I was exhausted and couldn’t reach the clicker and the TV was set to MSNBC — the perfect storm that had me watching Rachel Maddow last night. I’m sure that in the five minutes before I threw a shoe and hit the off button my viewing cleared out a nice hunk of Purgatory. Anyway, Ms. Maddow was beating that drum about how the wack-job gunner at the Holocaust Museum was an “anti-Semitic, anti-government right-wing extremist.”
If you watched, surely your bs-dar went off. Fact is, it’s on the Left — and not the merely on the exclusive turf of real extremists such as God DAMN America / “them Jews”-er Rev. Jeremiah Wright and that other minister whose got a thing about Hymietown — where the gold, silver, and bronze medals for anti-Semitism are being won and worn proudly. Hey, why let facts get in the way when MSNBC has got a shtick to perform, right? (Take the Maddow template and apply it to baseball, and you’d have Shannen Coffin rooting for the Bronx Bombers!)
Part of the reason why National Review exists is to be a witness to the truth, and to be unfraid to tell the Media Establishment it’s full of borscht as it so often is (“often” now a synonym for “always”).
Another part of the reason why we exist is you. A big part. I might even say you are the wind beneath our wings if only to give Jonah an opportunity to make fun of me. But on behalf of the NR suits, I’ll say thanks to those of you who have most kindly donated this week to sustain this most-critical voice of American conservatism and sanity. The doors would have closed long ago without your consistent support. Without it, I’d likely be back to selling hot dogs and beer at Yankee Stadium (the upside: accidentally spilling a brewski on Keith Olbermann’s pompousdour!).
To those of you who have not donated and are on the brink, just think of Rachel for five seconds, or Keith for one — then click here.