"We knew Chris Matthews had no shame. Now we also know the king of TV ghouls has no souls." -- Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang; born October 20, 1970) is an American conservative blogger, political commentator, and author. Her weekly, syndicated column appears in a number of newspapers and websites nationwide. She has been a guest on MSNBC, Fox News Channel, C-SPAN, and national radio programs. Malkin has written four books published by Regnery.
Malkin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the first of two children to Philippine citizens Rafaela (née Perez), a homemaker and schoolteacher, and Apolo DeCastro Maglalang, a physician-in-training. Her parents had arrived in the United States earlier that year on an employer-sponsored visa.Lamb, Brian. " Booknotes Transcript on "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists", Booknotes, December 8, 2002.
After her father finished his medical training, the family moved to the small southern New Jersey town of Absecon, where she and her younger brother were raised in the Catholic faith. She has described her parents as Reagan Republicans who were "not incredibly politically active”.
Malkin has spoken of a formative event when she was in kindergarten: one day, the other children called her a racist name, and she went home crying. Her mother comforted her and told her, "Everyone has prejudice." She has said that she is "eternally grateful" for that counsel. Malkin attended Holy Spirit Roman Catholic High School, where she edited the school newspaper and planned to become a concert pianist. Following her graduation in 1988, she originally planned to pursue a bachelor's degree in music at Oberlin College, but changed her major to English. Malkin was employed as a press inserter, tax preparation aide, and network news librarian before graduating from college.
At Oberlin, she began writing for an independent newspaper that was being started by Jesse Dylan Malkin, a Rhodes Scholar with established conservative leanings; the two eventually began dating. Malkin's first article for the paper heavily criticized Oberlin's affirmative action program, which received a "hugely negative response" from other students on campus. In June 1992, Malkin graduated from Oberlin College. She later described her alma mater as a "radically left-wing, liberal arts college".
Malkin began her journalism career at the Los Angeles Daily News, working as a columnist from 1992 to 1994. In 1995, she worked in Washington, D.C., as a journalism fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank which is dedicated to the promotion of free enterprise without government regulation. In 1996, she moved to Seattle, Washington, where she wrote columns for The Seattle Times. Malkin became a nationally-syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate in 1999.Malkin< Michelle. "Michelle Malkin's Latest Opinion Column RSS", Creators Syndicate.
For many years, Malkin was a frequent commentator for Fox News Channel and a regular guest host of The O'Reilly Factor. In 2007, she announced that she would not return to The O'Reilly Factor, claiming that Fox News had mishandled a dispute over derogatory statements made about her by Geraldo Rivera in a Boston Globe interview. Since 2007, she has concentrated on her writing, blogging and public speaking, although she still appears on television occasionally, especially with Sean Hannity on Fox News and Fox & Friends once a week. In December 2009, Malkin began writing for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
In August 2004, following claims by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that presidential candidate John Kerry had exaggerated his record during the Vietnam War, Malkin appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and stated that there were "legitimate questions" over whether Kerry's wounds were "self-inflicted." When host Chris Matthews pressed her eleven times over his interpretation of 'self-inflicted' to imply that Kerry had shot himself on purpose, she said that other soldiers had made this claim, referring to other injuries. Matthews said "No irresponsible comments are going to be made on this show"; Malkin criticized Matthews and the MSNBC staff in her blog the following day. Georgia Senator Zell Miller accused Matthews of "browbeating" Malkin.
