If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you know all about the Gawker smear machine and its misogynist war on conservative women.

Under Gawker Media boss Nick Denton, barrel-scraping blog Wonkette published racist, sexist crap like this:

And manufactured smears like this.

In 2008, it was lying Gawker that published Sarah Palin’s hacked private e-mails, raided her family’s private photos, stolen from the e-mail account, used Bristol Palin’s illegally obtained private cell phone number from her mom’s private account, recorded her voice mail message and posted it on their website, and reprinted her husband Todd’s private e-mail address and son Track’s private e-mail address.

And today, it is Gawker running a filthy, paid anonymous hit piece on Christine O’Donnell that even other left-wingers have disavowed.

Salon: Gawker’s Christine O’Donnell tell-all backfires

Politics Daily’s Jill Lawrence: “Gawker on Christine O’Donnell is absolutely, totally, offensively out of line. Awful. You won’t get link from me.”

Let me repeat again what I said about Nick Denton and his slime businesses in 2006:

There is a time to be tolerant and there is a time to draw lines. If you don’t draw those lines, bullies will be emboldened. The smug Gawker smear machine is all about pushing those boundaries with the expectation that no one will push back. They project their own cynicism, recklessness with facts, intellectual laziness, and bad faith on everyone else.

But outside of Manhattan and Los Angeles, not all of us think blogging is a for-profit enterprise founded solely to tear people down with gossip, rumor-mongering, and damaging lies disguised as “satire.” Funny how some of the loudest voices decrying the lack of civility in the blogosphere are the biggest promoters of the bottom-feeders and debasers at Gawker Media.

***

A few of Gawker’s select advertisers…

***

Update: Christine O’Donnell’s campaign responds…

“This story is just another example of the sexism and slander that female candidates are forced to deal with. From Secretary Clinton, to Governor Palin, to soon-to-be Governor Haley, Christine’s political opponents have been willing to engage in appalling and baseless attacks — all with the aim of distracting the press from covering the real issues in this race. Even the National Organization for Women gets it, but Christine’s opponent disturbingly does not. As Chris Coons said on September 16th he would not condone personal attacks against Christine. Classless Coons goons have proven yet again to have no sense of common decency or common sense with their desperate attacks to get another rubber stamp for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. Such attacks are truly shameful, but they will not distract us from making our case to Delaware voters — and keeping the focus on Chris Coons’ record of higher taxes, increased spending, and as he has done again here, breaking his promises to the voters.”

The National Organization for Women (NOW) on Thursday condemned the tabloid website Gawker for publishing an anonymous account: NOW issued a statement late Thursday stating that “sexist, misogynist attacks against women have no place in the electoral process, regardless of a particular candidate’s political ideology.”

“NOW repudiates Gawker’s decision to run this piece. It operates as public sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only O’Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere,” said NOW president Terry O’Neill.

Slime, false moral equivalence, and more lies.

Here’s the summary, so I don’t have to link and you don’t have to give them traffic:

*They repost the fake bikini photoshop that gives them so much sick pleasure.

*They get their nutroots talking points wrong about the infamous UC Santa Cruz incident. The “college kids” were anti-war militants who publicized their own contact information on a public website and in a public press release in order to tout their efforts to sabotage military recruitment efforts on campus. Those militants never contacted me, never complained, and never asked me to take their public information off my site.

(But never mind. In their warped heads, there’s no difference at all between republishing public information made public by those individuals and publishing private photos of children obtained through the federal crime of illegal e-mail hacking. While we’re on the subject of nutroots talking points, it looks like they forgot to dredge up my “stalking” of the Graeme Frost family and CNN/YouTube debate plants.)

*And to top it all off, they make libelous claims about my second book.

In short: Gawker Media is proud to have violated the Palin children’s privacy and will happily smear those who dare challenge them.

***

From the Gawker advertising page:

Sometime early this morning, between approximately 3:00am – 4:00am, members of an infamous group of hackers broke into Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account. The incriminating discussion threads included screenshots of Palin’s e-mail and private e-mail addresses of her contacts. The threads have since been deleted. (More details here.)

Hacking e-mail is a federal crime. A TV anchor who broke into his colleague’s e-mail account recently pleaded guilty and faces a maximum five years in prison.

The law will catch up to the hackers, but what about the lowlifes who are now gleefully splashing the alleged contents of Palin’s private e-mail account all over the Internet?

The Gawker smear machine — see here for all the background you need — has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.

They have used Bristol Palin’s illegally obtained private cell phone number from her mom’s private account, recorded her voicemail message, and posted it on their website.

They have reprinted her husband Todd’s private e-mail address and son Track’s private e-mail address.

You think this is just a harmless prank? Those of you who have had to deal with break-ins and identity theft know exactly what a burdensome process it is to recover from crimes like this.

Gawker knowingly and deliberately published illegally obtained photos of the Palin children.

Where are the privacy absolutists now?

You think Palin Derangement Syndrome is bad now? These by-any-means-necessary lunatics are just warming up.

Let me repeat what I said about Nick Denton and his slime businesses in 2006. It’s every bit as relevant now. And I expect the same cowards who said nothing then to remain silent about the violations of the Palin family’s privacy now:

There is a time to be tolerant and there is a time to draw lines. If you don’t draw those lines, bullies will be emboldened. The smug Gawker smear machine is all about pushing those boundaries with the expectation that no one will push back. They project their own cynicism, recklessness with facts, intellectual laziness, and bad faith on everyone else.

But outside of Manhattan and Los Angeles, not all of us think blogging is a for-profit enterprise founded solely to tear people down with gossip, rumor-mongering, and damaging lies disguised as “satire.” Funny how some of the loudest voices decrying the lack of civility in the blogosphere are the biggest promoters of the bottom-feeders and debasers at Gawker Media.

Bastards. Bastards all.

***

More at ArtVoice and here.

***

A reminder of another high-profile privacy breech against a Republican: The Democrats’ fraud and theft of Michael Steele’s credit reports.

