Dan Abrams, owner of the often-fun Mediaite, wants you to know right in his headline that he, Dan Abrams, questioned his writer, Noah Rothman, over what Abrams perceived as Rothman's total-bullshit hack-job hit piece on Meghan McCain, wherein Rothman said McCain was a "bully" for saying Michelle Malkin was a syphilitic granny-raper and that Andrew Breitbart could spin on Satan's dick. LIBEL! Malkin is not a granny raper! She will make loveto your granny (who was asking for it). But that was before Meghan McCain proved Rothman's point by referring constantly to Mediaite as "Dan Abrams' Mediaite," and if being associated with Mediaite is not bullying Dan Abram, then what on earth would be? (Unless it is Mediaite that is being bullied by its association with Dan Abrams? There is only one way to find out, and that would be to contact him, and therefore we will never, ever know.)
WELL! Dan Abrams was so upset by this horrible Internettery that he logged on ON MEMORIAL DAY SUNDAY to write an incoherent, overwrought mess of a drunken (?), 18-paragraph soul-cry about McCain's horrible ways and how he will never again question Rothman's instincts in saying that any Republican who says "Hey can other Republicans stop being such horrible beasts?" is ... oh, something, who cares, we read it over the weekend and it wasn't interesting enough to link to then even as an emergency holiday weekend post filler. But Abrams's is! Here, have a fuckload of paragraphs!
Then later in the day, Noah Rothman, Mediaite’s in-house conservative, took on McCain from a slightly different vantage point. “Meghan McCain Looks For Fight, Finds Many, Now Wants Sympathy” was the headline. Rothman took the position that “McCain has often made herself out to be a victim of close-minded conservatives who simply reject her for her less-than-dogmatic policy preferences. But McCain forgets that she has made a career of being a contrarian – her vehicle for getting air time consists almost entirely of starting fights with Republican pundits and lawmakers.” He went on to cite numerous examples of critiques McCain had offered of the biggest names in the right-wing blogosphere, and most of the Republican candidates for President. He also characterized her as a “bully.”
When I read Rothman’s piece, I actually said to him, “I don’t know that I agree with you, but really interesting piece.”
I didn’t completely agree primarily because I admired McCain’s willingness to challenge the powers that be on the far right. His characterization of her as a “bully” was, I thought, unfair, since presenting a moderate’s view of the Grand Old Party was nothing to discourage. Mediaite’s liberal writer and White House Correspondent, Tommy Christopher, who has defended McCain in the past, then took to Twitter to slam Rothman, calling his piece “garbage” and taunting Rothman in defense of McCain. I even jokingly tweeted: “Is it sadistic that I kind of love that @mediaite’s @tommyxtopher is taking on @mediaite’s @noah_c_rothman on twitter?”
It seems Dan Abrams might need a little primer on your better S/M techniques, which, so far as we know, do not include reading Tommy Christopher twit-fight Noah Rothman. OR MAYBE THEY DO!
So it was against this backdrop that McCain, who professes an appreciation of moderation, published her piece today in The Daily Beast, which begins by citing vile and sexist comments made about her. Then, the rhetorical kill:
“That’s only a small sampling, but you get the idea. You would think that by now, having gone through a presidential election with my father in 2008, I would be numb to this kind of name-calling. But I’m not. It hurts, it rattles me, it (understandably) concerns my mother, and it keeps me up at night. In a single day, Dan Abrams’ Mediaite found it necessary to post two full columns about me, questioning my career and suggesting I’m a problem for the Republican Party. By the way, each of the “columnists” behind these posts also vomited up a series of nasty Twitter posts following their columns. And they are supposed to be professionals.”
She goes on to say in a section highlighted on her story “It’s no secret that the blogosphere is more vicious on women than it is on men.”
Suddenly, she is lumping me and my site in with the disgusting and sexist attacks made against her, even though there was nothing remotely personal or sexist about the pieces on Mediaite (and of course she ignores The Jane Dough’s piece and Christopher’s defenses of her).
But she is also flat-out lying when she writes that they then “vomited up a series of nasty Twitter posts following their columns.” Below, I have attached all the tweets from Martel, Donovan, Rothman and Christopher about this as they occurred. While Donovan and Christopher celebrate and defend her, Rothman is simply defending his piece. The only remotely personal line was when [Frances] Martel questioned Rothman’s line, “Let me be clear, conservatives who underestimate her intelligence do not get it.”
McCain would also have a hard time explaining her claim that they questioned her career and suggested she is a “problem for the Republican party.” That is, however, a nice and easy way of avoiding the specific critiques and instead, as Rothman argued, allows her to play the victim card, again. Meghan McCain has every right to be upset about the way some treat her, but that does not entitle her to simply invent controversies.
Sorry we made you read all those paragraphs, but in our defense, we had to read even more of them . In any case, we would like to state for the record that we have absolutely nothing against Dan Abrams, and that our longstanding motto has once again been proved: everybody needs an editor, editors most of all.
Dan Abrams Will Not Let His Mediaite Be Bullied By That Trollop Meghan McCain!
Who says he matters?
get a room you tow two.