Just wanted to post my favorite Michelle Malkin photo while I continue to completely neglect and ignore this blog.

Mazel tov!

When Michelle Malkin launched hotair.com in April 2006, it was billed as “the world’s first conservative internet broadcast network”.

Here’s the press release:

Washington, DC, USA, April 24, 2006 — Hot Air, the world’s first conservative Internet broadcast network, launches today. Founder and CEO Michelle Malkin leads a multi-talented, tech-savvy staff on the cutting edge of the Internet video/TV convergence.

Hot Air’s ground-breaking, irreverent daily video newscast, “Vent with Michelle Malkin,” tackles media sacred cows and left-wing shibboleths — harnessing the best blog reporting and analysis across the Internet. Today’s inaugural newscast skewers U.S. high-tech titans kowtowing to China’s tyrants.

This is not your father’s nightly news.

Hot Air exposes new viewers of all political stripes to the world of videoblogging, animation, and podcasting. The network has signed on independent affiliates from Paris to Washington, D.C. Advertisers have lined up; Hot Air has already sold pre-roll video ads through the first week.

Malkin also bragged about the long line of advertisers waiting to advertise on Vent:

Advertisers have lined up; Hot Air has already sold pre-roll video ads through the first week.

And indeed, the first week of Vent with Michelle Malkin did feature video ads at the beginning of each episode. But by the end of week two, the video ads had disappeared.

That was back when Malkin did five episodes of Vent per week and hosted the video files on her own servers. She also tried branching out with additional video projects such as Citizen Journalist, Press Play, Hot Air Films and Jihad Watch.

Fast forward to June of 2007. In a move that signaled near-certain financial distress, Malkin announced that hotair.com had joined the Pajama’s Media network. A month later. Michelle Malkin told BusinessWeek that- despite six-digit per day traffic- her web sites were still operating at a loss:

Between her eponymous blog and her video blog, Hot Air, conservative author and columnist Michelle Malkin gets more than 220,000 visits per day, but says her sites still operate at a slight loss.

Malkin went on to explain how expensive it is to run a high-traffic video blog:

“We’re doing what few other blogs can do. We serve up terabytes of bandwidth,” Malkin says. “I’m shelling out for gold-plated servers. That’s expensive, and we want to be able to withstand huge traffic surges.” Hot Air, a group video-blog, in particular needs the bandwidth to stream videos.

That was July of 2007, even before she lost her O’Reilly Factor gig. She was obviously treading water even then.

Nowadays you’ll find hotair.com rarely hosts videos on their own servers. They post them to YouTube or other video services thus saving their own bandwidth. Could it be that without the O’Reilly gig, Michelle Malkin can’t afford to shell out for those “gold-plated servers” to host her own videos anymore? Let’s go to Allahpundit in October 2006:

Those O’R[eilly Factor] wages help pay for the Hot Air empire, so if O’R wants to talk about O’R, a-talkin’ about O’R she shall be!

That may lend weight to the theory that Malkin took a financial hit when she lost her job with The O’Reilly Factor. But it doesn’t explain what happened to Vent with Michelle Malkin. Early last summer the once five-day-per-week feature just suddenly vanished into the ether, without so much as an explanation from its creator/star or her cronies at Hot Air. If bandwidth was the problem, they could’ve just shifted the burden to YouTube as they’ve done with everything else the past several months. But they didn’t. They just stopped making episodes.

This is pure speculation but my theory is that the whole Vent project was just a ruse- an audition of sorts- to help Michelle Malkin snag her own T.V. show on Fox. Once she figured out that wasn’t going to happen, she dropped the pretense and stopped bothering to make the videos.

The Hot Air side projects- Citizen Journalist, Press Play, and Hot Air Films also seem to have bitten the dust. Only Jihad Watch has remained active, and even its status is up in the air now that “video editing whiz” Bryan Preston has moved on.

So, “the world’s first conservative internet broadcast network” no longer has a video production staff, no longer has any “network” to speak of, and apparently can no longer afford those “gold-plated servers”.

Captain Ed to the rescue!

