Letter to a Damned Fool

Posted on | December 4, 2010 | 13 Comments

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

Nothing Says ‘Merry Christmas’ . . .

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 62 Comments

. . . 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.

Good News! Unemployment Hits 9.8%

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 11 Comments

It’s the most wonderful time of the year isn’t it? New York Times:

In a jolting surprise to the economic recovery and market expectations, the United States economy added just 39,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

Did somebody say “surprise”? Yes! Which can only mean . . . ? Yes, it’s time for the magic word!

Employers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased, vindicating the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump more money into the economy to spur growth.

Everybody loves unexpected surprises this time of year, don’t they? And why are you so very merry this Christmas season? Because when I said, “Hey, maybe Glenn Beck’s got a point with this gold thing” — in May, when gold was under $1,200 an ounce — you listened.

You did listen, didn’t you?

Gold prices jumped back above $1,400 an ounce Friday to settle at a fresh record-high as the U.S. dollar slid following a surprisingly weak report on the nation’s job market.
February gold futures rose $16.90, or 1.2%, to settle at a nominal all-time high of $1,406.20 an ounce.

Yes, you are having a happy, happy holiday! And what makes it even happier? Because you know that those 1,800 soon-to-be-unemployed Democrat congressional staffers will be entering the worst U.S. job market in 30 years!

Ho, ho, ho!

UPDATE: And welcome, Instapundit readers!

VIDEO: Mall Food Court Surprised by Flash-Mob Singing ‘Hallelujah Chorus’

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 12 Comments

(Hat-tip: Shona Darress.)

Dear Zionist Overlords . . .

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 9 Comments

. . . it looks like Helen Thomas is onto our game here:

“We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is. . . .”

Of course, Helen hasn’t yet figured out that the blogosphere is also owned by rich Jews, mainly because y’all were so clever as to put a poor Jew like Yid for Lid in charge of the online element of our conspiracy.

As always, your obedient Gentile lapdogs stand ready to do your bidding but . . . more shekels, please. IYKWIMAITYD.

Malkin and Coulter Underrated?

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 14 Comments

Conservative Home, a new Web site run by people you never heard of, has published the results of a survey of “1,152 Republican activists” identifying their favorite pundits.

The top five are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — i.e., the top talk-radio star, three Fox News hosts and and a Washington Post columnist who appears frequently on Fox News.

Before you say “epistemic closure,” let me point out that Michelle Malkin is ranked No. 7 and Ann Coulter No. 9 on the list. Both of them are more conservative than O’Reilly or Newt Gingrich (No. 6) and both of them have written important, heavily-researched books that were also huge bestsellers.

Malkin’s Invasion must be ranked as the best book on immigration policy since Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation (which is very high praise) and In Defense of Internment . . . my God, talk about poking the hornet’s nest of political correctness with a stick.

As for Coulter, her books are much better than is suspected by people who know her only for her snarky jabs on TV. As for her right-wing bona fides, I still remember the shock of reading Godless, in which she described Joe Sobran as her “mentor.” If you know anything about Sobran, that one reference ought to give you pause the next time you hear some idiot dismiss Coulter as a “neo-con.” 

Malkin and Coulter and George Will (No. 10) would all rank above O’Reilly in any fair ranking of conservative pundits, but “favorite” is not the same as “most conservative,” of course. I’m also surprised that Mark Levin didn’t make the list, but you see that — with the exception of Limbaugh and Will — the basic factor here seems to be, “Who gets the most airtime on Fox?”

The Conservative Home editors themselves have other concerns:

Worryingly, columnists often regarded as among the most thoughtful conservatives did not fare well. David Brooks of the New York Times only mustered a mention from 1.3% of the panel (14 people). Ross Douthat, also at the NYT, won just four votes and Mike Gerson, Washington Post writer and former speechwriter to President Bush, gets just three mentions.

These omissions are entirely understandable:

• David Brooks is not a conservative, period. He has described himself as a “moderate,” and I say we take his word for it.
• Douthat is conservative and, as the editors say, “thoughtful,” but his thoughtfulness manifests itself as an unwillingness to reach out, smack liberals upside the head and yell, “You’re wrong!” (Metaphorically, of course.) A good conservative pundit has to be confrontational toward liberalism, and aggressively so. This has been true of every great pundit of the Right since Buckley smacked Yale upside the head in 1951.
• The basic problem with Gerson can best be summarized in the phrase “former speechwriter to President Bush.” Gerson recently wrote a good column, which makes him 1-for-the-season by my count. In general, Gerson’s prose is boring and bland. David Frum considers Gerson his intellectual inferior and this is one point where even Frum’s worst enemies wouldn’t argue with him.

It is possible to be erudite and serious without being pompous, snobby, wishy-washy or dull, and the Brooks/Douthat/Gerson troika can’t seem to transcend that hurdle.

