How Do You Get a Michelle Malkin Interview? Just Ask

In March 2008, Rebecca Mead, a staff writer for the New Yorker, wanted to profile the syndicated columnist and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. "I’ve been reading and watching with interest your commentary on the election, and—particularly with McCain rising—I think this could be a great time to look at your work and career and influence," Mead wrote Malkin in an email the latter reproduced on her website.

After reaching out to Malkin's editor at the New York Post and others—and even enlisting New Yorker editor David Remnick to send Malkin a couple of friendly emails—Mead's profile never materialized. "I have neither the time nor inclination to sit down with your staff Jane Goodall and serve as an anthropological specimen for the New Yorker’s readership," Malkin told Remnick. "If I want to play ape for amusement, I’ll do it for my kids."

Malkin was a lot more receptive to the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove, whom she chatted with for a piece today headlined Michelle Malkin Has Feelings, Too. To echo Bill O'Reilly's assessment of Time's Glenn Beck cover, Grove (a former Portfolio.com columnist) offers an article that isn't a hatchet job, but isn't a Valentine.

"I’m a human being," Malkin tells Grove. She evidently needs to point that out, since many critics can't see past her endorsements of America's internment of Japanese citizens during World War II and of racial profiling post-9/11.

So, how'd Grove get Malkin to talk where the New Yorker couldn't? "It's a simple matter of calling her publisher," Grove told Portfolio.com. "Maybe she didn't have a book to promote when Remnick et. al tried to wrangle her," he wrote in an email. He also pointed out he has "a reputation of giving the right-wingers a fair shake."

Addressing some patently fake images of the pundit in a bikini that circulated on the Web a few years ago, Grove got Malkin, a mother of two, to make a self-effacing joke about her stretch marks, handing the Huffington Post the almost irresistible headline "Michelle Malkin: 'I'm A Human Being' With Feelings, Stretch Marks." Meow. Over at Jezebel, the usually tolerant members of that site's community are currently eviscerating her under the post that wonders, Is Michelle Malkin a Decent Human Being? (Consensus: No, probably not.)

Grove also reminded Portfolio.com that Malkin, whom he says he never met, once referred to him while he was a columnist for the New York Daily News as a "journalistic dumpster diver" in a blog post in 2004.

"I'm quite sure Michelle had forgotten it, and I certainly didn't remind her," said Grove, who has feelings too.