Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin invented a conspiracy theory that the clothing chain Forever 21 was intimidated by the Obama administration into claiming that its decision to cut worker hours was not a result of the health care law.
Media outlets are reporting that Forever 21 is cutting the hours of some full-time employees and reclassifying them as part-time. In a statement on Facebook, the company said that the cuts affect "less than 1% of all U.S. store employees" and have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act:
Forever 21, like all retailers, staffs its stores based on projected store sales, completely independent of the Affordable Care Act. After a recent evaluation, Forever 21 realigned its staffing needs to better reflect sales expectations. This realignment impacted less than 1% of all U.S. store employees. Forever 21 values all of its employees and made every effort to affect as few employees as possible in this realignment.
Despite the company's explicit refutation and a lack of evidence to support her conspiracy, Malkin argued that Forever 21 was cowed into denying that the Affordable Care Act played a role in its decision to reduce worker hours.
On America Live, Malkin said that Forever 21's statement on its decision was evidence that "the intimidation campaign of this White House has worked rather effectively." Malkin added that companies that have "had the audacity to talk about the connection between Obamacare and cutting benefits and cutting full-time employees to part-time" were "punished," so "of course a company is going to deny that it had anything to do with Obamacare."
During an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday night, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin alleged that influential anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist was indirectly linked to the Boston Marathon bombing.
“I think of course political correctness has always been the handmaiden of terrorism, on top of that political pandering, and unfortunately neither party has its hands completely free of this,” she told Sean Hannity while discussing the bombing suspects.
“If you go on my website right now, michellemalkin.com, I talk more about the first president of the mosque that the bombers attended, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who has ties to the GOP — and in particular Grover Norquist — that a lot of people in the establishment had never, never condemned,” Malkin added. “If this had been a liberal who was tied to it, everybody on the right would be screaming about it. So both parties, both establishments are guilty of not speaking up enough and not doing enough to stop these people.”
Alamoudi, former president of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2004 after confessing to his involvement in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Prior to his arrest, he was an influential financier of political and charitable organizations.
On her website, Malkin claimed that Norquist had worked with Alamoudi to create the Islamic Free Market Institute. She also alleged that Norquist helped Alamoudi obtain access to the White House.
Malkin is not the first to have attacked Norquist for his alleged ties to “Islamic radicals.” Conservative activists Frank Gaffney and David Horowitz were the first to accuse the founder of Americans for Tax Reform of helping “Islamists” infiltrate the U.S. government. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Gaffney as “the anti-Muslim movement’s most paranoid propagandist.”
Maybe now Bill Kristol knows how Barack Obama feels.
Like Obama, the long-time conservative commentator has become a (temporary) punching bag for the more radical elements of the far-right press. Kristol's sin? Acknowledging that Romney's "47 percent" comments made behind closed doors to wealthy donors were "stupid and arrogant."
Over the weekend, Breitbart.com condemned Kristol as a "pinhead" and suggested a wounded ego was the reason The Weekly Standard editor took issue with Romney's donor comments.
Last week, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin lashed out at Kristol and denounced him as a "windbag" in "meltdown mode." For Malkin, insulting nearly half the electorate and deriding them as lazy and irresponsible was the perfect campaign pitch for Romney to make. Because according to Malkin, this campaign is all about "about America's makers versus America's takers." (Fox News also loved the "47 percent" attack line.)
That's clearly how the fanatical far-right media see the looming November election. Yet Kristol's critique of Romney's comments was self-evident: "It's worth recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters."
The fact that Malkin and others castigate Kristol only shows how fanatically they take the oath of loyalty during the campaign season. (And how name-calling is their first response to a debate.)
There's also an alternate universe narrative being pushed in the fevered swamps of the right-wing blogosphere at places like Breitbart.com. It preaches to readers that Romney's campaign is in great shape and that pollssuggesting otherwise should be dismissed as bogus because the sampling is all wrong. (Biased!)
