The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

2010: The Year of Pamela Geller

Posted on | January 1, 2011 | 11 Comments

Several readers have contacted CPAC director Lisa DePasquale to nominate me as “Blogger of the Year” and, of course, I’m flattered.

What are the chances I’ll actually win? Not bloody likely, but even if I were somehow to win the award, the first sentence of my acceptance speech would have to be, “Pamela Geller got robbed.”

Even if you disagree with her politically, can there be any argument that Geller and her Atlas Shrugs readers had the biggest impact of any conservative blog in 2010? Donald Douglas features this video of Geller’s appearance in the 60 Minutes story about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy:

(4:18) “Pamela Geller is a key figure in all of this. She is the Islamic center’s most ardent opponent. Geller is a former New York media executive who writes a politically far-right blog that mixes news, opinion and conspiracy theories. . . . Last December, Geller’s blog appears to have been the first to re-name the Islamic center the ‘Mosque at Ground Zero.'”

Again, I say, you don’t have to agree with Geller to recognize her tremendous impact. Criticize her, call her names, whatever — she made a difference. She was also targeted by the harshest attacks that the Left and its media allies could muster. When they call you a “far-right conspiracy theorist,” you know you’re doing something right.

What shall we say in answer to Geller’s critics? To those who say she is reckless, that her rhetoric is sometimes sensationalistic and over-the-top . . . Hey, I resemble that remark!

This is the freaking blogosphere, pal. It ain’t a graduate seminar at the Kennedy School of Government.

If the first rule of effective communication is that you’ve got to get people to pay attention, Pamela Geller has brilliantly demonstrated how to do that. Let the respectable intellectuals make their carefully reasoned arguments in quarterly scholastic journals; by the time those journal articles make it to print, Geller will have published 300 posts urging people to take action and get involved.

When you’re in a fight, you need fighters, and in the fight over the Lower Manhattan Islamic Community Center You’re Not Allowed to Call a ‘Mosque,’ Pamela Geller has been worth more than any half-dozen think-tank policy experts.

And you know what else? Pamela Geller is No. 1 on Charles Johnson’s Hate List. She’s the itch he can’t stop scratching. That’s an award in its own right. Geller was named one of Jewish Week‘s “Seven Who Made a Difference in 2010.” By his vindictiveness against her, Charles Johnson has made himself so irrelevant the only place he’s likely to get recognition is on the side of a milk carton: Have You Seen This Blogger?

Go see: The Atlas Shrugs highlights of 2010.

Category: Atlas Shrugs

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