ERIC MULLER continues his unrelenting critique of Michelle Malkin. Frankly, I might find Muller more persuasive if he didn’t rely so heavily on David Neiwert, whose tendency to hurl unsubstantiated charges of racism at anyone he doesn’t like has cost him rather a lot of credibility in my eyes.
UPDATE: Malkin responds!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Neiwert takes exception to this post and says that if I can find an unsubstantiated accusation of racism on his blog he’ll apologize. Well, there’s this one: ” the root of all evil in Reynoldsland are the twin threads of dark-skinned Muslims and left-wing antiwar liberals.”
Leaving aside the subject-verb disagreement, Neiwert’s use of “dark-skinned” seems like an imputation of racism to me. He’s smart enough to know that Muslims aren’t all dark-skinned, and that I don’t exactly obsess over skin color, or say negative things about Islam, beyond the wacky terror-inspiring varieties (see, for example, this post). Nor does he offer any substantiation in terms of links, or examples that might buttress his case. It’s a cheap shot, and he repeats it in this interview. That’s why I don’t find him especially credible when he’s charging people with racism.
But I await the promised apology.
In a related development (unsubstantiated charges) Oliver Willis says that Ed Cone caught me in a “fabrication” — when the real problem is that Ed didn’t scroll down to see the update. Ed’s noted that, but Oliver hasn’t. David Brock isn’t getting his money’s worth there.
Yeah, I usually ignore this kind of stuff. But “usually” isn’t “always.”
MORE: Neiwert emails that he doesn’t think that’s an accusation of racism, and he’s not apologizing. Sure seems like one to me.
APOLOGY UPDATE: No, not to Neiwert, who doesn’t deserve it in the least, but to Eric Muller, who got caught in the crossfire. I didn’t mean by the above that I don’t trust Muller — I think he’s careful and accurate and trustworthy, though I confess that I haven’t followed the latter stages of the ongoing Muller/Malkin debate very closely. But I meant my remarks as criticism of Neiwert, rather than Muller, and I didn’t phrase them properly to reflect that. My apologies.