Category: Shoe Leather Fund

Feminism: A Problem, Not a Solution

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The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved, as I reminded readers a few weeks ago, and you’ll pardon me for quoting myself, but the evidence of elite depravity keeps slapping me in the face. Adriana Miele is a senior at Yale University:

Brunch is the ideal time to do it. Dinner is usually too crowded, and lunch and breakfast are so rushed that I don’t have the time. On any given weekend, I arrive at a dining hall past noon, usually with leggings and a warm, knit sweater. I swipe my card.
Then I count the amount of rapists in the room.
Girls at Columbia and Brown got in trouble for releasing lists with names of known rapists on their campuses. My friends and I have still considered doing the same, but we’re too exhausted to deal with the inevitable backlash.
I can’t speak about other campuses because I know only this one, but Yale has an epidemic. Each day, students fear for their safety as they walk across campus. Whether stepping into the library or taking a seat in a classroom, they’re reminded of some of the most traumatizing moments of their lives.
I think it’s true that you can survive Yale despite an experience of violence, sexual or otherwise. You can do it. I have endured Yale. But you shouldn’t be enduring Yale: you should be attending and enjoying Yale. Women and queer people aren’t thriving at Yale the way we should be. According to the Association of American Universities’ 2015 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault, most of us here at Yale have been physically violated and intimidated. Among straight women, it’s over half; among gender-queer students, it’s over 60 percent. . . .
When over half of your undergraduate female population is being assaulted, you have an epidemic. . . .
Since I started counting, I can’t remember a single weekend without noticing at least one rapist (that I know of) in the room. . . .

Either (a) Yale is the Rape Capital of the World, or (b) Adriana Miele is in the grip of a paranoid delusion. Considering annual tuition at Yale is $47,600, and most of the boys she imagines are “rapists” are mild-mannered brainiac nerds, I rather doubt most women on campus in New Haven “fear for their safety.” Does anyone believe these geeky Yale boys, many of them National Merit Scholar finalists, are committing sexual assault on a regular basis? Is dating a Yale boy like partying with the Hell’s Angels during Bike Week in Daytona? What kind of lunatic would claim such a thing? A quick bit of research turned up an autobiographical essay Adriana Miele published last fall:

I didn’t like Massachusetts because my parents got divorced in Massachusetts, and in Virginia, everything was sunny and perfect and the winters weren’t even that bad. . . . I hated everything about the fact that my parents were no longer together, and I felt like something had died. . . .
One of the few places in New England that didn’t feel heartless and evil was the town of Newton, the place where my brothers, mother, and I all attended school: a private Montessori elementary school for the kids, and Lassell College for our mom, who decided to pursue her bachelor’s degree once my dad left. . . .
My mom . . . met my bearded, New Englander father in D.C. Following the affair with his client’s paralegal, my parents separated, and I became extremely depressed. . . . Out of concern, mom got me a therapist in Newton. . . .
My therapist’s office had a big, comfy green chair and bookshelf full of games and books with titles that mentioned “childhood trauma” and “anxiety,” but we didn’t use those words. Dr. S taught me card games and tried to get me to talk about my father and stepmother.

Well, you can read the whole thing, but the short version is, her father is a selfish creep and her parents’ divorce when she was 8 years old inflicted a psychological wound in Adriana Miele from which she has never recovered, and therefore she hates and fears men. This probably explains why she got into Yale, really. Elite schools require applicants to submit essays along with their applications. Because of grade inflation and programs that teach kids specifically how to take standardized tests, lots of kids finish high school with near-perfect GPAs and high SAT scores. The admissions essay is a way for students to signify their “progressive” politics by telling stories about themselves, signalling their solidarity with radical faculty on the admissions committee.

This is why there are dozens of Adriana Miele clones on all the Ivy League campuses, see? If it weren’t for their feminist “Look at Me I’m an Oppressed Victim” narratives, they’d be attending one of those overpriced second-tier liberal arts schools that exist merely to provide a pseudo-Ivy experience for rich kids who got rejected by Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia. Adriana Miele leveraged her victimhood (and half-Peruvian ancestry, to check the “diversity” box) into an acceptance at Yale, so that now her Daddy can pay the tuition bill while she proclaims to the world how all the men at Yale are rapists.