Her first book, How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces, was published in 2002 and was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2004, she wrote The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, defending Japanese American internment by the United States government during World War II, and arguing that the same procedures could be used on Arab- and Muslim-Americans today. The book engendered harsh criticism from several Asian American civil rights organizations.Japanese American citizens League. "JACL Responds to 'Defense of Internment, Case for Race Profiling'","IMdiversity.com", August 24, 2004. The "Historians' Committee for Fairness," a group of professors, condemned the book for not having undergone peer review and argued that its central thesis is false. It was announced in August 2004 that the Hawaii-based newspaper Midweek dropped her column as a result of the controversy.Beginning in November 2004, this move was followed by The Virginian-Pilot, with criticism that she was "an Asian Ann Coulter."Editor & Publisher Staff. "Virginia Paper Drops Columnist Malkin", Editor and Publisher, November 22, 2004. Malkin responded, "I'm not Asian, I'm American, for goodness' sake. I would take the comparison to Ann Coulter as somewhat of a compliment. I have a lot of respect for Ann Coulter".Malkin's opponents attempted to get the Manzanar National Historic Site (a former relocation and internment camp) to ban her book from their store, but failed.
Malkin's third book, Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, was released in October 2005.
Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, Malkin's fourth book, was released on July 27, 2009, and attained #1 best seller status by August 5, 2009. The book spent six weeks at #1 on the hardcover non-fiction section of the New York Times Best Seller list. Malkin embarked on a media tour, covering both TV and radio outlets to promote the book.Malkin described an objective of the book in a July 27, 2009 interview with Sean Hannity, saying "what I have done is to help shatter completely the myths of hope and change in the new politics in Washington by scouring every nook and cranny, every inch of this administration, and showing how in a very short span of six months they have betrayed every principle and every promise that they have made by installing these influence peddlers, power brokers and very wealthy people". Discussing her theme of corruption Malkin said: "you have to judge them by their rhetoric, and if you look at the gap between the rhetoric and the reality, this has to be one of the most corrupt administrations in recent memory."
Malkin appeared on NBC's Today show on July 29, 2009 where she explained the title for chapter 2 of her book, "Bitter Half: First Crony Michelle Obama" as deriving from her view that Michelle Obama "was steeped in the politics of the Daley machine" and that she "is beholden to the type of hardball politics that Barack Obama says he is against." Stating that Michelle Obama's "entire professional career was based on nepotism", Malkin went on to say that "despite Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis where she whined and moaned about the old boy network and how she couldn't get ahead because of her skin color, in fact it was a farce because it was one of those old white boys who put her in that position in the first place."
In June 2004 she launched a political blog, MichelleMalkin.com. A 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee described Malkin as one of the five "best-read national conservative bloggers", and Technorati ranks MichelleMalkin.com as the 60th most popular blog among all types.
After Malkin criticized hip hop artist Akon for "degrading women" in a Vent episode, Akon's record label, Universal Music Group, forced YouTube to remove the video by issuing a DMCA takedown notice, but decided to retract this notice after the Electronic Frontier Foundation joined Malkin and Hot Air in contesting the removal as a misuse of copyright law.
In an interview with Business Week magazine in July 2007, Malkin said, "We’re doing what few other blogs can do. We serve up terabytes of bandwidth... I'm shelling out for gold-plated servers. That's expensive, and we want to be able to withstand huge traffic surges."
She continued to contribute frequently to MichelleMalkin.com, and in June 2007, she revamped it, moving it to a larger server on WordPress. With the new redesign, she re-enabled comments on her blog, which she said she had disallowed after February 2005 due to a high level of obscene and racist comments. Subscribed readers could once again post comments, although registration for the comments is rarely open. Malkin states her policy thus: "I may allow as much or as little opportunity for registration as I choose, in my absolute discretion, and I may close particular comment threads".
Jamil Hussein
Malkin was one of several bloggers who questioned the credibility and even the existence of Iraqi police Captain "Jamil Hussein" who had been used as a source by the Associated Press in over 60 stories about the Iraq war. The controversy started in November 2006 when the AP reported that six Iraqis had been burned alive as they left a mosque and that four mosques had been destroyed, citing Hussein as one of its sources. In January 2007, Malkin visited Baghdad, and stated that:"the Iraqi Ministry of Interior says disputed Associated Press source Jamil Hussein does exist. At least one story he told the AP just doesn’t check out: The Sunni mosques that as Hussein claimed and AP reported as “destroyed,” “torched” and “burned and blown up” are all still standing. So the credibility of every AP story relying on Jamil Hussein remains dubious." Malkin has issued a correction for her denial of Capt. Hussein's existence but still contests AP claims of destroyed mosques and civilians burned alive.
