Best. Book. Party. Evah!

Hey, where were you Wednesday night? Because if you're one of the cool kids, you were hanging with Michelle Malkin at Morton's Steakhouse in downtown D.C.

It was announced last night that Culture of Corruption will appear for the sixth consecutive week at No. 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list -- the first time in the 62-year history of Regnery Publishing that one of their titles has spent so many weeks at No. 1. The secret? Page 291.

Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center and Jimmie Bise of the Sundries Shack were hanging out with the author of The Best. Book. Evah!

Michelle talks with Ron Kessler of NewsMax.com.

Michelle speaks! It took me about five tries to get the photo I wanted, showing the wedding ring on her left hand. She ended her speech by thanking her husband, Jesse, and the rest of her family -- her nieces, nephews and in-laws were in attendance -- for helping to keep her "grounded." Of all that she does (blogs, columns, books, TV, radio, speeches) the most amazing thing to remember is that she does all these things while also being a wife and mom.

Jason Mattera of YAF and Jimmie Bise show their solidarity by exchanging the official Obama Terrorist Fist-Bump.

Elizabeth Meinecke of Human Events, Bay Buchanan, and Mary Katharine Ham of the Weekly Standard were hanging out with The Man On Page 291.

Jesse Malkin: "You da man!" Me: "No, no! You da man!" After debating this topic for half an hour, Jesse and I decided we need to co-author a book, How To Be Da Man: Secrets of Becoming the Kind of Cool Dude That Chicks Dig.

Regnery Publishing's president Marji Ross likes the book idea.

Erick Erickson agrees with Jesse that I am da man.

Jimmie Bise -- who fills in as da man when I'm off-duty -- poses with Mary Matalin, a/k/a Mrs. James Carville. Me to Mary: "Hey, he's better looking than your husband." Mary to me: "Well, that's not saying much."

Da man with Mark Hemingway's wife, shortly after she revealed details of the secret plan by National Review staffers to oust Rich Lowry.

George Soros vs. The Best. Book. Evah!

The Boss:

"At HuffPo, a Soros-tied co-author has launched a bid to dislodge conservative authors — and he's asking for help from every last nutroots activist out there. . . .
"Co-author Michael Huttner urges his fellow Obama cultists to buy the book [50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America] . . .
"[W]e also hope it contributes to changing the dialogue in this country, at a time when it's beginning to look a little too much like the Bush era with books by right-wingers Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and [some douchebag who isn't actually conservative] topping this week's national bestsellers list."

You must fight back! You must buy the No. 1 New York Times bestseller: Culture of Corruption: Obama And His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies -- actually, you should buy two copies and give one to a liberal friend, just to annoy him.

It's the Best. Book. Evah!

Rep. Diane Watson (D-Havana) Unwittingly Consigns Herself to Hell

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for transcribing this remarkable rant by the Castroite congresswoman:

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, "Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?"
And lemme tell ya, before you say "Oh, it's a commu–" you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]
And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found . . . well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro . . .

Many critics have focused on the racial aspect of Rep. Watson's remarks, in which she bashed Rush Limbaugh for his oft-misinterpreted "I hope he fails" remark about Obama. Watson said Republicans "are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails."

Dear Ms. Watson: Barack Obama does not look like you, for which fact he should be eternally grateful.

And as much as I would enjoy unpacking what my old college buddy Bobby "The Hamp" Shearer would call your "signifying jive," it is far more important that your admiration for Fidel Castro and his murderous Marxist henchman, Che Guevara, be exposed as a species of subversive totalitarian propaganda.

Whether anyone is black or white, Jewish or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic, believer or atheist, gay or straight, native or immigrant, rich or poor is irrelevant to whether he is an American. Yet to deny the founding principles of this great nation -- as you, Ms. Watson, have done by your embrace of that ideology of evil known as Marxism -- is to deserve the contempt of every man and woman who would claim the high honor of being an American.

Assignment From the Site Meter
There were other things I might have done today -- oh, look, Ted Kennedy was a commie-loving traitor, too! -- but when I woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee, and checked my SiteMeter (the Small Blogger's habit I hope I never lose) I noticed traffic from Michelle Malkin.

Hmmm, had The Boss linked me? Well, merely a "Buzzworthy" sidebar link to my denunciation of Eric Zorn. Ah, but there on Mrs. Malkin's front page was her transcription of your remarks on this YouTube video:

Now, Mrs. Malkin is a journalist who has acquired fame and fortune by the most honorable of methods: Hard work. When we hung out in Denver a year ago, I had the opportunity to watch her live-blog the famous "Barackopolis" acceptance speech. The lady is a lean, mean, blogging machine. Her focus and discipline are an amazing thing to see.

Now, Ms. Watson, what does it mean that such a person as Michelle Malkin would devote even a small part of her precious allotment of time on this earth to transcribing your idiotic remarks? If there is any journalistic duty worse than transcribing audio, I don't know what it is. And I say that as someone whose early career as a small-town sports writer involved typing in bowling league results.

