Dear Mike Malloy:

Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

Related Post Roulette

59 Responses

  1. Glyph says:

    I looked him up, because my thought was “who?” (His name is Mike, not Marc). Salon did a 2003 piece speculating that he might be the liberal Limbaugh.

    http://www.salon.com/2003/05/13/malloy/

    So, there ya go. Maybe we should put ’em in Thunderdome together!Report

  2. Burt Likko says:

    He finds Limbaugh’s ideas offensive. So be it.

    I would expect someone in media to be more… articulate, if you know what I’m getting at. “Bad” is not the same thing as “Nazi” or “pederast.”

    Far, FAR better would be to ACCURATELY state Limbaugh’s actual opinions. The moral outrageousness will out itself.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Burt Likko says:

      He was caught coming back from a country known for sex tourism featuring underage girls with a suitcase full of Viagra. It’s not a difficult conclusion to draw.Report

      • Nob Akimoto in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        Yeah, but that’s a different conclusion to draw than the one Malloy does. Though it is kind of a small fry to be highlighting for a Moore Award.Report

        • North in reply to Nob Akimoto says:

          Sully hammers the right wholesale with his Hewitt award. He probably leapt at the opportunity to nail an over the top “left wing figure” in the interest of fairness. Though this nobody doesn’t really represent much of the left AFAIK.Report

          • NewDealer in reply to North says:

            There is also the Malkin award which hammers the right as well. Then there is the Dick Morris award.

            Though, I find Sully perplexing. Often I like him and he seems reasonable. Every now and then he seems to melt down or have a flashbulb go off and remember “I’m a Tory” and decides to attack the Democratic Party for no reason.

            I do like that he is very willing to post dissents and sometimes vehement ones though.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        Jeez, Mike, now you are making ME defend Limbaugh….and I normally ignore Limbaugh so hard that I never even heard of this scandal (I only remembered the Vicodin one).

        The DR does in fact have legal prostitution & concomitant sex tourism, as I understand it; some of that tourism is undoubtedly for child prostitution; it is also, as I understand it, possible to meet single adults and have completely consensual, non-paying sex at beach resorts where they serve lots of booze (wouldn’t know, I’m married).

        The DR is also apparently a golf destination: http://gocaribbean.about.com/od/attract4/tp/bestdominicangolf.htm

        “Golfers have more than 20 courses to choose from, among them some of the finest courses in the world.”

        Isn’t Limbaugh an avid golfer? And, don’t people also go to Caribbean destinations because they are close, and cheap, and have beaches and booze?

        And he didn’t have “a suitcase full of Viagra” – he had A SINGLE bottle, inscribed with his doctor’s name, rather than his own (see sworn affidavit on The Smoking Gun), for which offense he does not appear to have been charged.

        IOW, “not a difficult conclusion to draw” can be said with as about a straight face as “I saw Schilling in THAILAND EATING OYSTERS, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, AND I THINK YOU DO.”Report

        • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:

          Something about the phrase “it’s not a difficult conclusion to draw” made me think that maybe Mike was riffing on something Limbaugh (or somebody) had said in the past. But when I google that phrase it just brings me right back to this post (presumably because Google knows I am here all damn day? That can’t be the only time anyone has ever used that phrase.)Report

        • Mike Schilling in reply to Glyph says:

          If I were riffing, it would go something like:

          It makes him a pervert, right? It makes him a molester. He’s screwing so many kids he ran out of his own Viagra and had to borrow somebody else’s. Report

          • M.A. in reply to Mike Schilling says:

            It explains one big misconception Limbaugh had about birth control.

            He needs a pill every time he tries to get it up. By his reasoning, then, women need one birth control pill every time they want to have sex (vis-a-vis his rants about Sandra Fluke).

            The fact that he’s simultaneously clueless, misogynist AND impotent… well, one of the three is just icing on the cake.Report

  3. ktward says:

    So, according to wiki this Mike Malloy flamed out in liberal talk radio and couldn’t get a gig anywhere else, so he’s now self-syndicated* and presently present in a whopping 13 markets. Which markets those are, precisely, requires more googling time than I’m prepared to commit. Which seems telling enough. Small wonder that few libs have ever heard of him.

