I've never had much respect for UNC Law professor Eric L. Muller and now that he has attempted what I assert is visual libel--falsely attributing a photo of one person as being someone else--I have even less.

Muller has a long-standing and quite unhealthy fascination with conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin, and this morning, Muller leveled a charge of hypocrisy against her in this post:

In today's column, Michelle Malkin asks, "Where Have All the Good Girls Gone?"

It's a verbal assault on some twenty-year-old TV personality in Great Britain who "once possessed an uncommon sense of modesty and decorum in the skin-baring age of Britney Spears," and liked to spend her time singing "Blessed Jesus" and clutching "a rosary blessed by the pope," but has now become "the new face of skankdom," a "half-naked" "pop tart" who sums up all that is evil in our new world of "sexpot dolls/characters" and "Bratz babies in thongs." A woman who has gone from "pure-hearted to pure crap," and who, among other horrible things, "drinks" and "parties."

With no further ado, I give you: Michelle Malkin, Spring Break, March 27, 1992. Could that be an all-you-can-drink wristband?

Here, incidentally, is the flickr page where the photo appears. Somebody forwarded it to me a couple of months ago. I chortled. Then I forgot about it -- until today, that is, when her vicious hatchet job on a "half-naked" twenty-year-old "skank" brought it to mind.

Mind you: there's nothing wrong with trips to the beach during college, or all-you-can-drink wristbands, or bikinis.

Just with hypocrisy.

The column stands or falls on its own merits, but Muller's accusation--a link to a trashy, "Girls Gone Wild" themed picture--is serious stuff. Muller says the photo is Malkin.

It isn't.

It is a horribly done Photoshop edit, featuring a shrunken headshot of Malkin poorly imposed in the wrong scale over someone else's body. It is such an obvious fakery one has to assume Muller knew it was faked, but pressed on with what in my mind constitutes something akin to visual libel, presenting a obvious forgery as legitimate.

Gawker Media, which owns Wonkette, is familiar with blogs and so much know just how easy it is to badly fake a Photoshop, and so it was a surprise when, they, too joined Muller in presenting the fake photo as fact.

Malkin is rightfully outraged at the attack, and she should be.

Eric Muller's unhinged obsession has gone far over the line, and I hope that he is called to account for his actions. Malkin does not deserve this, nor does North Carolina's flagship university.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:08 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 450 words, total size 3 kb.

The power of social networking, as practiced by the blogosphere.

Simply awesome.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

Mary Katherine Ham admits to watching The View.

She was going to be on the panel after mine at Carolina FreedomNet 2006, but now... I dunno.

It might be time to talk about finding a replacement.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:45 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

The Carolina FreedomNet 2006 half-day blog conference is just a month from now, and if you plan on coming, I suggest you hop over to Carolina Journal Online and check out the details. I hear that the hotel rooms at the reserved rate won't last too much longer, so you might want to act quickly.

The schedule is as follows:

8:00 a.m.-8:30 a.m.: Registration and Continental breakfast

8:30 a.m.-8:45 a.m.: Welcome session

8:45 a.m.-10:15 a.m.: Local vs. Global: What Should Be Your Blog's Focus? Panelists are Raleigh's Lorie Byrd of Wizbang, Greensboro's Sam Hieb of Sam's Notes, Charlotte's Sister Toldjah and Raleigh's Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee.

10:15 a.m.-10:45 a.m.: Break

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Panel: How Has The Blogging Phenomenon Affected Politics and Political Discourse? Panelists are Townhall.com's Mary Katharine Ham (formerly of Durham), Jeff Taylor of Charlotte's The Meck Deck, Scott Elliott of Election Projection and Durham's Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester.

12:15 p.m.-12:30 p.m.: Break

12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m.: Luncheon and keynote speech, "The 61st Minute: Inside the Eye of Hurricane Dan" with Scott Johnson of Powerline

I hope to see you there.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:05 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 194 words, total size 2 kb.