Having spent more than two decades clawing my way up from the very lowest rung of the American newspaper industry, having won awards and seen my reporting lead to legislative action in the halls of Congress, and especially having won acclaim as a top Hayekian public intellectual, I deeply resent it when at the advanced age of 49, I find myself required to do journalistic scutwork, as if I were some grass-green newbie "agate maggot" on the sports desk.

Old School Hayekian
Such are my feelings about transcribing audio. I'll do it if I have to do it. But whenever I'm cussing my way through a transcription, I always hear the inner voice of an Old School editor -- whom I picture in suspenders, sleeves rolled up, unbuttoned collar, loosened tie, an unfiltered Chesterfield hanging from the corner of his mouth and a pint of cheap whiskey in his desk drawer -- sharing a Hayekian insight:

Stop wasting your time on that crap, McCain. What the hell are interns for?

Such is the Old Schooler's concern for efficiency, his Hayekian conception of the division-of-labor benefits of organizational hierarchy, wherein the experienced editor assigns menial duties to an unfortunate young flunky, so that the grizzled veteran may apply his hard-won skills where they are most needed.

Wes Pruden often wore suspenders although I never saw him smoke a Chesterfield and, really, who knows what he kept in his desk drawer? But Mr. Pruden didn't work his way to the top of the heap so that he could spend his day transcribing audio. At some point, an old newspaperman -- Mr. Pruden notoriously hated the word "journalist" -- has earned the right to assign scutwork to others.

Blogospheric Punk-Smacking
Well, here I am in the blogosphere, in the New Media age where arrogant young know-it-alls think themselves too good to do scutwork. Every overprivileged 23-year-old punk fresh out of College Republicans is a pundit these days -- a commentator, a media critic, a political strategist, a regular by-God intellectual -- and heaven forbid anyone should expect one of these young geniuses to do the scutwork of mere reporting. (Anyone want to spot me an over/under on the total number of hours of his life Ross Douthat ever spent transcribing audio? I'd lay $20 it's less than 40 hours, and I'd bet the farm he's never typed in bowling-league results.)

Therefore, Ms. Watson, I considered it quite a marvelous and significant thing when, this morning, it came to my attention that no less a personage than Michelle Malkin -- the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Best. Book. Evah! -- had assigned herself the scutwork of transcribing this bit of audio.

It would seem as if something utterly accidental and random has called you, Rep. Diane Watson, to my attention. And as every regular reader knows, I don't believe in accidents.

People who know how to hit a man's tip jar thereby acquire his special favor. So when I woke up this morning, Ms. Watson, I quickly discerned the ministry to which I was called to devote myself this day. You have unwittingly incurred the diligent performance of a most solemn duty, ma'am.

The Series Continues

Like Belshazzar: The Self-Destruction of Diane Watson

Say it ain't so!

Hope for $ale?

Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising for Barack Obama’s White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.

Hope-destroying details from Michelle Malkin, who just learned that Culture of Corruption -- Best. Book. Evah! -- will be at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for the third consecutive week.

Michelle's secret to success? Page 291.

'He hasn't gotten where his is today by being a racial opportunist, has he?'

So says NBC's Matt Lauer to The Boss in the "Today Show" appearance in which, as Human Events says, Lauer "loses his cool":

This is a good example of why I hate television news. Say what you will about the impact of the blogosphere on journalism, TV has been degrading our profession for decades.

Television is a totalitarian medium, which has trouble accommodating diversity of opinion in a Hayekian universe of facts, where not all facts support any one particular side of an argument. TV tends to takes one of three approaches to controversy:

1. "That's the way it is" -- The Walter Cronkite Consensus, a phony moderation that may in some sense be "objective," but is never really neutral. This is the TV version of the phony conventional wisdom that David Broder peddled for decades.
2. Silencing dissent -- The Left has, correctly, excoriated the Beltway press corps for failing to provide due-diligence examination of the arguments in favor of the Iraq invasion. Even ferociously partisan Republicans who were the most hawkish in 2002-03 must now admit that Americans didn't get the whole story in the months leading up to the invasion. One of the reasons was that TV news did an excellent job of ignoring skeptics, not all of whom were International A.N.S.W.E.R.-type peacenik kooks. TV news tends to reduce arguments to exactly two sides, pro and con, and to exclude voices that don't fit neatly into those categories.
3. The "Crossfire" Syndrome -- Speaking of Manichean dualism! Lauer evidently feels obligated to challenge and dispute an assertion with which he disagrees. He is not content to do what a good print-news interviewer always does in such a situation: Let the subject of the interview speak their piece, and then come back later to ask them about some particular fact that contradicts their viewpoint.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, as a newspaper reporter, is the give-'em-enough-rope interview method. You've got somebody caught dead to rights -- the county commissioner who gave a no-bid contract to his brother-in-law, a fact clearly shown by documentary evidence -- and yet the obligation of fairness requires that the crooked commissioner has the right to respond to the accusations against him.

No need to be adversarial in such a situation. In fact, the reporter in this scenario wants to present himself as sympathetic and open-minded: "Hey, what's your side of the story?" You save your toughest question -- your smoking-gun "gotcha" -- for the end, because if the source gets all huffy and hostile then, you've already got a whole notebook full of quotes.