DIRTY DEM TRICKSTER: GUILTY
Chuckaquiddick charges
Whitewashing Chuckaquiddick
Chuckaquiddick: Look who’s paying the tab
NY Times “looks into” Chuckaquiddick
Chuckaquiddick: Where’s the MSM?
The NYTimes ombudsman is totally worthless
Democrat dumpster diving
A despicable Democrat dirty trick

***

Update: Wired News confirms one of the messages…

Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account was hacked, and some of its contents posted on the internet Wednesday.

The internet griefers known as Anonymous took credit for the intrusion, and screenshots of e-mail messages and photos belonging to the Alaska governor have been published by WikiLeaks. Threat Level has confirmed the authenticity of at least one of the e-mails.

The cache of stolen data contains five screenshots from Palin’s account, including the text of an e-mail exchange with Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress.

Another screenshot shows Palin’s inbox and a third shows the text of an e-mail from Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that “I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose.”

The Republican Party hasn’t responded to a call for comment, but McCorkell, reached at her office, confirmed that she did send the e-mail to Palin.

***

Update: The feds are investigating…

John McCain’s campaign said Wednesday it has contacted “appropriate authorities” over a report that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail had been hacked.

“This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law,” campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. “The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”

The statement came hours after a user on the Web site WikiLeaks said he had gained access to Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account and gained access. Screenshots of the e-mail messages and photos of the Alaska governor’s family were published on that Web site and later on gossip Web site gawker.com.

FBI Spokesman Eric Gonzalez in Anchorage, Alaska confirms to CNN an investigation is underway.

FYI: Alaska has very strong privacy laws.

***

Commenter The Master: “Is the irony pretty ironic? Obama slams McCain for not using email and Palin’s gets hacked when she does.”

***

Hitting back at Gawker.

Thing is, it’s happened before–to Michelle. Those of you who have followed this site for a while might remember when Gawker came up with some inept photoshops of Michelle in a bikini and ran them, to cheers from Michelle’s critics who believed this proved she was a big stinkin’ hypocrite.

Why? Even if the picture weren’t a fake cobbled together from a private picture of a college student that someone ripped off the web, would that have proven hypocrisy? SHOCKER: CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST DOES NOT SWIM IN A BURQINI.

Well, they thought–they hoped–that those fake photos of Michelle would somehow undermine her credibility with conservatives.

They don’t know us very well, do they? Even religious conservatives who emphasize modesty aren’t going to be wagging their finger and snarling “SINNER!” at someone who was once in a beauty contest or got her picture taken in a swimsuit. So once again, this is about to fall flat, like Brick Tamlin’s attempt to belittle his opponents’ sartorial taste:

See, the Left keeps on buying its own propaganda. There are a lot of slick hucksters there who tell them what they want to hear about how conservatives think and make decisions. Thomas Frank comes to mind, as does perennial tool George Lakoff.

Hey, it’s necessary to keep the liberal Strike Force! stoked at a fever pitch of seething hatred. That’s where the activism and the money and the silencing of opponents comes from. But then the problem is that they actually believe that this is how conservatives think and feel, and they make strategic mistakes because of it.

And then everybody laughs at them.

UPDATE: “Trollop“, eh? Somebody’s been reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Thanks to commenter RetFireman.

________________

{Post by See-Dubya; opinions are my own, time is my own, computer is my own, bikini photos of me are my own and you may not publish them! I was young, I needed the money…}

Future women leaders of America beware: if you plan on a career in politics, don’t allow yourself to be photographed in a bikini. Especially if you’re the type of woman who speaks out against the sexualization of young girls, the media will be eager to use it against you.

That is what we learned from conservative author Michelle Malkin last week. After she wrote a column criticizing once-wholesome singer Charlotte Church for her slide into pop star hedonism, left-wing Internet blogs discovered photographs of Malkin on spring break fourteen years ago. Accompanied by headlines like “Michelle Malkin gone wild” and “Michelle, you ignorant slut,” the blogs linked to a photo-sharing page that featured Malkin cavorting with girlfriends and posing in a string bikini.

It seemed like the perfect “gotcha” moment for the liberal blogosphere. But there was a problem: the photo page wasn’t real. I know this because most of the pictures on it belong to me.

Whoever made the photo page apparently wasn’t content to insult Malkin, an Asian woman, with racial slurs – a popular activity among her critics. Instead, they aimed to expose her as a hypocrite. Using pictures stolen from various Webshots.com accounts, including mine, the creator wrote captions to imply that I had had been a classmate of Malkin’s at Oberlin College in the early 90s – and that she was anything but a moralist back then.

By the time I discovered the hoax, liberal blogs were already hard at work smearing Malkin as a “slut,” “hussy,” and “b-tch.”

I was shocked as I scrolled through posts and reader comments about my pictures, some of them photoshopped or falsely labeled as pictures of Malkin. Racist jokes and sexual denigration were common themes.

Beneath a picture of me with a close friend from high school, someone had written, “She looks so happy back then…I wonder what made her become such a bitch? Maybe her grandma never sent her a care pack of adobo and lumpia shanghai.”

When someone commented that the photo of Malkin in a skimpy bikini appeared to be photoshopped, a reader responded, “A too small head on Malkin’s body doesn’t mean it’s Photoshopped. It just means that she has to put in the extra effort when she gives blow jobs.” The malicious posts did not appear on obscure blogs serving the political fringe. In fact, the most aggressive attacks came from a law professor at the University of North Carolina and a blog conglomerate valued at $76 million. Despite Malkin’s insistence that the photo site was an obvious forgery, the blogs continued to deride her as a hypocrite and, above all, a “skank.”

Still, I was confident that I could put an end to the hoax by coming forward as the owner of the photographs. I wrote an e-mail to Wonkette, the blog that first posted the pictures. I explained that only one picture on the page showed the real Michelle Malkin – I took it at the Conservative Political Action Conference last February, where I briefly met her. The others had been stolen from my webpage.

