The Chicago Tribune is attempting to innoculate readers against the possibility that the rumor published by Larry Johnson of a tape of Michelle Obama ranting about “Whitey” may turn out to be true.

It’s hard to come up with an ethnic slur that has less of a sting than “whitey.”

A prevalent yet unsubstantiated Internet rumor has it that Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, used this term at some point in a speech, and the Obama campaign is concerned enough to have posted an online rebuttal.

I’ve got to ask, though. Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term “whitey”?

More a taunt than a threat, the word has no ugly history and hints at no particular stereotypes. It may have been hurled in a menacing fashion in ugly personal confrontations from time to time, but it’s never been used to keep a people down, to put them in their place, to rank them as subhuman.

To be truly offensive, a derogatory term needs to have an ominous context that “whitey” lacks.

Those who take offense are confusing prejudice—which is making negative assumptions about people based solely on external characteristics, of which all races and ethnicities are guilty—with racism, which is prejudice in action.

It requires them to imagine that “whitey” marginalizes, diminishes and therefore harms white people.

And if they’re really that dumb, then I guess they deserve to be insulted.

So there!

They really lit Jeff Goldstein’s fuse with this one. Jeff retorts:

So yeah. It looks like an Obama presidency will give us a frank discussion on the issue of race. If by “frank” we mean, “shut up and quit you’re bitching, whitey. We’ll tell you what racism is.”

Read his whole Don’t call me nigger, Whitey.

Deborah Frisch, the former instructor in Psychology at the University of Arizona, who resigned her position after posting a series of irrational and obscene comments on Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom blog-site (many including references to Goldstein’s children) was arrested, and arraigned on August 21, in Oregon on charges of stalking and telephone harassment.

WWB and Tim Dreier have the story, and lots of recent background.

Our own coverage of the original incidents may be found here, along with some subsequent blog humor here.

Andrew Sullivan momentarily paused in his perenniel campaign of demanding kinder treatment for cuththroats to second the leftwing blogosphere’s posterboy of prolixity, Glenn Greenwald, in attacking the amiable Glenn Reynolds.

According to Andrew Sullivan, Reynolds is guilty, forsooth, “of never challeng(ing) in any serious way the abuses of power in this administration nor the extremism of the Malkinesque blogosphere.”

Those who haven’t been drinking moonbat koolaid don’t actually believe this administration is guilty of abuses of power at all. Really, if anything, it is guilty of neglecting to prosecute and punish war-time sedition and treason.

And face it, Andrew, anyone still really libertarian is on the right, and not on the San Francisco-style left. A commitment to socialism at home and surrender overseas, even seasoned with debauchery, is not libertarianism, old boy. Barry Goldwater was right: There’s nothing wrong with extremism in defense of liberty. Those of us still libertarian, still on the right, respect and admire Michelle Malkin precisely because she is a fighter. In fact, as a symbolic rejoinder on this subject, I’m going to add this little item to my links collection today.

I can understand, of course, how Michelle Malkin would scare someone like you.
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Turning to that odious windbag Greenwald, aptly recognized by Charles Johnson as “the left’s most dishonest blogger” (a title not easily achieved):

On Tuesday, Greenwald indulged in a little gamesmanship, first pooh-pooh’ing the significance of last weekend’s ravings in Jeff Goldstein’s Comment section by deranged (then University of Arizona Psychology Instructor) Deborah Frisch (who subsequently resigned), and then proceeding to claim rhetorically the moral high ground in order to equate an obvious exasperated rant by Mischa of Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler with Dr. Frisch’s sinister and highly disturbing comments, applying imagined violence and sexual acts to Mr. Goldstein’s children.
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Mischa’s rant:

So keep that in mind. Should we ever make the mistake of capturing any of the perpetrators of the war crime against PFCs Menchaca and Tucker alive, we can forget about interrogating them in order to catch the rest, according to the Supreme Whores. Well, unless they’re willing to give up information if we ask “pretty please?”, since anything other than that has been deemed illegal by those blackrobed tyrants. Are we exaggerating? Try doing anything to those mutilating darlings of the Supremes in order to extract life-saving intel from them, and then wait for the Supreme Whores to decide that you were “humiliating” them in doing so.

Five ropes, five robes, five trees.

Some assembly required.

Personally, I have a lot more of a problem with the name-calling language “Supreme Whores,” than I do with the “five ropes, five trees… Some assembly required” rhetorical flourish at the end.

OK, Mischa’s posting is not an example of closely-reasoned and totally exemplary blogging, but the current debates over public issues and policy are often emotionally charged, and we all blog unevenly. Many bloggers occasionally descend to the literary form of the rant. But, frankly, the most lurid right wing rant has a tendency to resemble an example of the most dignified and restrained expressions of partisanship found on many of the left’s best known blogs. Mischa would have to chug down a lot of tequila shots, and be in a really bad mood, to come even close to Digby or Atrios on an average day.