How could anyone even stand to be in the same room with a whiny overprivileged brat like Adriana Miele? The belief that Ivy League kids are “the best and brightest” in America was never really true, and the prestige of that bogus “meritocracy” continues to decline. There is no standardized test for virtue, so maybe the boys at Yale are as bad as the girls at Yale, and rape is everywhere on campus.

Simple question, Adriana: Isn’t your stepmother a feminist, too? Hasn’t all this “liberation” and “empowerment” of the past 40 or 50 years produced a lot of messed-up kids like you? And what about those rapists at Yale, huh? Here’s $20 that says every one of those Yale boys you’re accusing of being sexual predators is the son of a woman who considers herself to be a feminist. Two generations after “Second Wave” feminism emerged from the New Left in the 1960s, it is nearly impossible for young fools to understand the difference between (a) the traditional values that feminism condemns as “patriarchy,” and (b) the selfish attitudes that feminists celebrate as “liberation.” If feminism is to a great extent the cause of your problems, what kind of fool would insist that more feminism is the solution to your problems?

Answer: The kind of fool who attends Yale University.

* * * A SPECIAL REQUEST * * *

The Sex Trouble project, exploring the depths of feminist insanity, is an exercise in reader-sponsored journalism, and I have fallen far behind in my thank-you notes to those of you who have generously contributed. Your generosity would be especially appreciated today, because I’ve got until 6 p.m. ET to hustle up an extra $82 in the tip jar. This involves a brief if rather embarrassing story that might amuse readers.

A few weeks ago, things were going splendidly. My Army son came home for a visit, and we all gathered ’round the TV to cheer Alabama to victory in the BCS National Championship game. Meanwhile, I had received a belated payment for some work I’d done two years ago, which enabled us to catch up some overdue bills and I even took my wife out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, $24. The PayPal account was doing OK, and I paid the phone bill from that and noticed a surplus sufficient that I could afford to order $58 in feminist books as further research for the second edition of Sex Trouble. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Well, the Great Blizzard of 2016 didn’t create any particular expense, but it did distract me quite a bit, and somehow I overlooked the cable bill, which is also the Internet bill, and the thievish scoundrels nice people at Our Friendly Local Cable Provider told me on the phone the other day that I have until 6 p.m. ET today to come up with an unusually large sum (overdue amount, fees, blah blah blah) or else, no Internet.

And obviously, no Internet = no blogging.

OK, check my PayPal account and then check the balance remaining in our regular account and . . . Yeah, I’m $82 short. And $82, of course, is equal to the sum of $24 (lunch at the Mexican restaurant) and the $58 I spent on books. It’s as if God had been watching every penny and decided, “Yeah, let’s remind him who’s running the show.”

“Fear not!” I told my dear wife. “The tip-jar hitters have never failed me yet. Just maybe say an extra prayer, OK?”

Pushing it to the edge of catastrophe is a bad habit, but there were times I hit the road on The Shoe Leather Fund with no other plan for how I’d get back home. Really, I’m too old to be doing things the gonzo way and should be more prudent about such matters, but for the time being there’s a deficit of $82 and whatever you can chip in — $5, $10, $20 — will be deeply appreciated. Contrary to what feminists claim, patriarchy is usually just another word for “paying the bills.”

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Never doubt God answers prayers. Thanks in advance.




 

Feminism’s Attack on ‘Institutionalized, Normative Heterosexuality’

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If you’ve read my book Sex Trouble, you understand how I focus on the gap between feminism’s exoteric discourse (what feminists say when seeking support from the general public) and feminism’s esoteric doctrine (the beliefs shared among intellectuals and activists who lead and control the movement). Like other movements of the radical Left, feminism preaches one thing to outsiders while teaching something else to insiders, and this deception is both deliberate and necessary. Feminists must conceal the truth about their agenda, because if taxpayers knew the ideology that is being propagated in our universities, this would cause such a political uproar that legislators would zero out the budgets of Women’s Studies programs and eliminate funding for much of the “research” done by academic feminists. Please read this very carefully:

