Not content with being wrong in her previous tirades favoring the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII and in attacking the Associated Press for its reporting in Iraq, media hitwoman Michelle Malkin now has the John Edwards campaign in the cross-hairs.

Which, like occurs on a Cheney hunting trip, means somebody that never looked like her target could get their face filled with a musketload of hateshot.

Her nominal target is Amanda Marcotte, formerly blogging at Pandagon and recently hired to handle John Edwards’ campaign blog.

What Malkin’s alleging is that Marcotte has a pottymouth and that she’s pulled posts from the blog that give evidence of her pottymouth. Based on the evidence, the first criticism is apt; the second is unproven. Which means Marcotte has unleashed invective reserved in past decades to male sailors, jocks in locker rooms, and the late President Richard Nixon.

Of course, America’s mouth has grown coarser in the intervening years. Most notably, throughout the broadcast media, ‘bitch’, ‘whore’ and other previously censored words have become mainstreamed. You can also see more than women’s bellybuttons and two people can share the same bed, unlike the days of Rob and Laura Petrie.

Adults offended by pottytalk and sex are now compelled to turn their cable channels and to surf away from Net sites with a mouseclick. If they’re parents, they may feel it necessary to limit their children from viewing the same.

I had a great-aunt who thought it improper to say the word ‘ankle’ preferring the much more proper word, ‘leg’. Times sure have changed, haven’t they? And Malkin, whose punditry advance has occurred along the lines common to the televised class - she’s reasonably young and attractive- has decided to be the arbiter of sexual morality and the limits of speech between that which is ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’.

Or so she pretends.

Maybe she hasn’t noticed, but the political world has moved beyond that, especially since Republican politicians and operatives, fed by Republican foundations decided to air the unabridged versions of the intimate details of a president who had an affair. Right there in primetime! In newsprint readable by any kid with second grade reading skills!

The entire blame doesn’t rest on the Republican Party, of course. One could blame televangelists like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, Hollywood, Elvis Presley, Henry Miller, Hugh Hefner, the inventor of rubber, teenaged hippies from the 1960s and, of course, the French, who invented sex over the objections of the English, who previously thought procreation occurred under cabbage leaves while righteous people slept.

Not only is the cat out of the bag, but it’s out of the boat it shared with the owl, out of the closet, out on the town and more than a few of those wayward pussies have been peering from under celebrity skirts lately. It’s enough to make a grown American yawn.

But that’s not really Ms. Malkin’s point, is it? Nor does she have similar objections to blogs and websites displaying the same unmentionable body parts in photos of shattered Iraqi bodies caused by something far more destructive: lies, lies, lies and the mass destruction of a country of 27 million enabled by those lies.

That, to Ms. Malkin, is a necessity. Saying ‘fuck you’ is obscene.

Hidden in even plainer sight is Ms. Malkin’s longest moral crusade: the promotion of racial division between the correct colors - white Caucasian through Filipino brown - and the incorrect hues of Middle Eastern olive, Mexican brown and African-American brown-to-black.

For in the examples she cites of Marcotte’s pottymouth perfidy are the coincidental descriptions of events tinged heavily with the racial politics of a country where a significant minority of voters still hung up on melatonin disparities can still swing many an election.

Which is Ms. Malkin’s real objective here. she could care less about the ‘F’ word. She wants to portray a Democratic candidate as guilty of hiring a liberal who is predisposed to assume that racism is still more common in this country than most people are willing to admit.

Was racism present in Congresswoman McKinney’s response to being touched by a Capitol police officer? Possibly. Sexism also could have played a role. McKinney’s response could certainly be viewed through that lens by anyone Black or female in this country. That her response didn’t satisfy her constituents is a settl;ed matter, but there’s nothing out of line for a woman who’s been inappropriately grabbed from considering that an instinctive response. We should remember that the videotaped encounter produced nothing conclusive enough to warrant McKinney’s prosecution.

And the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the government bungling before and after, some of the specific events that occurred and the bias-tinged reporting of several in the broadcast media? Puh-leeze. If anyone can’t see all that as rife with racism, they are in the same boat with Holocaust deniers, paddling away from all the ‘mud-people.’

As for the alleged rape by the Duke lacrosse players, while I certainly understand the frustrations and emotions that case provokes, I have not followed the case closely enough to know what all the facts and allegations are. Presently it appears that a prosecutor bungled it so completely that the truth will never be known.

Thus, it’s quite possible that Marcotte’s feelings overwhelmed her discretion in her choice of words. It’s also possible - since I admit my own ignorance of the details - that her main error was to not use the words ‘alleged’ and ‘allegedly’. And if that’s the case, if it’s about a breach of journalism ethics, then Marcotte - despite not representing herself as a journalist - should consider whether an apolgy for that’s in order. Beyond that, well, she must weigh whether that might hold some consequences for the Edwards’ campaign and whether other choices are called for.

Still, with the prodigious output serious bloggers do, it’s a serious stretch of credibility to lay any blame on the candidate for hiring a blogger who may have made a rash decision or two. Advocacy that counters existing power paradigms in any society always bears risks that errors can occur. Most of the bloggers I read regularly have corrected errors they’ve made along the way, all the while learning how to avoid rhetorical traps and the traps that can occur because we’re humans, with feelings and biases of our own. I count myself as among those capable of error.

Yet all of this doesn’t grant Ms. Malkin a pass for jumping into this particular fray. There’s about a dozen Democratic candidates she could have chosen to target and the law of averages says some could be criticized for their past or current positions, or their associations with some less than ideal operatives.

Why is it that, over and over and over again, Ms. Malkin chooses to jump into only the frays where racial, ethnic and religious divisions divisions can be highlighted and further advanced? She’s tangled with bloggers before - most notably the blogging author with the strongest history credentials in exposing hate crimes, acts of bigotry and the promotion of violence against supporters of equal rights (eliminationism), David Neiwert of Orcinus.

While it’s true that public candidates for office must make decisions about the folks they hire if something comes to their attention that they think can reflect unfavorably on them, it’s well past time that mainstream broadcast media organizations do likewise.

If I managed a TV news network, I wouldn’t call on the expertise of a David Duke or the Grand Wizard of the KKK and present them as a reputable voice about anything, even though - like a stopped clock - they may be right about something twice a day.

And Ms. Malkin is a prime example of a pundit determined to toss in her two cents to repudiate the very idea! that race matters at all, every chance she gets. In reality, race remains an ugly tumor in dark, ignorant corners of our society, and deserves to be excised with vigilance, in pursuit of an advancing civilization and a greater society.

Ms. Malkin shields her racism behind puritanism and extremist nationalism. But it’s far more visible, far more influential and yes - far more obscene - than anything Amanda Marcotte has uttered publicly.

And the media outlets choosing to ignore that glaring reality should just give up their pretense at any objectivity and require all their employees to wear pointy white hoods.

Truth in advertising, it’s called.

Personal disclaimer: I’ve previously indicated John Edwards is my favored presidential candidate among several Democrats and a Republican I feel positive about. However, I am not owned by any candidate, not adverse to criticizing the weaknesses of those I favor, and I’m not responding to this dispute out of any concern for the Edwards campaign. I am far more concerned with the huge megaphone of the broadcast media in its influence on our society and am an advocate of the reduction of racism in our country, and that drives my compulsion to respond to the long visible agenda of hate and division promoted by Ms. Malkin and those who promote her.