Michelle Malkin in profile
Scott Johnson

Howard Kurtz profiles our friend Michelle Malkin in today's Washington Post: "A hard right punch." At Michelle's Hot Air site, See-Dubya points out the disappointing aspects of Kurtz's profile: "WaPo's Kurtz profiles lonely outspoken conservative who brings it all on herself."

I've long admired Michelle and was thrilled finally to meet her in March 2005. Michelle comes out of the world of professional journalism and still writes columns such as her most recent one on Barack Obama: "An Obamanation." But she is a natural blogger who pours it on every day at her Michelle Malkin site. In the tradition of Bill Buckley, she seems to me to be a happy warrior who has a gift for spotting lightweights and phonies.

Paul adds: ...

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Jules Crittenden: Just the Facts

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WaPo’s Kurtz Profiles Lonely Outspoken Conservative Who Brings It All On Herself 
See-Dubya

Keep an eye on this one, she’s going places:

“She’s a very tough lady,” says Bryan Preston, her business partner in the daily video blog Hot Air. “You’ve never met a happier person than Michelle when she’s in the thick of a fight. She enjoys the combat of ideas.”

That persona is a far cry from the self-described “geek” of her youth. Michelle Maglalang grew up outside Atlantic City in a Reaganite, conservative Catholic family, was not politically active, and failed a fifth-grade public speaking class. As a college student, she was so naive that when a married Republican congressman invited her to live in his home during her internship with then-Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), she thought it was a generous offer until her parents straightened her out.

Kurtz goes on to dwell on her outrageous pugnacious in-your-faceousness, and doesn’t give Michelle much credit for being anything but a controversialist.  ...

In Michelle’s defense, Kurtz quotes Bryan, and Michelle’s husband Jesse. He doesn’t bother to contact, say, another conservative blogger who hasn’t named a sarcastic award after her. And then he finishes off with a sad little riff about how lonely and alienated she makes herself:

It is as though eternal vigilance is the price of being Michelle Malkin: No slight can go unanswered, no insult allowed to stand. Blogging is an addiction, she says, but not one she is looking to kick.

“You have to accept that you’ll never have many friends,” Malkin says. “It’s a lonely existence.”

To prove that point, Kurtz runs extensive carping from Wonkette’s Ken Layne, lefty blogger Duncan “Atrios” Black, and Andrew “Conservative” Sullivan, who gives out a “Malkin award” for outrageousness, and who seems to think Michelle brings all her troubles on herself:  ...

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Kurtz On Malkin
Ed Morrissey

Howard Kurtz profiles Michelle Malkin in today's Washington Post -- if you'll forgive my pun -- and, as usual, Kurtz writes a balanced and interesting article on one of the most intriguing New Media figures. The portrait of a committed, passionate, and tough voice matches with my own experience with Michelle:

Is this merely how the war of ideas is waged in an anything-goes digital culture? Or is Malkin an especially inflammatory practitioner, torching her targets with such books as "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild"?

Over lunch at a Filipino cafe at Union Station, Malkin, who has two young children, is charming one moment and pugnacious the next. She says she loves the intellectual freedom of the blogosphere, where "you can respond, you can reveal people to be the liars and slanderers they are."

Between bites, though, you can catch a glimpse of amazement that "a small-town girl from South Jersey," as she puts it, can have such an outsize impact. Even if she makes plenty of enemies in the process.

If she makes enemies, it's only because they can't deal with the unvarnished truth-telling at her web site and in her columns. Instead of attacking her facts, her enemies attack her personally, the first sign that they have conceded on the merits of the argument. Michelle writes to get a reaction, and so the tenor of the debate will always be hot when she's involved, but the balance of vitriol in those exchanges always tilts heavily against Michelle. ...