Three days later my letter remained unanswered, and the smear campaign against Malkin raged on. I sent a second request to Gawker, the media empire that owns Wonkette, detailing the theft of my pictures. I was optimistic that a conglomerate worth tens of millions of dollars would show some accountability toward its audience.

Two days have passed, and my inbox is still empty.

This is the brave new world of Internet media. Like many Americans, I entered it with a naïve notion of bloggers as modern-day pamphleteers, throwing the cover off stories that the establishment media won’t touch. I believed that Internet blogs, being far more democratic mediums than mainstream television networks and newspapers, would show respect for the truth.

But after visiting a few popular blogs, I realized I was sadly mistaken. At best, many zero in on political gossip and absurd non-issues, such as whether a conservative author ever posed in a swimsuit. At worst, many political blogs are cesspools of racism, misogyny, and obscenity, not to mention vicious lies.

The posts and links to my pictures are still up, and I’m no longer anticipating a response from Gawker. They are a multimillion-dollar behemoth; I’m a college kid with a claim to a few stolen photographs. They have nothing to lose by ignoring me.

However, it seems the fallout from the Malkin hoax is far from over. This morning, I received an anxious message from an Ohio State student who had just discovered the fake photo page.

She identified herself as “the girl in the bikini” and explained that Malkin’s face had been photoshopped onto her body. She asked what we could do to stop the pictures from being circulated.

The answer, unfortunately, is probably “nothing.” Gawker and its ilk appear willing to perpetuate bald-faced lies in order to advance an agenda. And they don’t mind taking a few innocent college girls along for the ride.

More here.

Ashley, you’ll be glad to know, is studying journalism. She’s a tough cookie who now understands the depths of the unhinged liberal psyche from firsthand experience–and she’ll be a great addition to our ranks. It’s the silver lining.

***

Here’s a message from Meredith Chan, the girl in the bikini, posted at the fake Flickr site:

***

Previous:

A personal aside
The Gawker smear machine
Malkin Derangement Syndrome
Do you think this is funny?

Today, a pause from regularly scheduled blogging.

I love what I do. I count my blessings every day that I can make a living as a writer. I have been privileged to meet and work with and befriend some of the most brilliant, funny, engaging, talented people through the Internet. I’ve derived immense inspiration, stimulation, entertainment, and courage from fellow bloggers and readers over the last two years.

There are many unhinged people who would like me to shut up. There are those who engage routinely in active defamation and empty ad hominem attacks. There are also those who enable, excuse, and snicker at these attacks.

When I ignore them, lies are perpetuated and assumed to be true. When I respond, I am belittled as a self-promoter, whiner, humorless scold, and opportunist. Trolls at places like the Democratic Underground and obscure far-left blogs don’t warrant responses. But when the attacks come from a publicly subsidized UNC law professor and the largest blog conglomerate (valued at $76 million in 2005), they cannot go unanswered.

There seem to be some very dense people who don’t understand that this is not just about a bikini Photoshop. It is about disseminating the fake photo to cast me in a false light and “prove” that I’m somehow a hypocrite.

Someone created a fake Flickr site by filching photos from an innocent college undergrad’s Webshots site without her permission or knowledge. That student is Ashley Herzog of Ohio University, whom I heard from yesterday. She is upset and embarrassed to see her photos manipulated, and I am sorry she was dragged into someone’s deranged scheme because she happened to have her photo taken with me at CPAC earlier this year. Whoever created the fake Flickr site intended to mislead viewers into believing that Herzog was a classmate of mine 14 years ago. Whoever created the fake Flickr site went to the trouble of posting a photo of a dorm from my alma mater to give it authenticity.

Nobody would fall for such obvious fakery, right?

A law school professor did. Major gossip sites took the bait. Some people still refuse to believe it’s all fake.

If one anonymous creep, still out there somewhere, can successfully dupe supposedly smart people into believing his/her dumb but relatively innocuous Photoshops of me are real, I can only imagine what far worse things may be done.

But I’m supposed to just laugh along.

I don’t consider it pointless to hold up a mirror to liberals who think racist ping-pong ball jokes are respectable discourse. The Wonkette editors slimed me with that in response to a light-hearted Vent episode I did on the lack of conservative speakers at commencement addresses. For not laughing along with their senseless abuse, I’m considered a prude.

I don’t consider it pointless to note that the hate-filled cowards at Gawker Media have a pattern of repeatedly smearing and attempting to humiliate me. I have ignored most of their petty, pointless jibes. But I would not let Friday’s attack go unanswered. For responding to their idiocy, Wonkette guest Ken Layne accuses me of being a publicity seeker.

You posted the picture. You engaged in gratuitous insults. You had nothing better to write about.

But how dare I respond.

I don’t consider it pointless to note that a professor with whom I cordially engaged in lengthy debates over profiling and WWII history has descended into madness. I invited Muller to appear with me on radio. I encouraged students to read our extensive blog exchanges and gave out his website address on C-SPAN and in countless other appearances. If you paid attention to his behavior over the course of those interactions, what he did on Friday was no surprise. He called on his readers to get my book banned. He helped organize a “Historians’ Committee for Fairness” that demanded that any media organization that had me on to talk about my book “formally apologize to the Japanese Americans who have been slandered by Ms. Malkin’s reckless presentation and invite a reputable historian to present a more even-handed view of the evidence.” He allied himself with a hate-filled nut who refers to me as “Me So Michelle.” Later, he creepily monitored me while I was traveling. He distorted my writing so grossly that even his own readers tired of it. He trolled around on some fake Flickr site and linked to a photo he falsely asserted was of me, without verifying it, in order to make a nonsensical point about my supposed hypocrisy–a blog item which was picked up several hours later by Wonkette after a “tipster” e-mailed the story. A reminder of what Muller wrote:

With no further ado, I give you: Michelle Malkin, Spring Break, March 27, 1992. Could that be an all-you-can-drink wristband?

Here, incidentally, is the flickr page where the photo appears. Somebody forwarded it to me a couple of months ago. I chortled. Then I forgot about it — until today, that is, when her vicious hatchet job on a “half-naked” twenty-year-old “skank” brought it to mind.