    Meanwhile, the h/t/ trail (MRC to Newsbusters to Sully) suggests to me that Sully simply had too much time on his hands that day. I like Sully. It’s hard not to like him. But the thing I’ve learned about Sully is this: folks take him seriously, but no one takes Sully more seriously than he takes himself.

    *Before today, I’d never heard of Malloy nor of this thing called self-syndication. I guess I should get out more.Report

    • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

      Self-syndication sounds a lot like self-publication.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to ktward says:

      “*Before today, I’d never heard of Malloy nor of this thing called self-syndication. I guess I should get out more.”

      Or more likely, get really, really in. Like, “all day wearing your pajamas in mom’s basement” kind of in.Report

      • ktward in reply to Tod Kelly says:

        I’ve long envied the “all day wearing your pajamas” part. Sigh. If only I could be that kind of in. (I promise to do it right, I do! Just give me the chance, oh great universe …)Report

        • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

          I find this fascinating.

          I’ve never been one for laying around in PJs. It just makes me feel lazy and kind of grungy. I don’t put them on until I am ready to go to bed. And I tend to get into gym clothing or shower quickly after getting up.

          I never understood how people in college could come to class wearing their PJs. Is it really that hard to put on a pair of jeans and a pull-over shirt.Report

          • ktward in reply to NewDealer says:

            It’s not really an either/or thing. (Er, we don’t need to talk about how many decades I’ve been out of college.)

            I did the high-heels fashion thing before kids. After kids, I did the comfier low heels professional dress thing. Eventually, I was fortunate enough to do the every day is casual friday never wear pantyhose thing.

            So, now I’d really like to try the work in jammies thing. Which is not to be confused with the I have no work so I’m still in my jammies thing.

            Now, my daughter is in college. She goes to classes in whatever is comfy to pull on in 5 minutes and sit a lot/walk around campus a lot in: leggings, sweats, jammies … decidedly not jeans which aren’t all that comfy for those activities. But trust me, she gets all kinds of dressed up in jeans when she goes out and while at work, so it’s hardly like she wears jammie-like things all the time. (The girl works at PacSun– you can probably imagine her closet.)

            Like I said, it’s not really an either/or thing.Report

            • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

              That implies I know what PacSun is.

              I’m a bit out of college myselfReport

              • ktward in reply to NewDealer says:

                Sorry! Sometimes I reflexively assume other folks know what I know. My bad. Fwiw, PacSun is just one of a string of retailers who target the HS/College demo. But really, you don’t have to get my reference to get the gist of my comment.

                Seriously, I don’t give a whit what my daughter wears to her classes, and for the life of me I can’t imagine why you would care either. Her grades matter. Her wardrobe? Not so much.

                No offense, but your comment struck me like one of the old biddies back in the day who complained about the fact that I didn’t wear pantyhose to work.Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                I’m a bit of an old-fashioned person in both ways good and a bit priggish perhaps.Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                I’m just a bit old-fashioned in what I consider to be acceptable public-wear. I don’t want to go back to the days when everyone looked like they were going to work all the time but going to sleepwear and sweats as acceptable clothing when out in public is a bit too far.Report

              • ktward in reply to NewDealer says:

                but going to sleepwear and sweats as acceptable clothing when out in public is a bit too far.

                I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my dear, but that ship has long sailed. Heck, there’s probably some swanky sweatsuits to be found on Rodeo Drive. The good news is I’ve never seen anyone wear long johns or footie jammies out in public.`Not on purpose, anyway. 🙂Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                This is what happens to someone who started in theatre and then went into law. I see clothes as being able to transform a person and making a difference. There is something nice about putting on a really nice suit. Not all the time but…

                I don’t get the Silicon Valley mindset of wanting to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time.Report

              • ktward in reply to ktward says:

                I don’t get the Silicon Valley mindset of wanting to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time.

                Dude! You just got finished slamming college kids for being too lazy to at least throw on jeans, and now jeans aren’t good enough either? You’re giving me whiplash!

                Just joshin’ around. But seriously, I think it can all be generically chalked up to different strokes for different folks. 🙂Report

              • Jaybird in reply to ktward says:

                I don’t get the Silicon Valley mindset of wanting to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time.

                I went to a school that disallowed denim because jeans were “worldly”.