Over the last decade and more . . . feminists have been analysing how normative heterosexuality affects the lives of heterosexuals (see Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 1993; Richardson, 1996; Jackson, 1999; Ingraham, 1996, 1999). In so doing they have drawn on earlier feminists, such as Charlotte Bunch (1975), Adrienne Rich (1980) and Monique Wittig (1992), who related heterosexuality to the perpetuation of gendered divisions of labour and male appropriation of women’s productive and reproductive capacities. Indeed, Rich’s concept of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ could be seen as a forerunner of ‘heteronormativity’ and I would like to preserve an often neglected legacy of the former concept: that institutionalized, normative heterosexuality regulates those kept within its boundaries as well as marginalizing and sanctioning those outside them. The term ‘heteronormativity’ has not always captured this double-sided social regulation. Feminists have a vested interest in what goes on within heterosexual relations because we are concerned with the ways in which heterosexuality depends upon and guarantees gender division. . . . [T]he analysis of heteronormativity needs to be rethought in terms of what is subject to regulation on both sides of the normatively prescribed boundaries of heterosexuality: both sexuality and gender. With this in mind, this article re-examines the intersections between gender, sexuality in general and heterosexuality in particular. How these terms are defined is clearly consequential for any analysis of linkages between them. There is no consensus on the question of definition, in large part because gender, sexuality and heterosexuality are approached from a variety of perspectives focusing on different dimensions of the social. . . . Sexuality, gender and heterosexuality intersect in variable ways within and between different dimensions of the social — and these intersections are also, of course, subject to historical change along with cultural and contextual variability.

That is from a 2006 article in the journal Feminist Theory by University of York Professor Stevi Jackson. It is one of 77 citations that Google Scholar shows for The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power, a 1998 book by Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson. The authors are not “fringe” figures within academic feminism. Professor Holland (London South Bank University) and Professor Ramazanoglu (Goldsmiths College, University of London) co-authored the 2002 textbook Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices, while Professor Thomson (Director of the University of Sussex Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth) is author of the 2009 textbook Unfolding Lives: Youth, Gender and Change. The influential academic authors of The Male in the Head describe their work as a “detailed investigation of the social construction of sexuality” in which they “develop a feminist theory which shows the power of heterosexuality as masculine” — a theory that is certainly not new. Let’s recite a few examples of feminist theory.

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Charlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron (1975)

“I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
— Marilyn Frye, “A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies,” speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980

“Since sex is something men do to women . . . men dominate and control women. . . .
“In other words, heterosexuality is the foundation of the social structure of male dominance, and successfully attacking it could bring down the whole house. . . .
“The need for a unified feminist theory of sexuality is clear. If one concludes, as many feminists have, that heterosexuality is the primary and most powerful mechanism of social control, then understanding its meaning in all forms is imperative if male dominance is ever to be overcome.”
— S.P. Schacht and Patricia H. Atchison, “Heterosexual Instrumentalism: Past and Future Directions,” in Heterosexuality: A Feminism and Psychology Reader, edited by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger (1993)

“There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege. . . . [T]he interconnections of systems are reflected in the concept of heteropatriarchy, the dominance associated with a gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm. . . .
“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

Feminism’s anti-male ideology necessarily becomes an anti-heterosexual ideology. When I describe feminism as a war against human nature, I’m not exaggerating. The final chapter of The Male in the Head — as I’ve shown, a widely-cited book by respected academic feminists — is entitled, “Unnatural Heterosexuality,” and these eminent British professors advocate resistance to heterosexuality:

Men are routinely accessing male power over women, whether or not they . . . intend to exercise such power, but they are also constrained by the construction of adult heterosexuality as masculinity. We argue that sexually young people are all in the same boat, in that heterosexuality is masculinity only thinly disguised but . . . that resistance is possible and heterosexuality could be otherwise. . . .
Resisting heterosexuality is not only a question of how young people choose their sexual partners; resistance includes a critical exploration and disruption of desire, embodiment and gender. Although very few of the young people in our studies identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, such identities, while not freeing them from the gender relations of heterosexuality, can afford them a degree of freedom in the invention and negotiation of their sexual relationships.
Some young people are clearly resisting the pressures of heterosexuality and searching for other ways of being sexual. . . .
While young people’s resistance to heterosexuality can be socially constructed in varying ways . . . the potential for young people to have a subversive or transformative effect on sexual relationships appears to be limited. Analysis of the strategies of resistance . . . became important in our understanding of the location of male power in heterosexuality.

