I really enjoy Mark Rizzn Hopkins as a writer, as he often challenges things I’d consider the norm and makes me think. It also helps that he’s a great bloke who I have plenty of time for, but I also don’t always agree with him, and I don’t agree with this: Blogger Michelle Malkin Attacked in Denver near DNC08.
Now straight up I’ve read Malkin for years, and HotAir is one of the few political blogs I still read (she doesn’t often post there, but she owns the site). I’ve always considered her one of the more articulate on the right, although I don’t always agree with what she (and HotAir) has to say. However, lets look at what happened here: Malkin inserted herself into a crowd of left wing loons and got yelled at. She’s crazy brave for doing so, but was there ever going to be any other response from that group of people? Nope. It was made for news, she went in looking for that footage, looking for the attention this story is bringing in. That doesn’t justify the behavior, but it was predictable.
In terms of Alex Jones, although very rarely I may have linked to him, the guy is hard core fringe, complete with loopy conspiracy theories. That he was in Denver doesn’t make him representative of the left; in a free society people are still entitled to protest in a town during a convention, even if (and this is the funniest thing of all) they are trying to levitate the local mint 🙂
Now I know Mark is right wing inclined and there’s nothing wrong with that, but he missed the trap on this one: this whole event was created for a Fox News crowd that likes to think that “leftists” as FoxNews likes to label them are all raving loons and anti-America. It’s right wing propaganda: inflame a situation by putting yourself in the middle of it for the footage that is sure to follow, and after all, was that Vodka-Pundit/ PJMedia reporter there by accident? Listen to the language before the incident took place, the snide tone labeling the left collectively instead of noting correcting that what they were filming was a far left fringe gathering.
In terms of reflecting poorly on new media, I don’t get Mark on this. All it shows is that every part of society has its fringe groups, not that we are all collectively on the fringe ourselves. That the old media likes to paint a negative brush isn’t new, but that’s more to do with their fear of the competition. Highlighting 3 unknown loon bloggers doesn’t mean that the left are fully backing what happened either. I’ve known people on both sides of politics, and most don’t support this sort of stupidity full stop, they don’t need to say it out loud to somehow distance themselves from it. The presumption should always be on the positive, not the negative, and in falling towards the tarred brush of extremism we ourselves do become no better that the mainstream media.