Mind you: there’s nothing wrong with trips to the beach during college, or all-you-can-drink wristbands, or bikinis.

Just with hypocrisy.

Apologists believe the whole thing was presented as a joke. That would be Nick Denton’s and Ken Layne’s legal defense, no doubt, for maliciously neglecting to pay me the courtesy of verifying the photo with me before illogically accusing me of “hypocrisy,” linking to unhinged UNC professor Eric Muller’s post falsely asserting as fact that it was me, and now disingenuously playing it all off as a parody.

Gawker Media may never acknowledge their errors and apologize, but Professor Muller, who did, probably no longer thinks his post was so funny. Some apologists for Gawker Media believe no harm was done since eeeeeeh-veryone knew the photos were fake. Yeah? Go look at Jossip, which initially ran the Wonkette item as true hours after I answered the smear on this blog (although the amended Jossip post states its item ran “like four minutes” after I responded to Wonkette on my blog, Bloglines shows that Jossip posted its item nearly seven hours after my post went up). Countless more took their cue from the Wonkette headline calling me an “ignorant slut” and the Gawker headline “Michelle Malkin gone wild”–no question mark, no qualifiers. I won’t post all the abusive e-mails from readers of those sites who took their posts as straight, not parody.

There is a time to be tolerant and there is a time to draw lines. If you don’t draw those lines, bullies will be emboldened. The smug Gawker smear machine is all about pushing those boundaries with the expectation that no one will push back. They project their own cynicism, recklessness with facts, intellectual laziness, and bad faith on everyone else.

But outside of Manhattan and Los Angeles, not all of us think blogging is a for-profit enterprise founded solely to tear people down with gossip, rumor-mongering, and damaging lies disguised as “satire.” Funny how some of the loudest voices decrying the lack of civility in the blogosphere are the biggest promoters of the bottom-feeders and debasers at Gawker Media.

That is not what my blogs are about. That is not what I am about.

Since mm.com came into existence, I’ve been attacked regularly as a whore and a c**t and a puppet and a dupe and a sellout, etc. etc. etc. It comes with the territory–particularly when you happen to be a woman, a minority, and a conservative. The extensive arguments and blog posts and columns and books I’ve written are reduced to bumper-sticker putdowns by critics and their fellow travelers who couldn’t be bothered to actually read what I’ve written day in and day out for the last two years on the blog and the past 14 years in my books and columns. I poked fun at this pathology in my last book. I think what drives a lot of the haters crazy is that despite their ceaseless sniping, they can’t shut me up.

So, I’ll be back here the next day and the next cheerfully doing what I do. And the haters will be back in their pigpens doing what they do.

The wonderful thing about the Internet is that there is room for both. The wonderful thing about this country is that you are free to choose.

See you in the morning. Thanks for your continued readership!

***

Funny comments over at Tim Blair’s.

Chris Muir smiles.

A reader sends a WSJ profile of Gawker Media smear machine founder Nick Denton:

Names to Know
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
December 29, 2004 11:02 a.m.

Online Journal editors have highlighted 15 people to watch in 2005 — men and women who are set to shape the course of business, politics and world affairs in the next year…

Nick Denton, online publisher

The 2004 election may have made stars out of once-obscure online commentators, and larger sites have dabbled in blogs as well. Mr. Denton is looking to prove that blogging can be a business, building a small but growing galaxy of publications. Mr. Denton, publisher of the Wonkette political gossip blog and others, has become the poster boy for blog start-ups, snagging big-name advertisers with help from his highly targeted audiences. Altogether, his eight blogs, which include Gawker (Manhattan gossip) and Gizmodo (gadgets), pull in a total of more than 29 million page views monthly. Mr. Denton’s next challenge will be to sustain Wonkette in the absence of election news while forging ahead at his other blogs and perhaps founding a new “it” site. Mr. Denton has also tried to assume a leading role, recently supporting calls for blog ethics standards and launching a service, called Kinja, to make it easier for readers to keep up with their favorite blogs.

He supports “calls for blog ethics standards?”

Now that’s funny.

***
Previous:

The Gawker smear machine
Malkin Derangement Syndrome
Do you think this is funny?

***update 9/30 6:25pm…I have just heard from the student whose pictures were stolen from Webshots by the creator of the bogus Flickr site. She is Ashley Herzog of Ohio University (not Oberlin, my alma mater, as the bogus Flickr site creator misled people into believing with fake captions). She has made note of the theft of her photos on the fake Flickr site and is contemplating legal action against the creator of the Flickr site who smeared both of us. Good for her.

FYI, she writes: “I looked at the fake flickr page. Nearly all of the pictures were stolen from my Webshots account, username Ashley11485. In the picture of the four girls in formal dresses, I also recognize a girl I went to high school with, Megan del Corral (she’s on the far right)…The girl in the formal dress picture (who is supposedly you), is Ohio State student Meredith Chan.”***

I have had a nice afternoon with my family. I was not going to post on the lying hate-mongers again, but they will not stop. If they think I am going to shut up about their continued deranged smear job, think again.

I sent this e-mail to the Wonkette editors at 8:13am Eastern:

From: Michelle Malkin
Mailed-By: gmail.com
Reply-To: writemalkin@gmail.com
To: tips@wonkette.com
Date: Sep 29, 2006 8:13 AM
Subject: It’s a photoshop, you idiots

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006012.htm

Hours after my post noting that the photo was fake was published, Wonkette’s sister site, Gawker , went ahead and published this:

I was working at NBC News in Washington, D.C., in March 1992, but the facts and the truth simply do not matter to these hate-mongers.

At 1:24pm Eastern, I sent the editors of Gawker this e-mail with the forwarded message I sent to Wonkette:

From: Michelle Malkin

Mailed-By: gmail.com
Reply-To: writemalkin@gmail.com
To: tips@gawker.com
Date: Sep 29, 2006 1:24 PM
Subject: Fwd: It’s a photoshop, you idiots

My post went up at 8:11am:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006012.htm

I sent this to Wonkette at 8:13am this morning…

Instead of a correction and apology, the Gawker editors insulted me some more:

Oh, it gets better.