TV news, as a medium, doesn't work that way. Everything is real-time and the clock rules. Lauer knows going in that he's got exactly X-number of minutes with Malkin, and begins with the determination to control the interview for its entirety in a way that no print reporter ever does (or should).

There have been times I've talked to a source for an hour or more, and the entire news value of that interview was two sentences. Print news is patient in a way that live TV is not.

Much criticism of "the media" is actually a criticism of television, and of TV's unexamined influence on other media. As a print reporter, it does not matter what my opinion is -- especially in a place like Washington, D.C., which has now fewer than four daily newspapers.

So long as I'm reporting facts accurately, any imbalance can be counteracted by either (a) a follow-up story the next day, (b) the outraged letter-to-the-editor presenting "the other side," or (c) competing coverage in another paper, reporting whatever it was I missed in my story.

TV news is not as easy as it looks -- for a 2001 interview, I watched ABC's Peter Jennings do a live studio anchor on George W. Bush's first White House press conference, and was impressed -- but it cannot be done well by people who are not conscious of its limitations and inherent biases as a medium.

Jennings took heat for bias -- he was notoriously sympathetic to Israel's enemies, which critics attributed to his having shagged every Arab hottie within reach back when he was a Mideast correspondent -- but he nevertheless had a concern for professionalism that Lauer entirely lacks.

Believe it or not, Jennings took his critics seriously. Conscious of his own liberal views, he had a real curiosity about what made people see things differently.

Jennings and I stood in the snow on the sidewalk outside the ABC News Washington that day, taking a smoke break. (He kept a pack of Camel Lights in his desk, but said, "Don't report this. My wife would kill me.") And as we stood there, off-the-record, Jennings began to interview me.

Who was I? Where did I come from? How many kids did I have? How did I end up at The Washington Times? The man had a real desire to know, and that had a real impact on my perception of a guy whom I'd been prepared to discvoer was a blow-dried Ted Baxter stereotype. Biased or not, Jennings was a real reporter, a guy who took notes and paid attention.
In fact, my feature profile of Jennings was so positive that our editor-in-chief, Wes Pruden, felt the need to edit the story personally, and include a bit of snarky negativity that I considered most unfortunate. And, alas for poor Peter, it wasn't Mrs. Jennings who killed him, but those Camel Lights.

Matt Lauer, quite frankly, is not fit to be called a "journalist" in the sense that Peter Jennings was. We can trace a descending arc in the quality of TV journalism, and Matt Lauer is not an apogee of that arc.

Glenn Beck Says: 'Best. Book. Evah!'

Obviously, it takes a big man to admit that a mere "Asian woman" has written a better book than his own bestseller but . . . Glenn, have your people call my people, OK?

You know, I never did get around to exploring the question of why Allah hates me. When we were in Denver for the Apotheosis last summer, I asked Michelle, and she said she doesn't know, either. Maybe it's . . . wait a minute.

What's this? MK Ham and Sully, sittin' in a tree? . . . Errrr, errrr . . . .

America Agrees: Best. Book. Evah!

Professor Glenn Reynolds:

Not long ago, people were saying that right-leaning books didn’t sell. Now reader Gordy Dalman writes: "Michelle Malkin's Culture of Corruption is now #1 on Amazon. It's good to see both Glenn Beck and Mark Levin in the Top 10 as well."

OK, so even if those other guys didn't give me a shout-out (see p. 291 of the Best. Book. Evah!) you should still go ahead and buy all three.

America's biggest problem?Too many Orientals on TV!

Michelle Malkin gets hate-mail:

How do you, an Oriental, get on national TV and say and write such hard things about the President and several of his staff without being sued for slander?

Amazing, isn't it? Complete non sequitur. Just out of the blue: "Hey, you're Oriental!" Another classic:

I will be glad to have a debate with about your book, your vision, and you being an Asian who forgot where she is coming from.

Of course, they vary the ad hominem depending on who the enemy is: Rush Limbaugh is fat, Ann Coulter is a tranny, etc., etc. But it's all just variations on a theme.

Anyway, Hot Air has video of Michelle's appearance on the Hannity show to promote Culture of Corruption which -- in addition to being documented with 75 pages of end notes -- is also the Best. Book. Evah!

UPDATE: Notice the way Michelle's critics manage to insinuate that she doesn't know her place, that being a mere "Oriental" or "Asian" somehow renders her political arguments inoperative.

Does anyone ever send e-mails to Bill Moyers saying, "How can you, a Texan, get on national TV and say these things?" Or does Ed Schultz have to deal with people calling him a "German-American who forgot where he came from"?

On the one hand, conservatives are bashed for supposedly being "Racist! Sexist! Anti-Gay!" -- a chant I heard in 2007 outside an George Washington University appearance by David Horowitz -- but on the other hand, when confronted with conservatives who clearly don't fit that profile, the Left feels obligated to make racial and sexual comments.

And they don't do it merely as an insult, but seem to think that, in mentioning Michelle Malkin's ethnicity, they have actually proved something!