So, Michelle Malkin gets hate mail. What's the big deal?

Really.

What makes her special?

Putting this off on Armstrong Williams is low.

Real low.

She's whining. She's playing victocrat/victim/victimology.

The email is foul, but still...

It would help a few people, before they go on tirades about Williams's behavior, to recall any mistakes made in their life.  I'm sure all can think of a few.  The man has apologized, and it's not as if he has a history of such behavior.  It's time to break up the posse and move on.

"This happens all the time," he told me. "There are others." Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. "I'm not going to defend myself that way," he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.

Until names are named, we can assume every conservative pundit is on the White House's payola rolls.

On Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.

While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime. To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal.

Anyway Moss scored the second of his two touchdowns yesterday and strode to the nearest goalpost where he simulated dropping trow and mooning packer cheesehead fans in the bleachers behind the goalpost. At the time this happened Joe Buck, the play by play man for Fox called it a disgusting move, but that's really not what was disusting. I mean the emulated moon was disusting, but then after having dropped trow, and without pretending to pick the trow back up, while then still in his pantomime still with his trowsers down, he wiped his butt on the Packers' goalpost. Folks, that was the last straw. The moon, that's one thing but wiping his butt on the Packer goalpost and enjoying it, rubbing it in there, if you will, that didn't sit well with anybody. And this, of course, has caused a reaction from all of the pontificators on all of the networks. Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long said it's hopeless for Moss, he's a bat actor he's a bad character, the league ought to suspend him, fine him, kick him out. Tom Jackson on ESPN, why, you would have thought McNabb's name had been mentioned yesterday to listen to Tom Jackson go bonkers on the ESPN program. I think it was last night, their highlight show.

Here's what Randy Moss said in the locker room when asked about the mooning and the wiping of the butt incident on the Packers goalpost.

MOSS: The celebration was more of a fun thing and not more of a hatred thing; you know what I'm saying? I just tried to enjoy myself and as you see after the play my teammates came and smacked my helmet and picked me up in the air and things like that so that's why I say I was just playing and having fun man, you know, just caught a touchdown in a big game, I don't even know what quarter it was but I know it was a big game late in the second half, and, you know, I was just very enthused, and that's what I felt like doing.

RUSH: I don't know what quarter it was, but it was late in the second half. That would be the fourth quarter, Randy. Here's what Tom Jackson said on NFL prime-time on ESPN last night.

JACKSON: I cannot talk about this any more. I can't talk about Randy Moss and his responsibility to his football team, to the league, to the game itself. He will have to make decisions on his own, commissioner, team, owner, Red McCombs will have to make those decisions as to how to get through to him. We cannot. I said it this morning. He's made it clear to me that no one can tell him what to do or when to do it, and he acts that out all the time. So those issues right now, as far as I'm concerned, are for somebody else.

RUSH: Now, stop and think of that. Randy Moss is supposed to listen to a bunch of TV commentators in pre-game shows telling him what to do, when to do it, what not to do, and when not to do it, so Tom Jackson, who is I guess the morality czar of the ESPN pre-game show is now effectively wiping his hands of Randy Moss and is going to leave it up to the league, his teammates, and to his owner, Red McCombs. Oh, they were all high dudgeon over this, they were beside themselves that Moss had done this, and taken away the victory and the celebration of victory from his teammates by stealing the spotlight, mooning the Packer fans and then wiping his butt on their goalpost, probably had some Pimp Juice after the game, too.

I mean, I just find some of this, I'm not supporting what Moss did, don't misunderstand, when I saw it I had the same reaction that everybody else did and knew what the reaction was going to be. You know, some of the characters in this league that get celebrated, some of the characters in this league that are held up as role models and so forth and then you got Randy Moss only because he doesn't kiss their behinds. He doesn't seek their approval. He doesn't go out and try to be a model with phony charitable involvement and this sort of thing, so he's made himself a target. I guess he's got the personality type that likes that.

And I tell you, if you didn't see this live and you came in late in the day and you turned on TV and you heard sports people talking about this, I will lay you ten to one you probably thought Randy Moss actually dropped trow and actually mooned the crowd. You probably thought that's what had happened, since they weren't showing the replay. It was so bad, they were so righteously indignant, they were so appalled at what Randy Moss had done that they wouldn't replay it, and yet the stuff that gets televised on prime-time television at night, broadcast television, this pales in comparison to some of it. So you can't take Randy Moss out of the equation. He's earned it. I mean, he's earned the attention. He's earned the label of bad boy. And his antics give some of these people in football the opportunity to get on their moral high horse and show how sweet and pure they are and how they've got standards and so forth. He serves a purpose for him. But the outrage, the mock outrage over this, I'm sorry, does not match the action.

Now, if he'd actually mooned the crowd, I could understand them not showing that again. But to not show this and to act like you're protecting the young eyeballs of the nation and the children and the women, we're not going to show you this, it's too disgusting, that's just, even with the cultural decay that has occurred in the country, that is a bit over the top.

RUSH: Now, you have just, and I want to applaud you for this. You have just swerved into what to me is the real question. Why doesn't Randy Moss play every game with that much fire? How come it took an incident with him walking off the field before the game was over being chastised by teammates for him to come out and actually give it his all? Now, here's a guy that can selectively turn it on, you're supposed to go a hundred percent in every game and he has said if he's not in a play if his route is not being called, he's going to dog it. That didn't sit well with these guys who went all out on every play throughout their whole careers, yada yada yada yada. But it is an interesting point. The Vikings came out all fired up yesterday.

Folks, stick with me here. Principal journalists don't get $250,000 from government agencies to go out and promote what they're talking about, but then again Armstrong Williams doesn't get countless invitations to all the A-list cocktail parties where he can eat for nothing and drink for nothing and hobnob and hang around with all these people. What's the dollar value of becoming close friends with all your sources? What's the dollar value if you're a liberal journalist to being invited to all the right places and get to meet all the rightly people learn all the right spin, given all the right stuff to go out and spread the news in your own way? What's the difference? The difference is, that ostensibly isn't coming from government, the 240 grand for Armstrong Williams came from government.

Now, he's apologized, and that was a proper thing to do. But as I say, go back to the top of the question: What are they really upset about? Are they upset about the ethics of Armstrong Williams or are they upset about the money? Because I will bet you a dollar to a doughnut that Armstrong Williams would not shill for Hillary Clinton for all the money in the world. But how many of his critics would. How many of his critics do? How many of his critics out there shilling for the Clintons, shilling for Hillary no matter what they know; no matter who they know it from, no matter what they know to be the truth. How many of these people out there shilling for Bill Burkett? How many people shilling for all these Bush enemies from his Texas days, trying to get him on this National Guard story? How many people in the media shilling for things? One thing I know about Armstrong Williams: He's not going to shill for something he doesn't believe in. But I can't say that about the other guys.