Instead of issuing a correction and apology, Ken Layne at Wonkette suggests that I am lying about the fake photo:

I have informed Layne the photo is fake. Not only has he not issued a correction or apology, he is maliciously accusing me of lying. And notice that the Nick Denton smear machine can’t get its story straight. The Gawker editors say “Yes, of course, it’s fake!” The Wonkette editors scoff: “The story so far: Malkin is apparently claiming the all-but-naked picture of her is somehow “photoshopped,” whatever that means. Sure it is, Michelle, sure it is.”

Which is it?

Nick Denton, perhaps too busy IM’ing insults with Ken Layne, has not responded to my e-mail requesting a correction and apology.

Meanwhile UNC professor Eric Muller has issued an apology:

UPDATE, 3:00 p.m.: It appears that I was mistaken when I linked to the picture on flickr below, which I believed to be a picture of Michelle Malkin. I regret my error, and I apologize to Michelle Malkin for it. She has asked that I leave the post up — indeed, she has reprinted it — and so I will do as she wishes.

This doesn’t resolve the issue of whether Muller posted or e-mailed anything related to his false post from government-subsidized UNC computers, but it is a start.

***

Ace thinks I should sue. Any thoughts?

***

My good friend Ed Morrissey has ‘fessed up and revealed the true identitiy of the woman in the bikini:

LOL. Thanks for the laugh, Ed.

***

Update: Reader BruinEric has discovered where some of the original photos and captions that were posted onto the fake Flickr site came from–a site called Webshots. The blonde girl in the picture was not the forger. She is a victim, too:

Her real caption:

Here was the fake one:

Another bogus labeled photo from the Flickr site was photoshopped with a “3/27/92″ timestamp:

The real photo at the Webshots page is here.

Reader K. writes:

The photos are probably in violation of the Flickr terms of use agreement users are supposed to abide by – check out http://flickr.com/terms.gne – and have at ‘em. I’ve had success going a similar route with a whazoo-aperture posting a picture of me in a discussion forum that was hosted on photobucket – had the guy’s accounts nuked every time he posted the stolen picture of me.

***

Gotta love those tolerant lib commenters at Gawker:

The Wonkette editors continue to dig in and show their malice:

Reader David writes:

Michelle, trust me, they have talked to their lawyers, who told them (accurately) that parody is not actionable as libel. So now they are treating this as if it was a parody all along, which it was not.

Whatever you say, they will say something more outrageous now, as their tactic is to blend the original possible li[bel] into subsequent parody. That is why the fake photo is now in front of a relocation camp. Sick, lowlife parody, but also obvious parody.

John Hinderaker at Power Line writes:

The weirdest aspect of this latest liberal outrage is that a goofball law professor at the University of North Carolina–which is generally, I think, a reasonably well regarded institution–jumped on the bandwagon and, in all seriousness, accused Michelle of “hypocrisy” for trying to uphold normal standards of behavior despite having been photographed in a bikini in 1992. Apart from the fact that this guy 1) needs to get out more, and 2) needs to take a class in perspective so he’ll notice the proper relationship between heads and bodies, he also 3) should be fired because any law professor is expected to understand the concept of a non sequitur.

Increasingly, a basic equation is coming to dominate American politics: Liberal = hater.

So true.

Reader Marcia:

Let’s say the picture was real. How does that prove any sort of hypocrisy on your part?

You write a column denouncing Charlotte Church’s turning to raunchy dress and behavior (something every teen pop star seems to feel the need to do) with added Catholic bashing (not original either; see Sinead O’Connor circa 1987).

And Wonkette and this law prof say: “Gotcha!! How dare you decry the slutification of teen pop stars when you yourself once wore a bikini??!!”

Huh?

***

Previous:

Malkin Derangement Syndrome

***

Update:

10/10/06: A personal aside

The idiots are so blinded by hate they can’t see a two-bit Photoshop from some hater’s bogus Flickr site? And they couldn’t bother to ask me before attempting to embarrass me and calling me a slut?

You embarrass yourselves.

Rather than demand that they take their lying lies down, I am asking that they leave their smears up for all the world to see.

***

I am also filing a complaint with UNC School of Law Professor Muller’s employer. Here’s the dean’s contact information. This has gone too far.

Wonkette guest editor Ken Layne (e-mail ken.layne@gmail) is responsible for posting the Wonkette item, which I’m sure he’ll point out is more carefully worded than Professor Muller’s. Credit Gawker for having more legal sense than a UNC law professor, at least. Note Layne’s snarky comment in the comment thread:

That’s the Gawker idea of “reporting,” you see.

Here’s another dumb photoshop of me on the same bogus Flickr site that both Wonkette and Muller linked to:

Even Reuters could do better than that (notice that it appears to be the same face photo as the one used in the bikini shot).

Oh, and just a reminder of Gawker’s terms of use policy for commenters, which still seems not to apply to its own employees:

Comments Terms of Use

The comments sections on GM Sites are accessible to users by invitation only (such invitations coming either from Gawker Media editors directly or by referral from existing comment users). GM’s comment user registration system has been designed so that, if the user so chooses, they can remain completely anonymous, even to us.

In order to make our comments useful and interesting, the following guidelines have been established for comment users:

* Do not post threatening, harassing, defamatory, or libelous material.
* Do not intentionally make false or misleading statements.
* Do not offer to sell or buy any product or service.
* Do not post material that infringes copyright.
* Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law.
* Keep all comments relevant to the particular GM Site where the comment is being posted.
* Gawker Media will not accept responsibility for information posted in the Comments.

***

Reader J. e-mails:

In your first post this morning you say: “…they post a picture of a woman in a bikini that they claim is me (I wish I looked that good in a bikini):…”

I respectfully beg to differ, I bet you look absolutely stunning in a bikini.

Well, thanks for cheering me up.