Um, let’s see.. The Washington Times is owned by The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a mental case and convicted felon who believes he is the second coming of Christ and has said that the Holocaust was “a retribution” by God against Jews.

But it’s this that bothers Michelle Malkin.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

I’ve never been a regular reader of Morrisey’s blog but my limited impression is that he’s more reasonable than, and not nearly as obnoxious as Bryan Preston. Am I mistaken?

I’ll have more on the changes at hotair.com later. Consider this an open thread.

In the meantime, here’s two Serbians mooning CNN.

Francisco Nava ‘09 has admitted to fabricating an alleged assault on himself that he said occurred Friday evening and to sending threatening emails to himself, other members of the Anscombe Society and prominent conservative politics professor Robert George, today while being interviewed by Princeton Township Police.

“He fabricated the story,” Det. Sgt. Ernie Silagyi said.

Nava was released to Public Safety and charges “have not been filed pending further investigation,” according to a statement from Township Police.

Former Anscombe president Sherif Girgis ‘08 said he is “deeply angry and upset” at the news the incident was fabricated. “I am deeply troubled about what this must mean about Francisco and about his personal life,” he said, adding that he had harbored suspicions about Nava’s story before the Township confirmed the assault was faked.

[LINK]

There are some sick people in this world.

***

The Daily Princetonian has been following the story:

Anscombe members threatened

Undergraduate attacked in Township

Quoth Malkin:

Ugh. This is bad on many levels. W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a former Marine and milblogger who writes at National Review Online’s The Tank (and whose work in Iraq I’ve praised and linked to here), posts a long-winded defense of bogus, shoddy reporting he published while he was in Lebanon earlier this fall. It’s painful to read because he takes nearly 1,400 words to get to the main points:

1) He claimed he had seen “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen” at a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” when, in fact, he hadn’t seen 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen.

2) He reported that 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen had been “deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling ‘show of force,’” when, in fact, there is no evidence that a deployment of 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen to Christian areas of Beirut ever took place.

IOW, Smith was lying.

Of course, neither Michelle Malkin nor NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez actually admits that Smith lied. Lopez says the blog posts were simply missing “context” and “caveats”:

Bottom line: NRO strives to bring you reliable analysis and reporting — whether in presenting articles, essays, or blog posts. Smith did commendable work in Lebanon earlier this year, as he does from S.C. where he is based, as he has done from Iraq, where he has been twice. But rereading some of the posts (see “The Tank” for more detail) and after doing a thorough investigation of some of the points made in some of those posts, I’ve come to the conclusion that NRO should have provided readers with more context and caveats in some posts from Lebanon this fall. And so I apologize to you, our readers.

Malkin, who gleefully characterized Scott Beauchamp’s stories as “bullcrap”, is kinder to Smith, whose lies she describes as “phenomenal errors” and “XXL” “mistakes”:

[…]And “the nature of blogging” doesn’t excuse the phenomenal errors..

[…]

We are all fallible. We all make mistakes. But these were not small mistakes. They were XXL ones.

Via Huffington Post’s Thomas Edsall, several Middle-East journalists weigh in on Smith’s tall tales:

Michael Prothero, who has reported for Fortune, the Washington Times, and Slate, wrote in an email:

“In his [Smith’s] wildly entertaining postings, he describes kidnap attempts, an armed incursion into Christian East Beirut by 5,000 armed Hezbollah fighters that was missed by every journalist in town, he also notes the presence of 200 armed Hezbollah fighters in downtown Beirut ‘laying siege’ to the prime ministers office, recounts high-speed car chases and ‘armed recon operations’ where he drives around south Beirut taking pictures of Hezbollah installations, while carrying weapons. In a word, this is all insane.”

“He’s a fabulist,” wrote Chris Allbritton, who has reported from the Middle East since 2002 for Time, Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Times, and the Newark Star-Ledger. According to Allbritton, in an email to the Huffington Post, “[Smith’s] claim that 4,000 Hezbollah gunmen took over East Beirut at the end of September simply never happened. Every journalist in town would have pounced on that story, and he’s the only one who noticed?”