These claims are based on research that was funded by British taxpayers under the pretext of AIDS prevention (!!!) and let me ask the reader to imagine what kind “research” is produced when feminist professors get taxpayer money to study rape, domestic violence, prostitution or any other subject pertaining to sex (or “gender”) for which they may be able to obtain a government grant. When researchers begin with an ideological bias against men (as all feminists do), we can expect them to find the shadow of sinister “male power” wherever they look. This routinely results in research calculated to influence policy (including policy affecting school curricula) in ways that “have a subversive or transformative effect,” as the professors say, so as to undermine “male power” and “the gender relations of heterosexuality.”

When I quote what feminists actually write in their books and journal articles, most people — including people who call themselves “feminists” — are astonished. What is revealed by these quotes is not merely feminism’s implacable hostility toward “institutionalized, normative heterosexuality” (i.e., what most of us think of as human nature), but also the yawning gap between feminism’s exoteric discourse and its esoteric doctrine. Academic feminists have succeeded in concealing their work from external scrutiny in large measure because critics of feminism have failed to understand the importance of what is being taught in university departments of Women Studies. Even though the total number of students in these programs (about 90,000 annually in the United States) is a small fraction of overall undergraduate enrollment, they have a large influence within the feminist movement. Furthermore, because Women’s Studies is an “interdisciplinary” program, the ideology promulgated by these professors has an influence throughout the curriculum in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

While the adherents of feminism benefit from taxpayer subsidies and grants from major philanthropic foundations, what resources are available to those who oppose this radical ideology? You.

Yes, that’s right: You, my readers, have made possible the months of research that have enabled me to bring to light the inner workings of the Feminist-Industrial Complex. The fact that readers are astonished by what I’ve found — e.g., Women’s Studies textbooks that quite literally promote witchcraft — is a clue to how far behind we are in doing the work that needs to be done to defend our culture from feminism, a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It.

While working on the second edition of Sex Trouble, I’ve frequently felt an uncomfortable sense of loneliness, as if no one else is paying attention to this problem, as if no one (besides my regular readers) understands why this work matters. So I have begun conversations with a few friends to create an organization that can expand and continue this project. However, that’s going to require time to accomplish and — right here, right now — I’m facing a serious cash crunch. The electric bill, the cable bill, and the phone bill must be paid, and amid the annual summer blog slump, this has produced a crisis to which the only solution seems to be a repetition of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

Honestly, I hate having to do this, and am working to relieve the necessity of these occasional emergency tip-jar appeals, but right now whatever you can give — $5, $10, $20 — would be deeply appreciated. Thanks in advance, and thanks also for your prayers that reading all this crazy feminist stuff doesn’t melt my brain.

 

My SWATting: Perpetrator Reaches Plea Agreement in Federal Felony Case UPDATE: Investigation Is Continuing

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A letter arrived by Federal Express today from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C.:

Dear Mr. McCain:
We have learned that you are a victim of criminal activity involving conduct known as “swatting.” . . .
A federal investigation has revealed that several individuals participated in a scheme to commit swatting in the course of which these individuals committed various federal criminal offenses. You were a victim of criminal conduct which resulted in swattings in that you were swatted.
A federal investigation has reveal that several individuals participated in a scheme to commit doxing, in the course of which, these individuals committed various federal criminal offenses. Personal identifying information associated with you was posted on the website used by these individuals.
One of the individuals who participated in this scheme to commit doxing has been charged with the commission of a federal offense related to that activity. . . . This individual has agreed to accept responsibility for the commission of this offense and will be entering a guilty plea in Federal Court in Washington, D.C.
This letter is intended to notify you that you are a victim and that, as a victim, you have certain rights pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 3771. . .

Readers of this blog never previously knew that I was SWATted, because I never mentioned this incident. Nor have I described here the numerous ways in which I have been harassed — costing me thousands of dollars in lost revenue and harm to my personal and professional reputation — because I made up my mind to tell the truth about certain people who didn’t want the truth to be known.