Reader Bill:

The young woman in the photo looks to be pushing 5′ 8″ – 10″. While your razor whit certainly puts you in the big leagues, I suspect you fall a little short of 5′ 8″.

I appreciate you telling them to leave the photo up though. I personally never stop people from making jackasses of themselves, I simply enjoy watching them.

Have a great day.

I swear I am 5′ 1 1/2.” 5′ 4 1/2″ with these on.

Jason at Texas Rainmaker e-mails:

Nice to see you haven’t aged in 14 years.

Ha.

***

I am trying to find out who set up the bogus Flickr site. This picture may hold a clue:

If you know who the woman is on the right, please e-mail me. The caption is a lie. I recognize the setting. It was not taken “out west.” It was taken at CPAC in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. See:

***

More e-mails:

From reader J.

Dean Boger,

It is my sincere regret to inform you that I wish to pull my application packet from the UNC School of Law, due in large part to the behavior of Professor Eric Muller. The packet was mailed on 25 September, in hopes that it would arrive by your 1 October opening of admissions date. While I understand Professor Muller’s online activities are not endorsed by UNC, his crude and cruel remarks –targeted at columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin– reveal a certain classlessness that I would prefer not to be exposed to during my studies.

From Steve:

My eye has been honed by decades of girl-watching and my professional opinion on this bikini girl is that:

1) Her head is too small for her body.

2) Her body is too fleshy to be mistaken for you. You are a skinny little bone. Bikni Girl has chowed down a few extra pork chops.

3) That’s one ugly bikini.

Anyway, it’s an insult that they are passing off as you a girl who hasn’t skipped any desserts. The only way to put this controversy to rest is for you to post your own photo of yourself in a bikini, circa 1992, so that we, your loyal legion of fans, can compare and contrast the Real Michelle and the Bogus Michelle, point out all the discrepancies between the two, and demonstrate the superiority of Our Michelle to Their Michelle. It’s the only way to be sure. Accept No Substitutes!

In fact, to stop this kind of lefty outrage in the future, we probably should have bikini shots on file for all conservative commentators such as yourself, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, Page Hopkins, et cetera, so that we conservative males can instantly rebut small-minded slurs against the honor of our womenfolk. No need to thank us. We’re happy to do it as a favor to you.

Uh, no thanks!

Reader Scott:

I graduated from UNC back in 1980. At the time it was still considered a haven for hippies and liberal loonies. But those people would be considered downright conservative by today’s standards. I am ashamed of what that University has become. It is the oldest state-funded University in the country with a long tradition of academic excellence. Yet now, like so many schools around the country, it is now a breeding ground for liberal idiots.

Pay no attention to these people Michelle, they are insignificant, microcephalic cretins.

And even if that were you in the photograph, you would have been in your 20′s and it is hardly a risque photo. What is their point? Have they never seen a woman in a bikini before? The louder they cry the more it appears that they are threatened by you. They lash out at you because deep down they are seething is self-loathing.

Take care and keep the articles coming!

Stephen C.:

You would think a law professor would have a better idea of what is and is not appropriate. Just goes to show how far people of that ilk will sink.

Oh, and with regards to that bikini photo: Muller’s confusion is understandable – to them, all Asians look alike anyway, right?

La Shawn Barber: Liberal Bloggers Fall For Michelle Malkin Fauxtograph

Charles Johnson shares one of his haters’ Photoshops in “Inept Photoshop Phriday.”

Regarding the bikini, reader Tina writes:

I have that same bathingsuit! And I bought it about a year and a half [ago] at Target. Couldn’t possibly be from 1992.

Here’s Tina’s top:

Yup, and for the record (sorry to disappoint the gentlemen), I haven’t worn a bikini since I had my two kids.

Blogger Void Where Prohibited:

Just when you think the moonbats have gone as far as they can go. If that’s Michelle in that picture than I’m a Wookie. You ever seen someone 5’1″ stand next to a fridge?? They usually have to stand on tip toes to look in the freezer.

When you have to make up stuff to attack someone you are simply admitting that you’ve got nothing.

***

Update:

10/01/06 – A personal aside
9/29/06 The Gawker smear machine

Pat yourselves on the backs, you tolerant liberal bastards.

***

This is hardly
the first
time
liberals
have
made Asian whore ping-pong ball jokes about me.

But Wonkette has now mainstreamed it. And I’m sick of it. Are you proud of yourselves? Do you get a bonus from Nick Denton for scraping the bottom of the barrel?

***

The writer at Wonkette responsible for sliming me is Alex Pareene, who posted the supposed instant message conversation between himself and an “operative.” Here is his blog.

Here’s a bit about him from a recent profile, in which he is effusively praised by his hip, edgy bosses:

“I’m not nearly as good of a writer as Ana Marie Cox, so we’re just going to have to live with that,” he said. “But I think what catches people’s attention is that I’m a 20-year-old who writes like an old man. I have a sort of frame of reference that’s about 50 years behind the times. I basically have encyclopedic knowledge about very arcane information. And also, I’m very effective at cursing.”

Gawker’s former managing editor Choire Sicha discovered Pareene in the spring of 2004 when Gawker asked their readers to suggest what kind of skits Paris Hilton should be in when she hosted “Saturday Night Live.” Both Gawker and Wonkette are owned by Gawker Media.

“I randomly sent them off a suggestion, and Choire Sicha, their managing editor, wrote me back and said, ‘You’re really funny. Are you a writer? Should I have heard of you? Let’s find a way to use you,’ ” Pareene said. “I was originally sort of a guest editor on Gawker.com. There were two weeks in the summer when they were between editors so they brought me in to fill in.”

Sicha said he has never met Pareene in person, but thinks Pareene’s talent is undeniable.

“He’s definitely one of the brightest comic talents I’ve ever come across,” Sicha said. “What he’s got is wiles — preternaturally, for someone his age. He’s creepy-talented, really — kind of spooky. Maybe he’s a hoax perpetrated by a 40-year-old housewife.”

The summer after he dropped out, Pareene began a stint as a guest editor for Gawker. But this time, he would actually get paid for his blogging — something he considers fairly remarkable.