Narcissism, Isolation and Trolls

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 35 Comments

“The 19th-century cult of success . . . measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against  an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. . . . ‘By the end of the 19th century,’ writes John Cawelti [in his 1965 book, Apostles of the Self-Made Man], ‘self-help books were dominated by the ethos of salesmanship and boosterism. Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.’ . . . The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captains of industry gave way to the confidence men, the masters of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

The progressive site Mahablog awarded its “even dumber than Jim Hoft” award to Donald Douglas at American Power and, when Professor Douglas attempted to defend himself, he drew this trollish response:

I figured the cops finally had you on moral’s charges when you exposed your thimble-sized member to the JH School boys gym class. I guess there wasn’t enough evidence, huh?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What kind of person resorts to such abusive insults over an entirely moot political discussion about WikiLeaks? (Moot, I say, because the public-policy response to WikiLeaks is not going to be influenced by blogs.) Well, it would be simple enough to say that the kind of person who does this is the kind of person who can’t distinguish between plural and possessive, so as to write “moral’s charge” (wrong) instead of “morals charge” (correct).

Wednesday, Donald linked to an American Thinker column by blogger Robin of Berkeley, a psychotherapist who wondered about the trolls who plagued her own blog:

Where do these trolls come from? Where do they live and breed?
Do they write in dank basement rooms while their bedraggled girlfriends (or moms) pick up their dirty shorts? Do they intermix trolling with downloading internet porn?  (I’m not being snarky here; I’d bet good money that violent smut gives them endless inspiration.)

Leaving aside such speculation, Robin proceeds:

The creepy thing is that in the minds of trolls, and other extreme Progressives, their behavior is as normal as apple pie. This is because their worldview is amoral and asocial. Therefore, the merit of hurling insults at a complete stranger is a no-brainer.
Many leftists are positively clueless about how to conduct themselves in a civilized manner.  Believe me, I have tried over and over to engage some — any — in a respectful discussion.
Although I rarely give up on people, I have had to conclude that many extreme progressives are not simply choosing to be vicious. They do not know how to restrain themselves.

Which is exactly right: These trolls are asocial and incapable of restraint. And Robin of Berkeley lays her finger on an important point in suggesting trolls “intermix trolling with downloading internet porn.”

Like online porn, trolling is a secretive, solitary, anti-social vice, pursued in anonymity. Julie Zhuo of the New York Times emphasized anonymity as the decisive factor in the behavior of trolls. It is fun to imagine a sort of “To Catch a Predator” sting operation on trolls, with Chris Hansen confronting these people with their comments: “Did you write this?”

Anonymity is clearly a factor in the anti-social behavior of trolls, but what about isolation? In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch analyzed how changes in social structures, including the family and the workplace, created different behavioral incentives and a shift of values. Whereas for most of the 19th century, the literature of success had emphasized values of discipline and self-denial, the rise of the large bureaucratic corporation resulted in a greater emphasis on the “management of interpersonal relations” and conveying the impression of “personal magnetism.” This progressed over the decades until, by the 1970s, everyone nodded in recognition at Lasch’s description:

“The upwardly mobile corporate executive . . . advances through the corporate ranks not by serving the organization but by convincing his associates that he possesses the attributes of a ‘winner.'”

The flinging apart of giant corporation — downsizing, outsourcing, telecommuting, etc. — has radically changed the typical work environment in the 30 years since Lasch made that observation. “Interpersonal relations” have little or no meaning in such careers as software programming. For many others, career communications occur far more frequently through text messages and e-mails than through face-to-face conversations. And for many, “virtual” relationships — whether personal or professional — with faraway strangers are more meaningful than relationships with the people they actually meet daily in real life. (My wife: “How was your day?” Me: “Great. I just got Instalanched.”)

What does this dynamic mean to the progressive troll? In his virtual world, he feels the need to “represent” as a loyal member of the online tribe. So when a hostile target comes into view — e.g., the self-proclaimed neocon Donald Douglas — there is a competition among the trolls to make the most vicious attack possible. Through these attacks, the troll who excels others in obxnoxious thereby enhances both his self-esteem and his status within the virtual community.

A narcissistic quest for admiration — if only self-admiration — is therefore deeply implicated in the behavior of trolls. Their comments are neither informative nor entertaining, because that is not their purpose. They are engaged in destructive activity and expect to be admired for it by others who share their opinion that the target is worthy of destruction.

Their relevant peer-group (whose admiration they seek) are not people they actually know in real-life, but rather their fellow members of the ideologically organized virtual community. And this sort of behavior is not limited to blog trolls. Read more

Happy Hannukah From Sarah Palin

Posted on | December 3, 2010 | 2 Comments

Her Facebook page:

As Jewish families all over the country and the world come together to celebrate the festival of lights – the miracle of one day’s worth of oil lasting for eight – we are reminded that this holiday is also about the miracle of taking a stand against impossible odds, surviving existential threats, and staying true to one’s values and beliefs through it all.
More than two thousand years after the Maccabees rebelled against their oppressors and reconsecrated their Holy Temple, the Jewish people continue to face threats to their existence, and they continue to persevere and overcome great odds. Today we should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that the miracle of a Jewish state endures forever. The dreidel is one of the most familiar symbols of Hanukkah, with Hebrew letters on it representing the phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham – “a great miracle happened there.” Indeed a great miracle is still happening there. Todd and I wish the Jewish community a very Happy Hanukkah.

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