“Never Doubt That God Answers Prayer,” and thanks to all the readers who know the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

P.S.: Don’t jump to conclusions. I don’t know how (or even if) this SWATting is connected to the general pattern of harassment I have experienced since May 2012, and this incident occurred after I had moved from my former Maryland residence. Until I can get more information and provide it to readers, I ask that commenters refrain from speculation about who was involved in this federal crime, or what their motive might have been to target me. Speaking personally, however, I don’t believe in coincidences. — RSM

UPDATE (1:30 p.m. EDT): Just spoke to an official who explained that (a) the indictment is “under seal”; (b) the perpetrator who has reached a plea agreement cannot be named; and (c) the investigation is continuing. From this we may surmise, based upon knowledge of similar cases, that the perpetrator has made a full confession and is cooperating with the continuing investigation of his or her co-conspirators.

By the time the full scope of this conspiracy becomes public, it is likely that we we learn a great deal about the methods by which these criminals operate. Let it be known that the feds are getting serious about prosecuting “SWATting,” and the associated activity of “doxing.” Let justice be done. Let the guilty fear punishment for their crimes, so that the innocent need never fear. — RSM

 

‘Like a Plot Twist in a Faulkner Novel’

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ITAWAMBA COUNTY, Mississippi
Working from an enormous cabin in the middle of a 37-acre forest, it feels like I’m in a remote wilderness, although I’m actually just 15 miles from Tupelo. Our accommodations Monday night were graciously provided by a local Tea Party lady who knows Ali Akbar, and the mailing address here is Mantachie (population 1,107), but we’re outside the city limits, so the evocative “Itawamba County” was obviously a more appropriate dateline for my latest column:

State Sen. Chris McDaniel finished up an early morning campaign stop Monday by urging his supporters to “push like you’ve never pushed before” to get voters to the polls in Tuesday’s Republican primary. Polls show the Tea Party-backed challenger is neck-and-neck with incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran and turnout will be the decisive factor in a bitterly contested GOP fight that has drawn national attention.
“If we can unseat a 42-year incumbent, it will send shock waves through this country,” McDaniel told about 40 of his supporters who turned out for a breakfast meeting at Chick-fil-A in Tupelo.
The shock waves of a McDaniel victory would be a rebuke not only to the Republican establishment that has poured millions into Cochran’s re-election effort, but also to pundits who have been trying to write the obituary of the Tea Party movement. Regardless of the outcome Tuesday, the united effort of grassroots conservatives in the Mississippi primary have shown that the Tea Party is still very much alive, lifting up McDaniel — a young state senator previously unknown outside his district — to fight a down-to-the-wire campaign against a powerful incumbent with universal statewide name recognition. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Today we’ve got a four-hour drive back to Hattiesburg for what we hope will be a victory celebration tonight. Your prayers are most certainly welcome and, of course: Hit the freaking tip jar!

 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

ROAD TRIP!

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With little advance warning, I have decided to hit the road today, bound for New Orleans and the Republican Leadership Conference:

Republicans who can’t wait for an advance preview of the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign should mark the last weekend in May on their calendars and book their flights for New Orleans, site of the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference. Among the names already announced for the three-day event are Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, Tennesssee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Florida Rep. Allen West, businessman Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Tonight I’ll be in Atlanta and tomorrow will traverse Alabama and Mississippi.




 

Mopery, With Intent to Lurk

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Mopery (noun) — “The action of committing a minor or petty offence, such as loitering, etc.; contravention of a trivial or hypothetical law, esp. when used as an excuse to harass or arrest a person against whom no more serious crime can be charged.”

Whenever citing the list of heinous torts alleged against us by lying felon Brett Kimberlin — “malicious prosecution, conspiracy to abuse process, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and stalking” — John Hoge always hastens to add, “Mopery, with intent to lurk.”

Perhaps even aggravated mopery, in the first degree.

Alas, being sued by The World’s Most Evil Pro Se Litigant™ does not spare defendants the hassle and expense of defending ourselves, and so getting this absurd case laughed out of court is far more serious business than these lighthearted jests might suggest.

