’ll be at CPAC next month with a world-premiere movie.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

2010: The Year of Pamela Geller

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Several readers have contacted CPAC director Lisa DePasquale to nominate me as “Blogger of the Year” and, of course, I’m flattered.

What are the chances I’ll actually win? Not bloody likely, but even if I were somehow to win the award, the first sentence of my acceptance speech would have to be, “Pamela Geller got robbed.”

Even if you disagree with her politically, can there be any argument that Geller and her Atlas Shrugs readers had the biggest impact of any conservative blog in 2010? Donald Douglas features this video of Geller’s appearance in the 60 Minutes story about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy:

(4:18) “Pamela Geller is a key figure in all of this. She is the Islamic center’s most ardent opponent. Geller is a former New York media executive who writes a politically far-right blog that mixes news, opinion and conspiracy theories. . . . Last December, Geller’s blog appears to have been the first to re-name the Islamic center the ‘Mosque at Ground Zero.'”

Again, I say, you don’t have to agree with Geller to recognize her tremendous impact. Criticize her, call her names, whatever — she made a difference. She was also targeted by the harshest attacks that the Left and its media allies could muster. When they call you a “far-right conspiracy theorist,” you know you’re doing something right. Continue reading 2010: The Year of Pamela Geller →

Glenn Beck Criticizing George Soros? Beck’s a Jew-Hater, Says Media Matters

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Sammy Benoit at Yid With Lid disassembles the latest product from the Smear Factory.

Somebody needs to research whether Media Matters rang the anti-Semitism bell when the Left was routinely accusing the Bush administration of being controlled by a sinister cabal of Zionist neo-cons.

Better yet: Why wasn’t it Jew-hating when Media Matters was going after Pamela Geller? (Twenty-one hit pieces in September alone.)

Remember that it is wrong to accuse liberals of not having standards. They have exactly two standards: One for them, and one for everybody else.

UPDATE: Commenter Joe in the previous post links to Jeff Goldstein’s mocking link to a post by Professor Bainbridge telling us that the problem with the conservative movement is . . . Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Mark Levin and Dan Riehl?

Somehow, I’m thinking that the ghost of Russell Kirk might object to being invoked in support of that argument. And, relevantly, is Professor Bainbridge ignoring the charge of anti-Semitism against Kirk?

“And not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States — a position they will have difficulty in maintaining, as matters drift in the Levant.”

Just kidding. I’m not going to do the full-on Media Matters guilt-by-association smear on Professor Bainbridge. Rather, I’m trying to point out that this argumentum ad verecundiam trick of invoking Famous Dead Conservatives to condemn Famous (or Semi-Famous) Living Conservatives is generally invalid — mainly because the Famous Dead Conservatives you cite were, in their time, denounced by their enemies as hateful Know-Nothings.

Trying to use Mark Levin as Exhibit A in an indictment of anti-intellectual populism is likely to prove a difficult project: He’s Phi Beta Kappa and a magna cum laude graduate of Temple University.

UPDATE II: Mess with the bull, you get the horns:

I cite to several intellectuals in Liberty and Tyranny. [Professor Bainbridge] quotes Russell Kirk. I am a big fan of Kirk’s. I even cite him in my book, which the professor clearly has not read. I also cite Tocqueville, Locke, Montesquieu, Smith, Lewis, Friedman, and many others. Somehow I missed the professor. Does that sound like an anti-intellectual? And I routinely do the same on the air.
I don’t cite Bainbridge in anything I do because he is sadly inconsequential. . . . His influence, intellectual or otherwise, appears minimal in academia or elsewhere. I’m sure he’s a smart guy. He might even be likeable. But who knows? Who even cares?

Levin links to Bryan Preston’s fisking of David Frum:

When the Democrats all but locked Republicans out of the health care bill negotiations, Frum denounced . . . the Republicans, for not “compromising.” When the Democrats passed that bill over the objections of the majority of the people, Frum denounced. . . the Republicans. Now that the Republicans have won big over the Democrats, here comes Frum to denounce . . . the Republicans. Seeing a pattern in any of this?

