Informed Speculation

Oh, dear, this is becoming a bit of a habit, now, isn’t it? Never mind, though, the lefties are eating it up…

It, in this case, is yet another in a series of enthusiastically received broadsides against a convenient scapegoat of the right (you remember the ‘Cult of Bush’, don’t you?). This time, he takes on the Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds makes a good target because he is so visible, but let me tell you, from my limited contact with him, he’s a helluva nice guy and a real boon to small bloggers everywhere) for not taking out airtime during the primetime Olympics coverage to denounce Ann Coulter (you can read Glenn’s response here).

Greenwald has a point that many on the right have sometimes taken Democrats to task for not denouncing the latest idiotic statement from the likes of Harry Belafonte, as if they were somehow responsible for what that nut says. Okay – true enough. I’ve done it myself. It’s not fair. But how does playing “I know you are, but what am I?” with Reynolds prove? Two rights make a wrong? Glenn, with all due respect, if you want to obsess about something, obsess about you guys ever winning back control of Congress or the presidency – THAT will keep you occupied every waking hour.

Glenn (Greenwald, that is) also plays the selective quote game when he highlights this bit of the Instapundit’s piece:

“SO I GET HOME AND FIND MY INBOX full of complaints from lefties that I’ve been “silent” about Ann Coulter’s remarks on Friday” and “The lefties seem mostly upset about her use of the term “raghead”.

…which by itself looks kind of nonchalant about a racial slur, without including the all-important context:

The lefties seem mostly upset about her use of the term “raghead,” which is racist and offensive, but more or less akin to the term “cracker,” which doesn’t seem to bother a lot of lefties. So pardon me if I’m largely unmoved by their mock outrage on this account.

But there are more serious reasons to be unhappy with Coulter, reasons that, as so often happens, are actually obscured by the theatrics of angry lefties. And though I’ve been a bit distracted this weekend, and I don’t generally like to give Coulter’s attention-getting efforts more attention, it’s probably worth mentioning them now.

I didn’t attend the event (I didn’t actually attend any events except the book stuff in the Exhibition hall; I was supposed to be on a panel about online media but had to cancel) but as I understand it, Coulter made the raghead remark, and then a Muslim attendee — perhaps the guy from “Muslims For America” that Helen interviewed for our podcast — got up to object to the “raghead” remark, and she put him down. And that’s what’s really bad. In fact, Ann Coulter is guilty of doing what Ann Althouse and Stephen Green note that the lefty bloggers tend to do: Someone stretched out a hand, and she spat on it. And her ongoing treatment of Muslims has followed this general pattern of fostering alienation. The result of this sort of behavior is aid and comfort to the enemy.

Now you tell me, in all honesty: can it be a mistake that this context was left out? In fact, doesn’t it rather explode Greenwald’s whole post (well, almost: as I said earlier, I grant we have often been guilty of the behavior he condemns – and then proceeds to do himself)?

I’m also not a big fan of posting someone’s e-mail address to ensure they get lots of hate mail…pretty dirty pool, Glenn.

On a related note, the Real Ugly American provides a transcript to a debate that Greenwald had with Virginia Law Professor Robert Turner that aired on C-Span…