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Nov 3, 2007 
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Michelle Malkin has been promoting a charity that donates voice-activated laptops to disabled soldiers. Good for her.
Sort of.
See, her effort started well. But soon in her updates, Michelle’s primary purpose morphed into one of using the charitable drive as a weapon to pummel “left-wing bloggers.” First she said she’d donate $25 for the first ten “left-wing bloggers” who signed up to donate, instructing them to email her. She did not define “left-wing bloggers.” One presumes she knows one when she sees one. Perhaps there is a litmus test — failure to support War in Iraq, failure to react hysterically when the sort of brownish person in coach on the Southwest flight to Oakland says something about Allah or possibly Olive or Altmont, failure to accord her the level of respect and adulation and affirmation that she so clearly needs like a glutton needs his lunch.
Now, sneers she, “where are the liberal blogs?” It wasn’t enough to merely assume she’d hear about it if a lefty donated, by the way. She has an insider in the charity to help her police the lefty blogs:
Soldiers’ Angels webmaster Holly Aho says she has been on the lookout for any left-wing Project Valour-IT members and would give me a heads-up if any signed up. So far, to our knowledge, none have.
Now, in principle this sounds like an excellent charity. I firmly believe that when we send soldiers into danger, we owe them a debt of honor obligating us to provide them with the best training, equipment, and leadership humanly possible, and that when they come home wounded, we owe them a level of care nothing short of lavish. The GOVERNMENT should be giving the damned voice-activated laptops to soldiers who can’t use regular laptops because they were too badly injured fighting at the command of said government. Unfortunately, this government, for which Malkin so frequently is a shrill shill, feels that such care costs an awful lot and that it falls into the category of tax-and-spend liberalism (unlike paying for endeavors which result in such injuries in the first place) and that veteran care facilities should be merely “adequate”, in the sense of “not visibly cockroach-infested at the precise moment that the NBC cameras are running.”
But I’m really not inclined to donate to a charity when its fundraising arm is pimping itself out as the crude tool of political hackery. That’s a regrettable choice by them, and I hope that in the long term the deserving charity is not tainted by the association. Nor can I imagine why anyone would jump through a hoop simply because Malkin mockingly waves it. There are many, many deserving charities out there of every stripe, and the thought that anyone, right or left, should feel the need to prove themselves to the likes of Malkin is laughable. Malkin’s motive is not charitable in any meaningful sense of the word — it’s petty and pathetic, a corruption of the charitable impulse, like lighting a candle in the cathedral to pray that someone will die.
The Bible tells us that charity is the greatest of hope, faith, love, and charity; Twain cynically remarks that, with hate, revenge, magnanimity, and humanity, it serves our need to secure self-approval. It is sad to see Twain’s view of it hit closer to the mark with Malkin than the Bible’s.
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29 Comments 
assholes, Politics / Economics
