That’s the score, per Christopher Orlet, writer of today’s “The Nation’s Pulse” column at The American Spectator.Let’s allow Mr. Orlet to explain:
Score another one for the bloggers. Not only did the pajama pundits blow the whistle on Dan Rather’s misrepresentation of the president’s Air National Guard record (Rathergate), and CNN correspondent Eason Jordan’s false accusations that U.S. servicemen intentionally targeted and killed journalists in Iraq (Easongate), but last week the blogs Protein Wisdom and Blackfive outed a potentially dangerous leftist university professor. The principals have rather tediously designated this scandal Ramseygate, as in JonBenet.
Wow, “the blogs” got an obscure college instructor to resign from her part-time job. Their mothers must be proud.
But frankly, if this is the nation’s pulse, we should call a doctor STAT!
But let’s hear a little more about this potentially dangerous leftist (is there any other kind)?
Apparently Frisch has been trolling Jeff Goldstein’s conservative Protein Wisdom blog for some time, but last week something set her off. (What exactly is unclear. Prof. Frisch did not respond to my email.) Suddenly Goldstein begins receiving — from Frisch — thinly disguised death threats against his two-year-old son. It isn’t just the tone and vocabulary Frisch uses throughout her rant that is so scary, it is more the creepy imagery, like dialogue out of a slasher movie. I am not a psychologist like Prof. Frisch, but I think I recognize paranoid schizophrenia when I see it:
Wow, Mr. Orlet is as good as Dr. Sanity and Dr. Bill Frist in making long distance diagnoses.
Anyway, we won’t copy Frisch’s comments, because we think they are indeed beyond the pale, and have already received more than enough coverage (but can we just say that we think that naming a blogger “gate” after a murdered child is kind of sick in it’s own, special way).
So, let’s just get back to Mr. Orlet’s commentary on them:
Like a serial killer who scrawls “stop me before I kill again” on the walls of the murder scene, Prof. Frisch didn’t even trying to conceal her remarks. She posted them on Goldstein’s blog for all to see, along with her signature.
That’s analogy with the serial killer is perfect, except for the fact that serial killers (to include the legendary William George Heirens) don’t sign their names on the walls of murder scenes. Oh, and Frisch didn’t happen to kill anybody, and didn’t in fact issue any threats. (While saying that you wouldn’t care if something horrible happened to a child is not what decent people do, it’s not the same thing as saying “I am going to murder your child. You, Homer Simpson! I’m talking to YOU!”)
She now claims “I made a joke on a blog about the death of a nasty rightwing blogger’s toddler.” Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s anybody’s idea of humor.
Ann “poison in the crème brulee, terrorists should blow up the NY Times building, the troops should frag Murtha” Coulter probably would. But unlike Mr. Orlet, I don’t always recognize paranoid schizophrenia when I see it, so I don’t feel comfortable calling him crazy.
It is worrisome to think that this “academic” is influencing the way young people think.
Hey, I think it’s worrisome that Bill O’Reilly is influencing the way young people think, but he is still allowed to write books for kids! When will the blogosphere make HIM resign?
Equally troubling is the fact that Frisch is a psychologist and former director of the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation. (Physician, heal thyself!) Worse is the thought that there are hundreds of Frisch’s out there on American campuses, most not so careless.
We can only hope that Protein Wisdom and Black Five use their wiles to out the rest of them.
Frisch’s remarks were copied by readers and emailed by the hundreds to Al Kaszniak, the psychology department chair at the University of Arizona. Lacking tenure, Frisch did the only thing left to do — last week she resigned and offered Goldstein a goofy apology. Now she is pouting, writing that she feels physically threatened by the Great Right Wing Conspiracy. The FBI is on alert. As one blogger put it, Frisch is now headed down the familiar liberal path to victim status.
Unlike Jeff Goldstein, who is headed down the familiar conservative path to, um, victory, where he will be greeted with sweets and flowers.
And speaking of Jeff, we were impressed that he visited our humble blog — and were even more impressed by this portion of his comments:
Which doesn’t mean they [Gavin of Sadly, No!} were “scared,” of “course,” just that perhaps they “realized” that libel “is” potentially actionable, and that some of us are “through” fucking around with “anonymous” bloggers who like to hide behind their anonymity while launching anonymous attacks.
And I’m getting very very curious about who some of these people are.
Gavin is Gavin McLeod, former captain of the Love Boat. Brad is Brad Pitt, washed up film star. Retardo Montalban is Ricardo Montalban’s illegitimate step-son. Seb is Dick Cheney (and he cares nothing for your threats of lawsuits, for he shoots lawyers in the face just for sport!)
I hope that helps.
Online Integrity Pledge? Fuck it. Like the Geneva Convention: You don’t sign it, no protections for you. I don’t give a shit what Ginsburg, Souter, Kennedy, Bryer, Stevens and Greenwald have to say on the matter.
Yeah! Integrity? Fuck it! If other people are going to make fun of me, then I have no obligiation to control my behavior in any way.
Words to live by.
But back to Mr. Orlet, for the moral to the story:
As David Horowitz documents in his new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, these kinds of loonies have been ruining America’s universities and American education for four decades. In the past it took an enterprising student with a hidden tape recorder to record evidence of left wing professor’s lunacy. Now the Web is giving “educators” a more convenient way to shoot themselves in the foot. Thank God for the Web.
In fact, all educators should be required to post comments at Protein Wisdom – it’s our last, best hope of getting them all fired. And it’s why God (and Al Gore) invented the Web.