Punting the Pundits

Since I, Shelby, cover the idiotic pundits here, I must outline the Michelle Malkin vs. UCSC students fiasco.

Michelle Malkin was less than pleased when UCSC students made military recruiters leave their campus. She went ahead and posted the contact information for the students in charge of the organization. Knowing full well her army of crazed dimwits would begin harassing those kids with calls of death and meyham.

Lefties got sick of this one sided attack after Michelle refused to take down the students' numbers (they're still up even now!) So they started to get organized, which she also mocked.

Michelle then found out what's good for the goose is good for the gander as HER address and phone number got posted. Michelle failed to learn her lesson, instead claiming she's taking a stand (for UCSC military recruiters? Huh?) Actually, despite her rhetoric that it's about "them" (the recruitors) it's not, it's about HER. Her name is out there. Her name is all over the blogosphere. Her site is linked to all over the net (even here.) It's all about her. Michelle is probably working hard on her new book, Me Me Me Me ME ME MEEEEEE!!! (Islam sucks!), avaliable everywhere December 2006.

The "cyberwar" even made the mainstream press:

Cyber war over UCSC protest heats up
By ROGER SIDEMAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

In the easy and anonymous world of cyberspace communication, angry partisans on both sides of the anti-war movement can volley threatening barbs at the click of a button. UC Santa Cruz students and conservative pundits alike have seen such messages filing up their in-boxes in the wake of last week's campus protest.

After nationally syndicated columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin posted the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of three members of Students Against War, they received a flood of obscene and harassing messages from around the country, including death threats. When a liberal Web site, in retaliation, published Malkin's cell phone number and home address, a full-blown blog war ensued.

"I am now forced to remove one of my children from school and move my family," Malkin wrote Thursday in an e-mail to the Sentinel.

Malkin, author and Fox News Channel contributor, runs one of the most popular right-wing sites on the Web, attracting 145,000 hits daily, according to Web log rankings on truthlaidbear.com.

On April 11, Students Against War flushed military recruiters out of a campus job fair.

The next day, Malkin copied the cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses of three student activists at the demonstration from a news release intended for journalists and pasted them in her online column titled "Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America."

"I woke up in the morning and my cell had 14 new messages, 25 missed calls and it kept going on," said SAW member David Zlutnick, estimating the group's three media contacts have already sifted through 500 e-mails, more than 100 with death threats.

When students called Malkin to request she remove the student information, Malkin reposted the names and numbers several more times. She defended the decision, blaming SAW for posting a link to the news release on its Web site.

To Zlutnick, the retaliation Malkin got was simply "a taste of her own medicine."

"But to put all our energy into a cyber war with this crazy right-wing lady takes away from our larger mission to end the war," he said.

Contact Roger Sideman at rsideman@santacruzsentinel.com.

The cyber war

A sample of e-mails sent to Students Against War media contacts after their addresses were posted on a Web site:

* 'My sincere hope is that a couple hundred of the local patriots take a day off work for your next anarchist event, and come down with some axe handles and bust your (expletive) heads.'
* 'Don't let the right-wing hate mail get you down. They're just a bunch of cowards behind a computer. You guys put your bodies on the line for justice.'
* 'Once you grow up, I hope you realize at some point in your lives that war is inevitable. Conflict will always be with us, regardless of whether or not we close our eyes and pretend it isn't so. It all boils down to: Do we want to win or lose?'

I doubt this crap is over.

Also, one of the students' names is "Zlutnick"! That's hilarious.