Malkin's "Pen Became a Death Threat"

Michelle Malkin--AKA Coulter-Lite in polite company-- has a Longfellow quotation at the top of her website: "The pen became a clarion..". It became exactly that, in the worst possible sense, when her rallying cry unleashed the hounds of hate and ignorance (in other words, her core readership) on students at UC Santa Cruz. Background Military recruiters try to set up shop at a UC job fair, but are dissuaded by a peaceful protest. Kids learn a valuable lesson--their voices, without violence, can make a difference --and the recruiters show commendably good judgement in withdrawing without incident. No problem, right? Wrong. Malkin, to borrow a memorable phrase from James Wolcott, had steam coming out of her ass over the whole affair and launched a series of ugly posts. You can gather the tenor from the titles: UC Santa Cruz hates our troops Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America Cut off tax money for UC Santa Cruz! More thuggery at Santa Cruz Long story short, she published the personal phone numbers of the student leaders on her site. Now they're getting death threats from all across the nation, courteousy of Ms. Malkin. So it seems the students learned another lesson: if you don't care to be solicited as IED bait, be prepared to be face the wrath of tin horns like Malkin. Throw in the racist language of her followers and her respectable facade becomes indistinguishable from their ignorance and hate. In that sense, her pen has indeed become a death threat to kids who were only standing up to an unjust, ill-advised and tragically optional war.