The Nastiest Person in the World?

        Born Michelle Malatang to Filipino parents here on work visas, Michelle Malkin (her married Anglo name) is the archetypical “anchor baby.”  While I rarely use that term, I do so here because Ms. Malkin frequently derogates others by its use. She grew up in America, brought here, in-utero, without (obviously, but I’m making a point here) her knowledge or consent. Raised in the USA and benefiting from education through college here, she has, nonetheless, been a constant and harsh  critic of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA.)  

        So, what? So, these “Dreamers” are persons who, like her, came here, not of their own volition but because they were brought here, not born here, as Malkin wouldn’t have been had her parents waited just three months to emigrate. She violently opposes their being offered some of the same privileges she had, and has, due simply to timing. Much has been written about DACA and its provisions have been conflated by many on the right as an endorsement of unfettered illegal immigration, when in fact, restrictions have set in stone the number of persons already here who can qualify for Dreamer status.  

 To even qualify for DACA, applicants must meet the following major requirements, although meeting them does not guarantee approval. To even apply, an individual must have:

Come to the United States before their 16th birthday

Lived continuously in the United States since June 15, 2007

Been under age 31 on June 15, 2012

Been physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and at the time of making their request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS

Have completed high school or a GED, have been honorably discharged from the armed forces, or are enrolled in school

Have not been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanors, and do not pose a threat to national security or public safety

        These folks are here, succeeding in America at a higher rate than their native-born peers, regardless of race! Yeah, really - 72% of college age are enrolled and on track for citizenship in the country they were brought to, the vast majority as small children. Get this straight, had Michelle Malkin been born 5 months earlier, she would have fallen into the exact same status!

        This alone should be sufficient for any American of character to turn their backs on her but, “Wait”, as they say in those annoying commercials, “There’s more.” Although Malkin touts her parents’ and her own background as “Reagan Republicans” she has even polluted that well.

       It was, of course Ronald Reagan, who, in one of the few truly humane gestures identifiable in his presidency, formally apologized to Americans of Japanese descent for the internment of their families and ancestors during WWII. Speaking with regard to Executive Order 9066, he said, “We must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake. For throughout the war, Japanese-Americans in the tens of thousands remained utterly loyal to the United States.” The Civil Liberties Act also compensated more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. The legislation offered a formal apology and paid out $20,000 in compensation to each surviving victim. (ed. note: In most cases this was a pittance compared to the cost adjusted value of property seized and resold to Anglos in the process without compensation). The Act was passed after a Congressional Committee determined after exhaustive study of previously classified documents, that the incarceration was a "grave injustice" motivated by "racial prejudice, war hysteria and the failure of political leadership."

        So, what can she find fault with here, after all Ronnie was her idol, right? It seems, though, that Ms. Malkin thinks internment of American citizens was perfectly fine, even though even that hard-right guy, J. Edgar Hoover, condemned it at the time. In “Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror” Malkin stops just short of calling for internment of Arabs and other Muslims, but maintains that E.O. 9066 was justified, claiming to have done exhaustive research into declassified MAGIC transcripts, MAGIC being the name applied to the top-secret results of having broken both the Japanese Naval and “Purple” codes.

       

        Real historians who have spent decades trying to do what Malkin claims to have done in just under a year, have almost unanimously derided the book and her conclusions, in statements such as, “Ms. Malkin’s book represents a blatant violation of professional standards of objectivity and fairness." I am hardly surprised. There are reams and cases of documents involved here, many which can only be reviewed in situ and with credentials in the original. This brief screed has no space for that, but I would like to proffer one small excerpt from a transcribed and decoded intercepted MAGIC transmission from the Japanese consulate in San Francisco to Japan:

             “We (Japanese embassy personnel) are doing everything in our power to establish outside contacts in connection with our efforts to gather intelligence material. In this regard, we have decided to make use of white persons and Negroes, through Japanese persons whom we cannot trust completely. (It not only would be very difficult to hire U.S. (military?) experts for this work at present time, but the expenses would be exceedingly high.)"

        The underlined text makes it clear that, regardless of what the motherland demanded of embassy persons, they felt that native born American citizens (“White persons and Negroes”) were better spy material than Nisei (Japanese born immigrants) or Issei (American born ethnic Japanese). So, it seems that Malkin’s real agenda here is the process of analogizing Japanese in 1941 to Muslims in 2004. Yet, lest we think of her as simply the mean spirited second generation immigrant ingrate shrew that she really is, she prefaces her book with a short introduction ("A Time to Discriminate"), in which Malkin tells us to "Make no mistake": she is "not advocating rounding up all Arabs or Muslims and tossing them into camps." She's not?

       I find Michelle Malkin  to be a particularly loathsome creature, inconsistent, a poor researcher, mean spirited and as a woman of color, a discredit to her gender, her ethnicity, and her country.