“I still can’t believe I’m getting paid for it,” he said with a chuckle.

Gawker’s current managing editor, Lockhart Steele, said Pareene’s use of language and the way he “cocks his eyebrow at the media” caught his attention.

“We’re looking for someone who can have a little fun at the media’s expense,” Steele said. “Different blogs are enjoyable for different reasons and Alex has his own personality as a writer. You know when you like it, and when you go back to it, you ask yourself what brings you back and for Alex, I think it’s his quality of writing.”

***

Greg Tinti on double standards.

Dan Riehl spots underlying irony.

***

From the Gawker Media “Terms of Use” page, which shows that commenters are held to a higher standard than Gawker Media sites’ editors and racist smear merchants:

Comments Terms of Use

The comments sections on GM Sites are accessible to users by invitation only (such invitations coming either from Gawker Media editors directly or by referral from existing comment users). GM’s comment user registration system has been designed so that, if the user so chooses, they can remain completely anonymous, even to us.

In order to make our comments useful and interesting, the following guidelines have been established for comment users:

* Do not post abusive, obscene, threatening, harassing, defamatory, libelous, offensive or sexually explicit material.

I have been really embarrassed by this… My judgment was clouded… I feel that you conned us all.

Download the video (.wmv file).

AP coverage at Breitbart.com.

Justin Hart: This is par for the course for Oprah.

Newsbusters: “Never” been duped before?

Gawker live-blogged the live feed.

***

Previous:

What did Oprah know and when did she know it?
A million little plaintiffs
Oprah’s con man

It’s a zoo outside San Quentin prison, where convicted murderer/Crips gang co-founder Stanley “Tookie” Williams is scheduled to die by injection at San Quentin Prison at 12:01am Pacific time for murdering four people during two 1979 holdups. Live KPIX video feed outside San Quentin here. (Hat tip: Reader Dave.) Photos via readers and Yahoo!:

Jesse Jackson, the racial demagogue-turned-wannabe Death Row gawker, is desperately lobbying to be one of Tookie Williams’ execution witnesses, according to cable news reports.

Reader Doug from Upland e-mails that the crusading Rev. Jackson did not know the names of Williams’ victims when asked by KFI-AM radio talk show hosts John and Ken.

[Update: Reader Denise R. writes, "I was listening to [KFI host] John Zi[e]gler, he actually asked Jesse Jackson the names of the victims on a couple of occasions and his microphone was taken from him by Judge Mathis (the TV judge) and broken. He also was pushed by Jackson supporters, after that happened he was forced away from Jackson by Sheriff’s Deputies.]

On MSNBC this evening, host Tucker Carlson told his “friend” Al Sharpton that he would spare him embarassment by not asking him the names of the victims.

Why would he do that? Guess he didn’t want to ruin the freak show vibe.

***

As the execution hour approaches, keep the focus where it belongs.

THE NAMES OF THE VICTIMS:

ALBERT OWENS
TSAI-SHAI YANG
YEN-I YANG
YE-CHEN LIN

Patterico sums it up:

“Tonight should be about honoring their memory, and bringing justice for their deaths.”

Amen.

***
12am EDT: Press conference with San Quentin prison official. There will be 39 people witnessing the execution–including 17 members of the media and 5 witnesses approved by Williams. Official will not reveal identity of Williams’ five witnesses “for privacy reasons.” If Jackson is one of the five, it won’t be private for long.

***

Read these sober reflections from Captain’s Quarters, The Anchoress, and Baldilocks.

The Los Angeles Times has news analysis of Schwarzenegger’s decision not to grant clemency. An excerpt:

“Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologize or otherwise atone for the murders,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption.”

The evidence of guilt, the governor’s statement said, included testimony from two of Williams’ accomplices, ballistics evidence linking Williams’ shotgun to the murders and testimony from four people that Williams had at different times confessed to one or both murders.

Moreover, he said, after Williams’ arrest, he conspired to escape “by blowing up a jail transportation bus and killing the deputies guarding” it. Although the escape was never carried out, “there are detailed escape plans in Williams’ own handwriting,” the statement said, adding that an escape plan is “consistent with guilt, not innocence.”

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said she thought that Williams’ clemency bid was plagued from the start by his position that he would never acknowledge that he committed the four murders.

“I will never admit capital crimes that I did not commit — not even to save my life,” Williams wrote in his 2004 autobiography “Blue Rage, Black Redemption.” He repeated that position Monday afternoon in a conversation with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jackson told reporters.

“Tookie wanted to have it both ways — he wanted to maintain his actual innocence claim so that he would have something to argue in the courts, but he still wanted to claim that he had been redeemed,” Levenson said. “In the end, he lost on both fronts.”

Rick Moran has an good round-up and writes a note to Tookie: Shake hands with the devil for me.

Ward Churchill bloviates.

Bruce Armstrong will blog through the execution hour.

SFChron writer Kevin Fagan describes the execution protocol.

***

Question: Did Tookie supporter Jamie Foxx skip Terrell Owens’ birthday party? Did Jesse Jackson get a rain check? (Hat tip: readers Andrew and Braun)

256am. One final, last-ditch appeal for delay by Williams’ lawyers is rejected.

An estimated 2,000 gathered outside, shouting and obstructing a FOX News analyst doing a live shot.

The San Francisco Chronicle highlights the circus.

It’s done.

***

Previous:

The Tookie Files: Arnold’s choice
12/11 Tookie Files: Tension builds
12/6 Tookie Files: Surprising dissents
11/30 Tookie Watch
11/26 The Tookie Files
11/22/00 Peace prize for a murderer?

- Mike Fumento has a handsome new blog. Check it out.

- Belated welcomes to the blogosphere: Michael Barone and Beyond Borders.

- Been meaning to link to this interesting interview with CNN’s blog reporters, Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner, by Liz Cox Barrett at CJR Daily. Good read.

- Jason Apuzzo on terrorism chic in Hollywood.

