Right Wing Celebrity Death Match

Michelle Malkin: The 5-foot-2-inch, 100-pound mom

VERSUS

Alex Jones: The bug-eyed hulk

As a bit of light relief I have recently been dipping my finger into the hot bath of passionate politics that immerses the evolution vs. anti-evolutionist fracas debate. This has partly been encouraged by watching my Xmas DVD collection of Adam Curtis documentaries and partly because in order to comment on Robert Sheldon’s blog I had to sign up to Townhall.com, an American right wing webmagazine. After signing up I subsequently started receiving Townhall.com’s headline email-shots. One these emails advertised the May edition of their paper magazine that was running a feature article on a lady called Michelle Malkin described by Townhall as:

Most people know her as a conservative firebrand who has written best-selling books, including "Culture of Corruption," which dealt with the shady characters that have populated the Obama administration, and "Unhinged," which exposed the lunacy of the Left. She has been a regular analyst and contributor on Fox News for years. Week in and week out, her columns are always among the most read on Townhall.com. And her eponymous blog reaches millions of readers.

And adds:

Her impassioned opposition to Barack Obama has certainly stoked more outrage on the Left…..

But what caught my attention in this email was not so much the outrage from the left, but rather the outrage from a very different quarter altogether:


Not all of the threats come from the Left. Michelle covered the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver and expected to get challenged, but the most disturbing experience involved an altercation with conspiracy-theory extremist radio host Alex Jones. While attending a demonstration of "anarchist loons trying to levitate the Denver Mint," Jones charged out of the crowd toward Michelle.

"This bug-eyed hulk came stalking up and screaming at me about how I was a threat to his First Amendment rights," Michelle recalls. "He was spoiling for a fight with a 5-foot-2-inch, 100-pound mom; his clenched fists, bulging neck veins and spittle-flecked face were, I must say, rather disturbing."

Yes, that’s right good old right winger Alex Jones! Jones calls himself a Christian, but he does not believe in Young Earth Creationism and instead is an Intelligent Design anti-evolutionist. (See here)


I must admit I am bemused by this altercation and I don’t think I have made full sense of the sharpness of this right vs. right embroilment. The best sense I can make of it at the moment is that Jones identifies himself with the old school “patrician”* right wing, whereas the new republican right represented by townhall.com (and perhaps Uncommon Descent, also) think of themselves as the radical right advocates of free market democracy.

When I was contributing to this thread on Uncommon Descent a correspondent called “Jerry” helpfully gave me the following insights into the relevant politics:

Most atheist reside in the Democrat party which is highly secularist. However, many atheist are free market advocates and anti big government so they reside mostly on the conservative side except for social issues when they are often in favor of such things as choice in abortion, euthanasia and same sex marriage. TE’s tend to be liberal Christians and reside mostly in the Democrat Party. Those that adhere to traditional religion will mostly be Republicans because of the secular nature of the Democrats. I have no firm information about YEC’s but suspect they are mostly Republican due to the highly secular and anti Christian nature of the Democrat Party.


....so I’ll throw that into the melting pot as well and see if anything clear emerges.

Footnote:
* I have picked up this term “patrician” from Adam Curtis.