Greenwald’s alleged outrage over Mischa’s post is just like the faux-pious nonsense from leftwing moonbats filling up my own Comments section over the Hadji Girl song: just a bunch of opportunistic righteous posturing, the left’s favorite form of self-gratification.

There is a great deal of difference between the downright spooky comments involving his kids that Jeff Goldstein was receiving over the weekend, ultimately accompanied by some very real Denial of Service attacks, and Mischa’s crack. The Supreme Court was not put out of action for a few days, and Justice Stevens didn’t lose any sleep wondering if Mischa was really serious about that tree and that rope.

From Wuzzadem.

Hat tip to Beth.

goes to Jeff Goldstein. This one is definitely worth a link.

It’s not easy to get to the bottom of all this, since elements of the moonbat left have targeted Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom with not one, but two, Denial of Service attacks (reported via Blackfive).

Evidently, one Deborah Frisch, a University of Pennsylvania Ph.D., employed as an adjunct instructor in Psychology at the University of Arizona, a lady actually capable of defending Ward Churchill in these terms:

Hours after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Ward Churchill compared the victims to the Nazis. A professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he wrote in an essay that those killed at the World Trade Center were not innocent civilians but “little Eichmanns.”

The analogy is so outrageous, one thinks, that surely he immediately got into trouble.

Actually, the analogy is extremely apt and not outrageous at all. It is clear from the context, that Professor Churchill was referring to Hannah Arendt’s comments about Eichmann.

Hannah Arendt was a journalist for the newspaper “The New Yorker” when she saw the Eichmann Trial in Israel in 1961. Her book is based on a series of articles she wrote about the trial.

In the article, she coined the term “banality of evil.” Hitler’s henchmen who had behaved monstrously did not look like monsters. Instead, they were bland and benign. According to Arendt, Eichmann’s character flaw was mindless obedience to authority, not a sadistic or psychopathic personality.

This, of course, is even scarier than finding that Eichmann and other Nazis were crazy in some way. Arendt’s analysis inspired Stanley Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority at Yale University and Philip Zimbardo’s Prison Study at Stanford University.

So there is nothing absurd or outrageous about using the term “Eichmann” to refer to the stockbrokers who died that day. It’s a little strange to completely ignore the firefighters, secretaries and building maintenance workers who died that day. And singling out the stockbrokers and ignoring the firefighters dehumanizes them the same way Nazis dehumanized Jews.

I agree with Churchill that America was not an “innocent victim” on 911. I’m tempted to agree that “titans” of finance are more guilty than the rest of us. But even though they’re better compensated than the rest of us, they’re no more guilty, really. We’re all little Eichmanns. Only the far left is willing to admit it.

made a series of postings in the Comments section of Goldstein’s blog of an irrational and highly inappropriate character. Some readers thought these postings might actually constitute a threat to Mr. Goldstein’s child, and a number of people lodged complaints with the University of Arizona and the authorities.

Having provoked a firestorm, La Frisch prudently resigned her teaching position, and asked for the whole thing to stop.

Goldstein, posting on another site, denied feeling victimized.

1) I don’t feel victimized. Debbie Frisch is as nutty as the ring around a squirrel’s crapper, but I don’t think she’s a threat. She’s more of an object lesson in having too many cats.
2) I allowed Debbie to continue commenting here because she was (paraphrase: making a fool of herself).
3) (parahrase: She did make a fool of herself: a big one.)
4) But no matter. I don’t want apologies.
5) On the other hand, pie would be nice.
6) Or a bottle of really good tequila.
7) Blue agave, Deb.
8) None of that cheapass rail shit you were huffing the other night.
9) Go on, I’ll wait…

Deborah Frisch seems to have a long record of posting less-than-civil comments to blogs she disagrees with. I found another case early in 2005 at Professor Bainbridge.
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UPDATE

This unseemly affair started 7/3 with Frisch posting comments in response to criticism of the New York Times’ publication of the SWIFT program.

Frisch’s academic career.
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FURTHER UPDATE

All this unseemly correspondence, and denial of service attacks on Protein Wisdom, are still continuing Sunday night. link

From an interview with Jeff Goldstein by Norman Geras:

What would you do with the UN? > Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. Either that, or provide John Bolton’s moustache ‘Regis’ with a handful of armed deputies, a couple barrels of whiskey, and two weeks alone with all the UN diplomats and their staffs. When the doors swing open, all the UN’s problems will be solved.