A third reporter for a major U.S. magazine, who did not want his name used because he did not want to become involved in a journalistic controversy, wrote in an email to the Huffington Post:

“Mr. Smith also says that 4,000 armed Hezbollah fighters took up positions in East Beirut one day this fall in a ’show of force’. This would have been a major international news event and possibly the start of the next Lebanese civil war. In January, unarmed opposition supporters led by Hezbollah shut down roads in Beirut, and the event sparked riots and led the news all over the world. And yet, Mr. Smith is the only journalist in Lebanon to have found this story, as far as I know. So why, with such a major scoop in his hands, does Smith devote just a few lines in a blog post to it? Because it never happened.”

A fourth reporter, who works for a major media outlet and has extensive experience reporting in the area, also asked to remain anonymous, but emailed the Huffington Post:

“This guy is hilarious. Armed Hezbollah at the Serail? He must be mistaking the Lebanese army at the gates - those 200 in the tents are some middle class Hezbollees - who now come once a week to have a smoke with their friends and get away from their wives.”

Michelle Malkin reaches desperately for some moral highground on behalf of conservatives:

Kathryn Lopez, to her credit, immediately disclosed the controversy to readers. Contrary to the TNR editors, she thanked the reporter who first questioned Smith’s account, instead of trashing critics.

Umm… no, Lopez did not “immediately” disclose anything. In fact, two journalists have come forward to say they emailed Lopez with their concerns about Smith’s reporting more than six weeks ago. Apparently, she ignored them. It wasn’t until Edsall contacted her for comment on the story he was writing for Huffington Post that she disclosed anything at all.

***

Andrew Sullivan has more.

Michelle Malkin is depicted in an internment camp in a painting by Seattle artist Roger Shimomura. The painting is one of 30 acrylics in Shimomura’s newest exhibit on the Japanese internment.

Northwest Asian Weekly:

Take the painting, “Keep on Talkin’.” It’s an unflattering portrait of American activist Michelle Malkin, author of the infamous book, “In Defense of Internment.” Malkin’s book and her radio interviews earned her a dubious place in Shimomura’s collection. He depicts a wide-mouthed Malkin shouting in protest from a Minidoka Camp barrack. It may not be actual poetic justice, but perhaps it’s “artistic justice”?

Ouch. I’m sure Michelle Malkin would say this is the product of some kind of “derangement syndrome” but I don’t see where she has much room to complain. She’s the one who wrote that embarrassing book.

You can see a high-res version of the painting (along with the others in the series) here. And if you’re in the Seattle area, you can check out the Shimomura exhibit at the Greg Kucera Gallery through December 22.

Illegal Immigrant Rescues Boy in Desert

By TERRY TANG

PHOENIX (AP) — A 9-year-old boy looking for help after his mother crashed their van in the southern Arizona desert was rescued by a man entering the U.S. illegally, who stayed with him until help arrived the next day, an official said.

[…]

The van vaulted into a canyon and landed 300 feet from the road, he said. The woman, from Rimrock, north of Phoenix, survived the impact but was pinned inside, [Sheriff Tony Estrada] said.

Her son, unhurt but disoriented, crawled out to get help and was found about two hours later by Jesus Manuel Cordova, 26, of Magdalena de Kino in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Unable to pull the mother out, he comforted the boy while they waited for help.

The woman died a short time later.

“He stayed with him, told him that everything was going to be all right,” Estrada said.

As temperatures dropped, he gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday, when hunters passed by and called authorities, Estrada said. The boy was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson as a precaution but appeared unhurt.

Cordova was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents, who were the first to respond to the call for help. He had been trying to walk into the U.S. when he came across the boy.

The boy just lost his father a couple of months ago. Very sad.

The boy and his mother were in the area camping, Estrada said. The woman’s husband, the boy’s father, had died only two months ago. The names of the woman and her son were not being released until relatives were notified.

Cordova likely saved the boy, Estrada said, and his actions should remind people not to quickly characterize illegal immigrants as criminals.