                You’d better freakin’ believe I wear jeans all the time.Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                Jaybird,

                What school is that? Everything is wordly. I don’t get their argument.

                KTWard.

                Most likely. I probably come across as much more uptight than I really am with these comments.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to ktward says:

                It was a Christian School. In the world but not *OF* the world.

                Hey, you want the boat in the water. That’s what boats are for, after all, but you don’t want the water in the boat.Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                Jaybird,

                I grew up in suburban NYC. This is not an area known for Evangelical Christianity. Most of the Christians I knew growing up were Catholic, usually of Italian and/or Irish origin.

                The protestant schools tended to be of a more Mainline and old-school variety. I just went to suburban public school.

                I don’t quite get the world “in the world but not of it”. Judaism is a materialistic religion. It is entirely concerned with life on this world. Me Jewish education was entirely focused on real-world things. We never talked about what happens when you die.Report

              • trumwill mobile in reply to ktward says:

                When I worked for a software company on the west coast there were people in the lab with shorts and sandals. I tried dressing my normal way and kept getting asked if I was dressing for a job interview. I tried to mitigated my preference for slacks and a dress shirt by growing my hair out. Ultimately, I just settled on jeans. I remain under the delusion through professionals shoulddress like pprofessionals. A survey wouldn’t work in a computer lab, but flip flops are appropriate business attire nowhere.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to ktward says:

                Next time, you should go for the whole “Southern Baptist” thing. There are, indeed, a lot of restrictions but you can get away with murder in other areas.Report

              • trumwill mobile in reply to ktward says:

                Most of the people I know who are in the world but not ofit blah blah blah are hippie types who fancy eastern religion .Report

              • Glyph in reply to ktward says:

                NewDealer – I don’t know if JB got this story in his upbringing, but I did.

                It’s a song lyric that references a sort of parable or thought experiment told to kids, to impart some idea of what “eternity” means, so as to scare the bejesus into them at the idea of spending such a duration in Hell rather than Heaven.

                From the comments, I love that ‘goodoltup’ took a whack at the math:

                it would take 386 trillion trillion years to wear down a metal sphere (I used aluminum for the equation) ten times the size of Jupiter, to the size of a pea, hitting it once every thousand years with a swipe of a single feather (assuming the feather removes 10 micrograms of material with each swipe. For comparison, a fingerprint weighs 50 micrograms.) Here is the number in long format.
                386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
                The known universe is only 14 billion years old. Randys number has 16 more zeros.
                And remember, this 386 trillion trillion years is only half a blink, in the place you’re gonna be.

                Report

              • NewDealer in reply to ktward says:

                Glyph,

                I’ve heard of such things. They appall me. I don’t understand them and reject them absolutely.Report

              • Glyph in reply to ktward says:

                Oh yeah, it didn’t stick. 🙂

                We got a great song out of it though!Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to NewDealer says:

                I’m confused. Sleepwear and sweats make me look exactly like I’m going to work.Report

              • ktward in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                See? That’s the job I want.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to ktward says:

      Self-syndication? Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?Report

    • Rod Engelsman in reply to ktward says:

      He’s on Sirius/XM for whatever that’s worth. At least a potentially large audience.Report

  4. BlaiseP says:

    The Left has never done well in the one way market that is talk radio. We’ve done marginally better in television but we’ll never put asses in Barcaloungers like Fox does.

    The Left’s always been more subversive, simply oozing into an argument space, filling the cracks, then expanding like so much ice creating potholes. The Right knows this, too. They’re so angry at Barack Obama they could just spit. And spit they do, rattling on, saying the most awful things that come into their tiny little minds.

    The Liberals are, to put it bluntly, too cool to sit still for a hectoring idiot such as Mike Malloy. Excitable Andy doubtless got an email from someone, nominating this blatherskite for a Moore Award. He set one of his minions to the task of sussing him out and put in a one-liner about him, catapulting Malloy into the winter sky like a clay pigeon at the Left Wing Skeet Shooting Range. This is the Slashdot Effect, only featuring a bit of political nerdier-than-thou instead of harrumphing about a ten-year-old unfixed bug in the KDE desktop: too many political weenies come in search of too little information. Left wing wingnuts are everywhere, it’s just a matter of looking hard enough for them.Report