Book Review: Culture of Corruption by Michelle Malkin
It is hard to measure the impact Michelle Malkin has had on the world of Internet political investigative journalism. She is not only the founder of her own site, michellemalkin.com, as well as the invaluable hotair.com site, but she has also been the inspiration of countless of other political sites. It is difficult to imagine that there would be a Newsmax, or a Smart Girl Politics, or even an African-American Conservatives, without the trailblazing of Ms. Malkin. She is to political blogging what Rush Limbaugh is to talk radio, and what William F. Buckley is to punditry. We are all in her debt.
Malkin continues to demonstrate her gift of investigative journalism with an exhaustively researched Culture of Corruption, in which she juxtaposes the “Hope and Change” message of President Obama with his actions and the actions of those he has chosen to surround himself with as president.
On czars she writes: “Moreover, in a grand end-run around the public confirmation process, President Obama created a “historic” and “unprecedented” number of “czar” appointments through executive orders – essentially creating a shadow cabinet of secretaries overseeing every aspect of domestic policy with unchecked powers beyond congressional reach.”
On Biden she illustrates how “while Biden boasts of being on the Senate’s least wealthy members, he has profited mightily from the perks of entrenched incumbency – earmarks, sweetheart real estate deals, and lucrative positions for his children.”
Even Michelle Obama is exposed for being a hypocrite, as someone who profited well from the Chicago patronage culture, compassionless health care system, and “the evil lure of corporate America” that she so condemns in her public speeches.
Malkin also brings to light the troubling history of Eric Holder, the SEIU, ACORN, the Clintons, and many other figures in the Obama Universe – both major and minor.
I would have liked to have seen more attention paid to both Valerie Jarrett and George Soros, who, as Obama’s most trusted advisor, and primary source of funds, respectively, deserve much more scrutiny than received in this book. Perhaps this will be forthcoming it later editions. Michelle Malkin makes clear in the interview she granted to our site that she considers Culture of Corruption to be a work in progress.
Others might have liked to have seen more of a right-wing attack on Obama. But I don’t see this as a “Conservative” book per se. True, there are numerous examples of Ms. Malkin wearing her conservatism on her sleeve throughout the book; but at heart she is not a Conservative pundit, philosopher, nor a political partisan. She is not Mark Levin railing against the statists or Ann Coulter explaining how if Democrats had brains, they’d be Republicans.
At heart, Michelle Malkin is a reporter, reporting what the mainstream media often will not. She lays out the facts for the reader; leaving it up to us to draw our own conclusions as to what significance this culture of corruption has on the country, and on our own lives.
--DK