I agree with Rob Hyndman’s take:

It’s meaningless in the context of the broader debate in the U.S. over whether to let in more brown people, but this story is no more or less meaningless in that sense than the stories of criminality and violence by immigrants that some - like Matt Drudge and Lou Dobbs - love to highlight to inflame that debate.

Video of local news coverage here.

I hope you are all having a great Thanksgiving. My family and I are about to head over the river and through the woods for a Thanksgiving dinner that can’t be beat.

I have much to be thankful for this year… my wonderful husband and family, the roof over our heads and the food in our cupboards and the blessings we too often take for granted…

A few months ago my daughter was struck and nearly killed by a drunk driver. Her injuries were horrible but it could have been much worse. She’s still here and for that I am truly thankful. And, oh yeah… at least the drunk driver was an American citizen. A repeat offender, uninsured, suspended-license-having, redneck American citizen, but at least he wasn’t one of those dirty ee-legal aliens. I can’t tell you how fucking thankful I am for that [/sarcasm].

Have a wonderful holiday everyone, and as always, thanks for reading.

-Mary

***

More Thanksgiving blogging:

Sadly, No!
Tbogg

I’ve never been to a protest but I wouldn’t think it a good idea to bring children along. Not to anti-war protest, or any other kind of protest where children might be harmed.

Michelle Malkin however, apparently had no problem with bringing children to the Terri Schiavo protest a couple of years ago. She praised the “amazing” “pro-life activists and evangelical disabled advocates who have been peacefully keeping vigil outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice”, and featured pictures of them on her blog:

She even scolded the media for “disapprovingly” pointing out that some demonstrators had brought their children:

Instead, we get pieces like this Associated Press report–which treats pro-life activists as freaks and editorializes disapprovingly that demonstrators have brought children “some too young to truly understand why they are there.”

Think the Terri Schiavo protest wasn’t a dangerous place for kids? Think again:

Police snipers were spotted on the roof of the hospice by several protesters who arrived early on Saturday, and police dogs could be heard barking from behind the police lines. Capt. Michael Haworth, a spokesman for the Pinellas Park Police, said he could not say whether there were snipers posted but added that police officers had received threats.

Some parents at the Schiavo protest even managed to get their children arrested as they encouraged them to try to cross the police line:

But for some protesters, prayer alone was not enough. Several feet away police were arresting Chris Keys of Burnet, Texas, and three of his children for trying to break through the police cordon at the entrance to the hospice. The family carried symbolic cups of water in their hands to slake Schiavo’s thirst. When the officers moved to handcuff Keys’ children, his 14-year-old daughter, Josie, and her brothers, Cameron, 12, and Gabriel, 10, went down on their knees.

I wonder if Michelle Malkin’s commenters will scream for CPS to have these kids taken away from their parents?

Completing an unhinged trifecta, here’s a story out of Boston on a disruption today at the annual Veterans Day parade by anti-war protesters:

More than a dozen members of an antiwar veterans group were arrested yesterday as they protested the exclusion of their message from Boston’s Veterans Day parade.

Members of Veterans for Peace lined up in front of a podium at City Hall Plaza holding antiwar placards, as color guards from Massachusetts military units and JROTC bands from across the state filed into Government Center for a ceremony, sponsored by the American Legion, to honor veterans after the parade. Some protesters wore gags, which they later said symbolized the fact that, while they were permitted to march in the parade, they were prevented from carrying signs opposing the war in Iraq.

“We were exercising our First Amendment rights,” said Winston Warfield of Dorchester, a member of the group. “The First Amendment protects free speech, even when you don’t agree with what’s being said.

Here’s the part she omitted:

When Boston police asked the demonstrators to move from the front of the podium so that the Veterans Day services could continue, they refused. As the Boston Firemen’s Band played The Marine Hymn, several protesters were placed in plastic handcuffs and led away.

“Our free speech and civil rights are being abridged here,” said Nate Goldschlag, a Vietnam-era veteran who was among those standing in front of the podium. “We are veterans, too, and we should be allowed to express our opposition to this war.”

Not if Michelle Malkin has her way [Emphasis mine]:

Don’t these people have enough of their own damned parades
without having to ruin everyone else’s?