The suggestion that Romney's campaign is struggling is all a liberal media creation, goes the Breitbart line. The problem is when conservatives like Kristol puncture the bubble that Malkin and Breitbart bloggers hold so dear. In response, Kristol must be denounced as a fool.
Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin is very angry. Again.
Malkin is very angry the "lap dog" press is being so mean to Mitt Romney and is making a big deal about the "47 percent" comments he made behind closed doors to wealthy donors about how nearly half of Americans are lazy, irresponsible and unwilling to work hard to improve their lives.
Typing off the age-old conservative script, Malkin robotically blamed the press for Romney's latest campaign stumble, claiming there's a conspiracy among journalists and Democrats to shift the attention away from Obama and focus on alleged Romney gaffes.
But there's a slight problem this time around with the blame game: Lots of conservative pundits, such as The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol (as well as Republican members of Congress), have also denounced Romney's "47 percent" comments as irresponsible and misguided.
Malkin's response? Fox News contributor Kristol's part of the media problem and he's in on the colluded effort to doom Romney's campaign!
The intramural name-calling highlights the right-wing media fracture visible in the wake of Romney's "47 percent" debacle. Sides are being taken as to whether Romney's remarks were imprudent (i.e. "stupid and arrogant," as Kristol put it), or whether they can be used as a rallying cry to rescue his campaign.
More traditional Republican partisans in the press, such as the New York Times' David Brooks ("Thurston Howell Romney") and the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan ("Time For An Intervention"), have come down hard on Romney and belittled his campaign efforts.
By contrast, name-callers like Malkin and the more radical, Tea Party-leaning elements of the far-right media, including Fox News, have cheered the candidate's derogatory remarks and urged Romney to repeat them often on the campaign trail.
For this faction, virtually any criticism of their candidate is deemed off-limits, and heretics like Kristol must be publicly condemned.
Besides, Malkin insists Romney's attack on U.S. voters was dead-on [emphasis added]:
He's talking, of course, about the Peggy the Moochers and Henrietta Hugheses of the world - savior-based Obama supporters for whom the cult of personality trumps all else. He's talking about the Sandra Flukes and Julias of the world - Nanny State grievance-mongers who have been spoon-fed identity politics and victim Olympics from preschool through grad school and beyond. And he's talking about the encrusted entitlement clientele who range from the Section 8 housing mob in Atlanta that caused a near-riot to the irresponsible debt-ridden homeowners who mortgaged themselves into oblivion and want their bailout now, now, now.
Malkin despises all these people and loved Romney's closed-door attempt to demonize them during the campaign season. For Malkin and her Tea Party friends, that's what national campaigns are about, pitting Americans against each other by depicting political foes as parasites who feed off the generosity of hard working taxpayers. "This election is about America's makers versus America's takers," Malkin declared confidently.
In a recent post on her website, Fox News contributor Sally Kohn argued that conservative pundit Michelle Malkin, also a Fox News contributor, "condemn[s] supposed incivility on the part of the left while championing incivility on the part of the right," and pointed to examples of Malkin attacking progressives. Malkin responded to Kohn's post on Sean Hannity's radio show today, arguing that instead of using inflammatory rhetoric, she merely makes "funny," "lighthearted jokes":
But the following attacks Malkin has launched against progressives are neither "funny" nor "lighthearted":
Malkin attacked Michelle Obama for shopping at an Alexandria, VA, Target store, writing that Obama went "about as 'incognito' as Lady Gaga's outfit at her younger sister's graduation." Malkin went on to call the first lady "the glamour queen" and further stated that Obama's Target visit was "to counter the negative diva buzz" and that it "looks like she left the bling at home."
Malkin called Michelle Obama the president's "bitter half" and the "bitter half of the Obama administration."
Malkin mocked Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz as nothing more than "Alan Grayson in heels ... Anthony Weiner, only an octave higher."
Malkin called President Obama "thug-in-chief" and accused his administration of having "boots on the necks of American small business owners."