Students Against War controversy
In April 2006, Students Against War (SAW), a campus group at University of California, Santa Cruz, staged a protest against the presence of military recruiters on campus, and sent out a press release containing contact details (names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses) of three student leaders for use by reporters. Malkin included these contact details in a blog column entitled "Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America". Malkin claimed the contact information was originally taken from SAW's own website, but that later SAW had removed it and had "wiped" the "cached version." The students asked Malkin to remove the contact details from her blog, but Malkin reposted them several times Sentinel. < "Malkin moves, takes child from school, as SC students retaliate", "Santa Cruz Indymedia", April 22, 2006. writing in her blog: "I am leaving it up. If you are contacting them, I do not condone death threats or foul language. As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility."
SAW remarked: "Due to the continued irresponsible actions of some bloggers, members of the group have received numerous death threats and anti-Semitic comments through phone calls and emails." A blog war ensued. Malkin claimed that she received hostile e-mails then her private home address, phone number, photos of her neighborhood and maps to her house were published on several websites. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported receiving an email from Malkin saying that this forced her to remove one of her children from school and move her family.
Another controversy involving private addresses began on July 1, 2006, when Malkin and other bloggers commented on a New York Times Travel section article that had featured the town where Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld owned summer homes. The article included a picture of Rumsfeld's long tree-lined driveway that showed a birdhouse and small portion of the housefront. Malkin declared that this story was part of "a concerted, organized effort to dig up and publicize the private home information of prominent conservatives in the media and blogosphere to intimidate them."
Hot Air
On April 24, 2006, Hot Air, a "conservative Internet broadcast network" went into operation, with Malkin as founder/CEO. She intended the blog to provide "content and analysis you can't get anywhere else on a daily basis—both on the blog and in our original video features." Her staffers included 'Allahpundit' and Bryan Preston, though the latter was replaced by Ed Morrissey on February 25, 2008. In February 2010, Hotair.com was bought by Salem Communications and is no longer administered by Malkin.
Malkin believes that the custom of granting automatic citizenship at birth to children of tourists and temporary workers, and to "anchor babies" delivered by illegal aliens on American soil, undermines the integrity of citizenship. She argues that the custom of blanket birthright citizenship is supported neither by the Fourteenth Amendment nor by legal precedent.
Immigration enforcement
Malkin also opposes sanctuary cities, in which local authorities do not enforce all national immigration laws or coordinate with agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Following the August 2007 execution-style murder of three college students in Newark, New Jersey, she repeated her criticisms of politicians' posture towards sanctuary cities. In particular, she criticized former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's proposal for a tamper-proof identification card with this comment:
She supports coordination with federal authorities through the use of Section 287 of the IIRIRA to investigate, detain, and arrest aliens on civil and criminal grounds. Malkin supports the detention and deportation of some immigrants, regardless of legal status, on national security grounds.
Unemployment benefits
During an appearance as a news analyst on the roundtable segment of ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on August 2, 2009, Malkin suggested that extending unemployment benefits was a cause of the high unemployment rates of 2009. She explained why she opposed another 13-week extension of unemployment benefits: "if you put enough government cheese in front of people they are going to just keep eating it and kicking the can down the road... people will just delay getting a job until the three weeks before the benefits run out."
She married Jesse Dylan Malkin on July 23, 1993. Eventually, he worked as an associate policy analyst and economist focusing on healthcare issues for the Rand Corporation. The Malkins have two children: daughter Veronica Mae (born 1999) and son Julian Daniel (born 2003). In 2004, Malkin reported on her website that her husband had left his "lucrative health-care consulting job" to be a stay-at-home dad.
The family initially lived in North Bethesda, Maryland, but relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado in November 2008.