Basic Rule of Politics: Never Lose a Friend By Trying to Placate Your Enemies

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When it comes to a fight, the only true measure of a friend is, “Will they fight?” Befriending cowardly punks is a waste of time. Say what you will about Pamela Geller, she has never backed away from a fight.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times did a hit piece on Geller that I ignored because (a) it was published while I was on my way to Boston; (b) it mostly recycled old stuff that has been floating around the Internet for months or years; and (c) the article was a smear intended to distract us from the current election campaign.

The New York Times can’t expect my assistance in publicizing an article that includes details from Geller’s divorce settlement and the amount of her late husband’s life insurance policy, details which in context amount to fostering a hateful stereotype: “She’s a rich Jew! She’s rich, rich rich! And, oh, by the way, did we forget to mention she’s a Jew?”

The obvious purpose of such an attack is to discourage people from contributing to the causes Pamela advocates, to create the impression that she is rolling in bucks and doesn’t need or deserve the support of readers.

Had Pamela Geller kept silent, had she avoided controversy or only spoken out in defense of fashionable and popular causes, she would never have been subjected to such shameful treatment. But she keeps fighting when others back away and so she is honored with a hit piece which cites that eminent arbiter of online probity, Charles Johnson: “[W]hen people like Pam Geller are the loudest voices out there talking about it, it drowns out everything else and makes everyone look crazy.”

Yeah. He’s an expert on crazy. Continue reading Basic Rule of Politics: Never Lose a Friend By Trying to Placate Your Enemies →

A: Ludicrous Attacks From The Left

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by Smitty

Q: What Do Christine O’Donnell And Pamela Geller Have In Common?

Via Salon, Kristen Wiig’s faux campaign ad from SNL this weekend:

I’m not sure, but the fact that SNL spent precious airtime on this could mean:

  • They’re reaching out to conservative viewers.
  • Their idea pool is completely empty.
  • Supporters of the Bearded Marxist really have a lot of loot to waste, and think that this will somehow help.

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL for U.S. SENATE

At least this attack features Wiig, is mercifully brief, and can be viewed as humor without too much effort.
Undaunted American patriot Pamela Geller, on the other hand, received the full Duranty treatment from the scurrilous New York Times:

Just to show how avid and careful they were in their quest for the facts, they have me video blogging from an Israeli beach. Won’t Fort Lauderdale be surprised to find out that the Zionist war machine is now occupying Florida beaches? Richer still was their reference to “arching her bikini-bared back provocatively.” Please. I was submerged in the water with my kids in the background. Talk about easily titillated! I never arched my back except to swim away. They’ve been spending too much time with the Taliban. And they fault me for equating Palestinians with Hamas. The Palestinians elected Hamas, but who cares?

I’ve met Pamela. Certainly, she’s as human as the rest. Yet I think she deserves a medal for her efforts to bring consciousness to a sleeping country. If you haven’t already, buy the book she co-wrote with Robert Spencer.

Pamela Geller, Undaunted

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She has spoken her truth, stood up to the smears from her enemies (who are also our enemies) and she remains standing.

She vows that we have not heard the last of this, and I know that she can be expected to keep that vow.  For Pamela Geller is clearly someone who believes, as I told you:

Victory is the choice we make when we decide that no defeat can make us stop fighting. If you are defeated today, return to the battlefield tomorrow even more determined to prevail. And no matter how often you lose, you can never be defeated so long as you continue the fight.

Go tell her thanks for her courage.

Valley Of The Shadow Fisks ’60 Minutes’ For You

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by Smitty

It takes a hardcore blogger, with iron will and 18 miles of guts to stomach 60 Minutes, but that’s just what Valley of the Shadow did. Pamela herself responded to the GZM segment here. The lady deserves a medal.

Stand by, VodkaPundit; the “watching the shows that most Americans won’t for health reasons” market just got more crowded.

Last night, Mrs. OtherSmitty and I took in SNL, via TiVo. I’ll admit we rode the fast forward like teens on skateboards. I wonder if the Democrat party kommissars ordering up that tripe realize that transparent propaganda will have the opposite of the desired effect? They’ll be crying Buuuuush in the bushes come 03 November, no doubt.

At any rate, check out Valley of the Shadow.