Malkin said Obama "has been the Chicago bully in victim's clothing from day one."
Malkin asserted that with the contraception rule, Obama sided with "femagogues" and "tramplers of religious rights."
Malkin said that Obama "has embraced an impulse among the cultural left to display hostility to law enforcement."
Malkin said Obama seems "far more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the most virulently anti-American regimes."
Malkin called Richard Trumka "thug-in-chief at the AFL-CIO" and accused him of a "bloody legacy."
Malkin accused the Democratic Party and the White House of "racial demagoguery."
Malkin is not the only conservative to launch attacks that are neither "lighthearted" nor "funny":
Fox's Eric Bolling said that Obama was hosting "hoodlum[s]" in "the hizzouse" after learning that Obama was meeting with the Gabonese president. Bolling later said he was sorry for saying this and had gotten "a little fast and loose with the language."
Fox's Bill O'Reilly said, "I don't see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis," KKK.
Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obama has "a huge grievance against this country, a chip on his shoulder," and he wants "to get even."
The Washington Times' Jeffrey Kuhner called Obama "an anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot" whose "goal is to purge Christianity from civil society, to marginalize religion from the public square."
Fox's Angela McGlowan said Obama is "Machiavellian" and "a political monster" who is "about self-preservation ... not about this country."
Ted Nugent called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a "toxic cunt" and "two-bit whore for Fidel Castro."
Nugent said Obama is "a piece of shit" who should "suck on my machine gun."
Fox's Bolling said that Obama was "chugging a few 40's" in Europe instead of responding to the tornados in Joplin, Missouri.
Bolling falsely claimed that Obama had been a drug dealer. He later wrote on his Twitter feed: "Said yesterday that I thought the President had admitted to buying or selling drugs. I was wrong. And I apologize to him for my mistake"
A contentious CNN interview by Soledad O’Brien with Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak set off a firestorm of vitriolic name-calling against O’Brien from the far-right, with some critics going so far as to falsely accuse the CNN anchor of anti-Semitism.
In a March 8, interview, O’Brien challenged Pollak’s assertion that a video from 1990 showing President Obama, then a law student, hugging late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell was a “smoking gun” for Obama’s true beliefs on “racial division and class warfare.” Pollak’s manufactured controversy hinged on characterizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) as “hold[ing] that the Civil Rights Movement was a sham and that White Supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.” Prodded by Pollak to define CRT, O’Brien accurately characterizedit as a theory that “looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law.” (Watch it here.)
While Pollak in his eagerness to hype his “bombshell” video mischaracterized CRT as a radical theory that calls for a war against white people, animosity on the far right has been pointed at Soledad O’Brien for correcting his inaccurate statements. Chris Loesch, husband of CNN contributor Dana Loesch, tweeted (HT: Little Green Footballs):
And Michelle Malkin, writing on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com, claimed that O’Brien defended CRT and Bell because “she masks her political activism under the banner of corporate media ‘diversity.’” Malkin continues:
…[L]iberal minority journalists simply can’t resist carrying water for Obama. That’s because their journalistic unity demands political unanimity. If you don’t accept the left-leaning agenda of “social change” journalism, you’re enabling racism. If you don’t support the pursuit of racial hiring goals as a primary journalistic and academic goal, you’re selling out.
Noticeably, neither Loesch and Malkin offer any evidence that CRT calls for “war against white people” or that O’Brien’s comments were rooted in anti-Semitism or racism. Indeed, the increasing politicization of anti-Semitism accusations has raised eyebrows among many in the Jewish community. Sarah Wildman, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and PBS, wrote in The Jewish Daily Forward last January:
…[W]hen anti-Semitism is falsely applied, we must also stand up and decry it as defamation, as character assault, as unjust. That is why when we debase the term by using it as a rhetorical conceit against those with whom we disagree on policy matters, we have sullied our own promises to our grandparents. For if we dilute the term, if we render the label meaningless, defanged, we have failed ourselves, our legacy, our ancestors, our children.