“Kimberlin’s malicious prosecution and conspiracy to abuse process claims appear to be a classic ‘accuse the accuser’ tactic — he filed a series of ‘peace order’ requests and criminal complaints against his critics, and when some filed requests against him, he calls it malicious prosecution and abuse of process. The complaint’s description of this chain of events dishonestly omits Kimberlin’s own filings.”
— Ken White, “The Popehat Signal: Help Fight Evil In Maryland

Ditto, says defendant McCain, as to every other spurious claim in Kimberlin’s suit. Who has harassed, defamed and stalked whom? And who has organized a conspiracy against his enemies? This is why Neal Rauhauser’s confessed role in Kimberlin’s lawsuit is so important.

Perhaps you should ask Patterico what manner of mischief Neal Rauhauser has perpetrated over the years or, for that matter, you should read for yourself what Rauhauser (alias “Stranded Wind”) wrote on July 4, 2011: “Weinergate: Patterico’s Penalization.”

Bad causes attract bad people, and Neal Rauhauser’s association with Brett Kimberlin shows what manner of “progressive” client a disgraced Democrat campaign consultant inevitably finds. Kimberlin’s “accuse the accusers” tactics in the courtroom furnish fuel for online defamation by the army of slanderous sockpuppets that Rauhauser has helped assemble. John Hoge cites a typical example:

I will say that essentially all the “facts” cited by Xenophon are not factual. They are demonstrably false. Of course, this doesn’t surprise me. On multiple occasions, I’ve watched Brett Kimberlin lie in court, so why would I expect him or his lackeys to tell the truth any place else.
I’ll make sure that Xenophon’s post gets archived and forwarded to my lawyers.

Tell the truth about Brett Kimberlin, and he then enlists liars like Rauhauser and “Xenophon” to lie about you. The lies that have been endlessly repeated about me, I will not specify here, but the purpose of such smears is obvious: In order to explain why honest people say bad things about Kimberlin, his army of liars must discredit the truth-tellers. Once you know their motives, their methods make perfect sense.

“There’s nothing left-wing monsters hate more than people shining the truth on their acts of godless hatred, harassment, and intimidation.”
— Donald Douglas

“I have watched how the Left rolls: Target, Isolate, Attack and Destroy.”
— Lady Liberty

As Sister Toldjah says, this is all about “shutuppery.”

Can you guess what I don’t plan to do?

One million dollars — that’s the amount of punitive damages that convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin is seeking from myself and four other bloggers in a lawsuit recently filed in Maryland. Kimberlin filed this lawsuit pro se (charging “malicious prosecution, conspiracy to abuse process, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and stalking”) more than two weeks ago, but I haven’t written much about this suit because I haven’t yet retained counsel.
The fact that Democrats and their liberal allies in the media will not condemn Brett Kimberlin has angered me since May 2012, when I first started covering the story . . . Because Kimberlin once claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle, he was celebrated by many liberals — including Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau — as a political prisoner of sorts. Liberals ignored the facts about the crimes of which Kimberlin was convicted in 1981 and sentenced to 50 years in federal prison. He eventually served only 17 years of that sentence, and since his release in 2001, Kimberlin has promoted himself as a progressive, an “activist-musician” as the Washington Post’s Monica Hesse called Kimberlin in a 2007 feature profile.
The true story of the “Speedway Bomber” who terrorized an Indiana town, planting a bomb that blew off the leg of a Vietnam veteran, evidently isn’t something the Washington Post considers newsworthy. And neither has the Post shown any interest in Kimberlin’s legal war against blogger Aaron Walker that resulted in Walker being briefly arrested last year and ordered by a Maryland judge to stop writing about Kimberlin. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Today, I’m planning a road trip from the Undisclosed Location to a Mysterious Destination for Journalistic Purposes I Can’t Reveal. Loyal readers have been supporting the Shoe Leather Fund generously for years, and your contributions have been profoundly appreciated, even if I haven’t found time to thank each of you directly. I always figure that you’re paying me to keep blogging, and time spent writing “thank you” e-mails is time not spent providing the work you’re paying me to do. Nevertheless, please do not doubt my gratitude, nor the gratitude of my family, for every $5, $10, $20 contribution.

