Porn Debate Raises The Bar On Public Discourse

July 6, 2007
DASHIELL

Our old dentist used have to a sign in his office that said "Never argue with a crazy person; people might not be able to tell the difference." For some reason, that nugget of wisdom came to mind when we saw this clip from last night's "The O'Reilly Factor," where professional finger-wagger Michelle Malkin bravely takes on the entire world of hardcore pornography via the formidable proxy of barely legal webmaster Doug Markwith.

Being the high-minded interlocutor that she is, Malkin opens the forum by calling her opponent skeezy and a "loser" (is that the famous Fox News reporting, or the deciding?), insults his girlfriend, then cuts them both off without caring to listen to their side of the story. Unfortunately, Doug doesn't acquit himself very well either, as he stumbles over his answers, tries to zing Michelle with comments about some fake bikini shots, then signs off with a classy one-fingered salute. (The backwards baseball cap was a nice touch, though.) Not since the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 have we seen such high-minded political rhetoric in the public sphere, but we're pretty sure that neither Republicans nor pornographers should be particularly thrilled about the way their side was represented. The whole affair was disappointing to say the least, especially when you consider Michelle's usual parliamentary procedures—the ones she's actually proud of! If her political cheerleading isn't the definition of skeezy, we don't know what is.