Malkin’s commenters respond by calling the anti-war veterans “ingrates”, “maggots” and “numbskulls”.

Yes, question their patriotism.

I don’t get why I’m supposed to be outraged over this:

When you don’t feel like covering the news, you manfacture it. Remember the story I broke last spring about NBC News engineering a sting at NASCAR to try and expose fans as anti-Muslim bigots? Well, it looks like the dinosaur networks haven’t learned from the embarrassing backlash to that pathetic episode. Or Rathergate. Or Shattered Glass. Or Janet Cooke. Or Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, according to the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, it looks like ABC News is engaging in media stage management and Theater of Journalism to expose anti-homosexual bigotry in the South:

ABC is doing a social experiment in Birmingham that includes having same-sex couples show affection for each other in public, according to Birmingham police department sources.

FOX6 first learned about this story from a Southside merchant who pointed out an RV parked at the corner of 20th Street and 11th Avenue South. The merchant said ABC was working on a week-long project to see how people would react to things like public displays of affection by gay and lesbian couples. A FOX6 news reporter approached the RV and talked with an “actor” who said, “Yes, we are working for ABC News.”

The “experiment” is apparently for ABC’s Primetime Live program, which is running a series of undercover stings titled “What Would You Do?”

Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.

Dinosaur network news motto: All the news that’s fit to stage.

Sorry, but I wouldn’t call that “staged” news. It’s called investigative journalism, which often requires some level of deceit. Now, if ABC had hired actors to fake their reactions to the gay couples, then she could call it staged news. Or if ABC, say… got a group of gays together for a “spontaneous” “back and forth” video conference and was then busted on video coaching and rehearsing them ahead of time, she could call that staged news.

Oh, wait…

Malkin not convinced that Bush’s video conference with troops was “staged”

In her October 19 syndicated column, Michelle Malkin took to task “[t]he Associated Press, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell and others in the Bush-bashing press corps” for “accus[ing] the White House and 10 soldiers from the Army’s 42nd Infantry Division of ’staging’ ” an October 13 video conference in which President Bush spoke with soldiers stationed in Iraq. Malkin also criticized NBC News for “indulging in its Bush-deranged feeding frenzy over the ’staged’ talk with the troops.” But the very same NBC Nightly News report specifically referenced by Malkin included extended video of preparations for the event making it abundantly clear that it was, in fact, “staged.”

Now she’s trying to whip her readers into a frenzy over a legitimate investigative journalism piece which might expose some anti-gay bigots as anti-gay bigots. She’s even likening the piece to Rathergate, for Pete’s sake.

What is she so afraid of?

Michelle Malkin was recently nominated for an award as one of the Most Influential Filipina Women in the U.S. . The awards ceremony was held in Washington D.C. last week, and by at least one account was an embarrassingly disorganized mess. Still, Malkin lost out in the journalism category to author/teacher M. Evelina Galang.

Now, I’m just a clueless white girl, but it’s almost as if the Filipino community doesn’t embrace Michelle Malkin.

Go figure.

UPDATE: A proud Filipino-American-conservative emails:

“We are mortified by being in the same category with Michelle Malkin. Please do not judge all Filipino-Americans by the despicable behavior of this one racist conservative icon. “

Whether Michelle Malkin quit or was fired from The O’Reilly Factor is still a matter of speculation, but Fox has now replaced Malkin with rightwing talk radio host and author Laura Ingraham, according to TV Newser:

Laura Ingraham Joins FNC

TVNewser has learned Laura Ingraham is joining FNC as the primary fill-in for Bill O’Reilly as well as for Sean Hannity on Hannity and Colmes. Ingraham will also contribute to other FNC shows. Ingraham will continue to host her daily radio show. No stranger to TV, Ingraham is often a guest commentator on cable news shows. She also hosted her own show on MSNBC called “Watch It!” (Full disclosure, produced by yours truly).

>More: In a press release Ingraham says, “After years of guest appearances on FOX, I couldn’t be happier about the opportunity to add my voice to FNC’s stellar lineup.”

Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, has all but disappeared from FNC, with the occasional appearance on Fox’s morning show her only recent contributions.