Let’s do the math: If 500 readers gave $20 each, that’s $10,000. And if that happened twice a week, every week for the next year, by September 2014, that would be One Meel-lion Dollars — with $40,000 left over for coffee, cigarettes, cheap motels and road food.

What the hell, huh? Nobody ever thought I’d make it to Wasilla.





 

Headin’ to South Cackalacky!

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There’s a debate tomorrow night in Charleston, Ed Morrissey interviewed Curtis Bostic this morning, and Ann Coulter says:

There’s no “win” for the GOP with Sanford, except that Mark Sanford is bored and no one will hire him.  So the country has to take one for the team — Team Sanford!
The country is important, but Mark Sanford thinks his redemption is more important. . . .
Meanwhile, Sanford’s runoff opponent, Curtis Bostic, is a grassroots, fiscal conservative, former marine and practicing lawyer, who would be a dream candidate for the GOP in any congressional district. He, too, has found his soulmate. In fact, he’s married to her. When Curtis Bostic tells his staff he’s hiking the Appalachian Trail, he’s hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Any idiot who votes for Sanford in the runoff is working for the Obama administration.
Vote for Curtis Bostic in the GOP runoff election on April 2.
Your friend, Ann Coulter

No time to say more. Gotta hit the road.

Can the Shoe Leather Fund Send Me to South Carolina? O, Ye of Little Faith!

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OK, I never heard the name “Curtis Bostic” until last week, when he finished second to Mark Sanford in the South Carolina 1st District primary. Now, Bostic has been endorsed by Rick Santorum and polls show Bostic doing better than Sanford against Stephen Colbert’s sister.

So it’s obviously time for a road trip and, with the GOP runoff next Tuesday, it looks like I’ll spend Easter weekend in South Carolina.

This will be the first road trip in my new role as Editor in Chief of ViralRead, which is kind of appropriate in that I first met Ali Akbar during the now-legendary NY-23 Doug Hoffman campaign that started this whole gonzo campaign-trail trip that has since taken me as far as Alaska, to provide on-the-scene coverage. And so Ali double-dog dared me: He’s created a special ViralRead shoe-leather account and challenged me to raise $1,000 to cover this trip.

Can our readers do it? I have no doubt.

There have been times of doubt these past five years. The morning I left for Alaska in 2010 — on a one-way ticket, counting on readers to make sure I got home — my wife was in tears. But I told her, “This is what the readers are paying for, honey. It’s show time.”

A few days later, I was watching Todd Palin read stories to Trig in their living room in Wasilla. Readers were amazed — heck, my wife was amazed — but the thing that amazes me is that people don’t believe miracles can happen. Our entire lives are miraculous, if you think about it, and our doubt is actually ingratitude for God’s many blessings.

Think about this: On July 1, 1863, my great-grandfather was in the opening fight at Gettysburg. An illiterate farmboy, a private in the 13th Alabama, he was captured when the Union’s Iron Brigade turned the right flank of Archer’s brigade just east of Willoughby Run. Pvt. Winston Wood Bolt spent the next two years as a prisoner of war in Fort Delaware, where the inmates ate rats to survive. But if he had not been captured, I might not be here.

Two days after my great-grandfather was captured, the 13th Alabama, as part of Pettigrew’s Division, took part in what became known as Pickett’s Charge. The regiment went over the wall at Cemetery Ridge and suffered devastating casualties in that conflict.

A miracle, you see? And my own father — grandson of Private Bolt — was wounded within an inch of his life by German shrapnel while fighting the Nazis in France. The rest of his life, he bore that scar on the back of his neck, and you could see that if the shrapnel had penetrated another inch, he would have died that day in 1944, but when they got him to the field hospital, the medic told him, “You got a million-dollar wound, Mack.” It wasn’t bad enough to kill or permanently maim him, but he wouldn’t have to go back into combat again.

If my very existence is a miracle, why should I ever doubt that, if there is work for me to do in South Carolina this Easter weekend, our readers will make it happen? There are signs and omens, my friends. This runoff in South Carolina is important, or I never would have noticed it. And if Ali doubts you can send me there, let him doubt no more.

Contribute what you can — $5, $10, $25, whatever you can afford — and help make another miracle happen. This gonzo experiment in reader-supported journalism has only just begun, and the five most important words in the English language are still . . .

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!