While Loesch and Malkin are quick to throw around incendiary accusations, it might be helpful for them to explain why they believe O’Brien’s defense of CRT and critical questioning of Joel Pollak justify accusing an award winning CNN anchor of racism and anti-Semitism.
On Monday's edition of America Live, Megyn Kelly hosted Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin to discuss the Obama administration's decision to prioritize the removal of undocumented immigrants who pose a threat to public safety. Malkin -- who has said she agrees that Mexican immigrants in the United States are "part of a plan" by the Mexican government "to bring back territory to Mexico" -- was "not happy" about the administration's plan, to say the least.
Throughout the segment, Malkin's speech was a strident echo of anti-immigrant talking points and inflammatory language smearing immigrants. She claimed the administration's decision was made to "appease" the "left-wing, open-borders lobby" and that it amounted to passing the DREAM Act "through administrative fiat." Malkin, who is nofriend of the legislation that provides certain undocumented students and armed services members a path to citizenship, referred to the proposed act as an "illegal alien student bailout."
Dismissing NDN's Kristian Ramos' contention that the plan is "smart policy" that throws limited law enforcement resources behind deporting criminals while cutting detainment costs, Malkin replied:
MALKIN: It sounds like good rhetoric and they certainly have tested these talking points and tried to appeal to pragmatists, but I've studied and reported and investigated the deportation system over the last 20 years and it is not the case that we're deporting hardened criminals. That's the problem, is that the system is such a wreck that they're unable to be able to tell who's here as a true potential danger to the country and who's not.
That indeed was the bulk of Malkin's substantive argument: that she knows better. She also had a message for those who are here unlawfully: "You do not belong here."
When Ramos tried to make the point that Obama's decision "is designed to do exactly what Michelle is saying that has always been a problem" and that it addresses a "resource issue," he was cut off by Kelly, who moderated the discussion as if Malkin's points were beyond dispute.
Since the Obama administration announced the new immigration plan, Fox has shown just how "fair and balanced" it really is. The network, which characterized the decision as "blanket amnesty," has taken the opportunity to air footage of border crossers and smearimmigrants as "illegals." Fox has alsorepeatedlyhosted a hate group leader to attack the new policy and has advanced the notion that President Obama's decision is unlawful and subject to impeachment.
Writing about the decision on her personal blog, Malkin stated:
The Obama Department of Homeland Security late last week announced it would enforce the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout by administrative order -- call them White House deportation waivers -- over the heads of a bipartisan majority of Congress that has repeatedly and resoundingly rejected such proposals.
They administration didn't put it in such stark terms, of course. But that is the effect of the decree.
[...]
The question for 2012 GOP primary voters: Is there a candidate out there who you trust to stand on the side of secure borders and strict enforcement, who has consistently opposed DREAM Act illegal alien bailouts, and who will resist the urge to use and abuse his executive powers to override the will of the people?
In November 2004, the editorial board of the Virginian-Pilot, a Norfolk-based daily newspaper, dumped Malkin from its op-ed page. The Pilot, which regularly featured the likes of Thomas Sowell, George Will, and Cal Thomas -- conservatives all -- had had enough of her "penchant for name-calling and ad hominem attacks."
Bronwyn Lance Chester, then a Pilot editorial writer who is now Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss' communications director, commented: "I think she habitually mistakes shrill for thought-provoking and substitutes screaming for discussion." Lance Chester added: "She's the worst of what's wrong with punditry today. She adds absolutely nothing to genuine political discourse."
Malkin, whose column is syndicated nationwide by Creators Syndicate, said she was amused by the newspaper's decision at the time, adding: "The Pilot is free to do whatever it wants with its op-ed pages. Next time, though, it should avoid making such a stridently sanctimonious show of it." She further wrote that " 'stridency' and shrillness are in the eye of the liberal media beholder" but acknowledged that she is "anti-liberal."
