Michelle Malkin: Shoot Mouth Off First, Check Facts Later (But Probably Not)

AT's nomination for Bonehead of the Week: Conservative blogger and Fox personality (so to speak) Michelle Malkin.

Responding to a Sally Field comment on the Emmy broadcast that mothers are people who should oppose war, Malkin blasted Fields by suggesting that the actor represents every bad mother in America.

In a column in the National Review called “Sally Field Does Not Speak For Me,” Malkin writes:

Sally Field is the mom who looks the other way when the brat on the elementary-school slide pushes your son to the ground or throws dirt in your daughter’s face.

She’s the mom who holds her tongue at the mall when thugs spew profanities and make crude gestures in front of her brood.

She’s the mom who tells her child never to point out when a teacher gets her facts wrong.

She’s the mom who buys her teenager beer, condoms, and a hotel room on prom night, because she’d rather give in than assert her parental authority and do battle.

Talk about a "straw man" (or woman, in this case) argument. Malkin provides no evidence—nothing at all—that Sally Field is anything like this cartoonish representation or that she has ever acted in any of these ways. Instead, she unloads a boatload of psychobabble about the presumed views of people like Sally Field.

Note to Michelle: You can disagree all you want with anyone you care to attack. But it is customary, even in partisan circles, to locate your argument in facts and to make arguments that stand up to even cursory examination.

Without evidence or logic, after all, we can make all sorts of outlandish and cartoonish representations of certain highly inflammatory female Fox wingnuts.