- Jason Calacanis blows the whistle on the Nick Denton-funded comScore study on blogs released earlier this week. That’s the “study” that views Free Republic and The Drudge Report as blogs and said Outside the Beltway has more readers than Instapundit. Jarvis has more.

- David Sifry of Technorati acknowledges the huge growth in computer-generated spam blogs and fake blogs but does not say whether these blogs comprise a large percentage of the 14 million blogs tracked by Technorati.

- A scheme to attack a busy New York subway station with bombs hidden in backpacks. (Via JihadWatch.)

- Patterico says the LA Times loves factcheck.org–but only when it promotes the liberal position.

And yes, it’s really me. No Libertarian Girl or Hot Abercrombie Chick stunts here.

Why the photo change? The previous photo, taken for the book flap of Invasion, was from three years ago. Thought it was way past time for an update. Besides, it’s fresh fodder for my good friends at Wonkette and Gawker, who have provided such constructive comments about my hair.

In addition, I’ve gotten polite and not-so-polite feedback about my highlights, buck teeth, flat nose, crooked/cross/bug eyes, big forehead, and big lips. Good thing my skin is thicker than Kevlar–because even my pigment has been subjected to vicious commentary and Photoshopping.

Now you know why I only feel like getting a new publicity photo taken every three or four years!

Update: Gawker takes the bait. [1020pm. Woops wrong link. Here's the right one.]

Have you heard of “cutting”? If you’re a parent, you’d better read up. “Cutting” refers to self-mutilation — using knives, razor blades or even safety pins to deliberately harm one’s own body — and it’s spreading to a school near you.

Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as “Blood Red,” “Razor Blade Kisses” and “The Cutting World”) featuring “famous self-injurers,” photos of teenagers’ self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as “Thirteen”). There is even a new genre of music — “emo” — associated with promoting the cutting culture.

In Britain, health care researchers estimate that one in 10 teenagers engages in addictive self injury. According to psychiatrist Gary Litovitz, medical director of Dominion Hospital in Falls Church, Va., the growing trend here in America has alarmed school guidance counselors around the country.

It’s not just delinquents and social misfits who are doing it…

Public health advocates are so worried about the fad spreading, especially among pre-teen and teen girls, that there’s even a “National Self Injury Awareness Day” coming up on March 1. If your kids’ schools aren’t on top of this, they should be.

Update: Getting tons of e-mail on this subject. One theme among critics is that cutting isn’t new. Readers recall an old friend here or there who nicked himself/herself with a razor blade 10, 15, or 20 years ago. So what’s the big fuss?

The fuss is that according to psychiatrists in the know like Dr. Litovitz, self injury has taken on an entirely unprecedented and far more widespread level of acceptability among young people than it ever has before. The Internet has a lot to do with it; so do the tacit endorsements of popular Hollywood celebrities. Am I saying that the Internet and Hollywood cause all young cutters to do what they’re doing? Um, no. But parents, medical professionals, and kids themselves are telling me that these factors have undoubtedly inspired many to take it up now who wouldn’t have otherwise.

A teenager from Texas writes:

I totally agree on everything you said about the cutting thing. I’m 14 and in middle school and I know people who cut themselves to show off like it’s some kind of fashion statement. Also there are so many websites, such as www.xanga.com, and if you look at certain sites that are for ‘icons’ they have a ton of pictures that are of cutting stuff! It’s sick and I think all th[ese] kids who are doing it are really influenced by the internet.

Reader Nancy B., an LCSW with an interesting take, writes:

I am a school counselor who just read your great commentary on cutting. You couldn’t be more correct- most of the cutters I see begin through copying others- particularly “stars” like Ricci. Hollywood never ceases to amaze me- they are always the primary contributors to the negative aspects of American culture- and then they turn around and rail against that which they have created.

Parents need to understand that trotting kids off to psychiatrists is probably one of the worst responses to cutting. I have been a clinical social worker for 18 years, and have had more than my share of kids diagnosed, put on a variety of drugs, and made into chronic mental patients. They need to talk with and LISTEN TO their daughters (about all things, not just cutting) rather than react to cutting as if the kids are severely mentally ill.

Another theme among many letter-writers and bloggers is that I’m an idiot because “emo” music is not new and has nothing to do with cutting. Reader Marjorie Snook writes:

I have never come across anything that would suggest a promotion of cutting. Your statement was patently ridiculous, and I can’t help but wonder who fed you such information. I am also surprised that you do so little research and fact-checking.

Yes, it’s true, emotional, woe-is-me music has been around a long time. But the kind of “emo” music embraced now by young people who cut themselves (Taking Back Sunday is one of the most popular cited; the Apathy Code, which depicts cutting on its album cover and in the lyrics to “No Alarms”) is new. And it is cited repeatedly on kids’ websites and blogs. Take a cursory look here.

Look, you can mock me for paying attention to this problem, but something very wrong is going on here–for whatever reason you want to believe–and parents have asked me to help get the word out. I hope it helps.

Update II: Kimberly Swygert at Number 2 Pencil weighs in. More from Illuminaria, Secure Liberty, and The Llama Butchers. A Small Victory is under the gravely mistaken impression that I’m engaging in the “trivialization of self-injury and cutting.” What?! Quite the opposite. It’s all my sneering critics–the ones writing that this is an “old” problem or that it’s not a problem at all since it helps cutters deal with their feelings–that are doing the trivializing.

More e-mail from readers with experience:

Harry Lynch writes:

I am a private school headmaster, and this has been a problem for a couple of years now. It has only gotten worse. We need to ask ourselves how we have been failing our kids.

My own belief: educators will talk to the kids about anything and everything, except God. It’s a truly bitter irony, that the one thing our kids need, we will not give them.

And Wendy Daly writes:

As a psychotherapist on an inpatient psychiatric unit I am all too familiar w/”cutting” or self-injury. I must say that cutting or other forms of self-injury is generally symptomatic of borderline personality disorder. The “cutting” traits that are on the rise indicated by your article are not surprising. I would expect this trend to continue given the direction of our current culture.