Sam Boyd has issued a lengthy non-response response to my post criticizing his calling Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in my mind (and in the minds of many others) "The Bravest, Most Remarkable Woman of Our Times," a "dangerous fanatic." However, he avoids debate on this subject to instead attack me for something I wrote on contentions about two disturbing endorsements Barack Obama received in the past several weeks. Since Boyd doesn't want to engage in a debate about his outrageous and scurrilous slandering of this woman, I'll respond to his scattershot and largely incoherent defense of the racist thug and Robert Mugabe fan Charles Barron and Donnie "the gays want to 'kill our children'" McClurkin's endorsment of Barack Obama for president.
A few quick things of which to dispense:
- As for Charles Barron, the most Boyd can muster is that he's "rather unpleasant." He then chides me for linking to a piece I wrote about Barron as my "source on Barron's faults." Sam should do some reading on New York City politics before commenting so impetuously about Charles Barron, but here's some other stories about his endorsing the assassination of one of his Council colleagues and his hosting Robert Mugabe in Council chambers.
- Boyd writes that my "casual dismissal of Jesse Jackson as a 'racial huckster' is extra special classy." Not sure what he's getting at here, but if it's an attempt to say that Jesse Jackson deserves anything more than "casual dismissal" from serious people and that he isn't a "racial huckster," then Boyd's just beyond the reach of rational discussion. Charles Barron, by the way, makes Jesse Jackson seem like Bayard Rustin.
Matthew Yglesias joins the pile-on, and while the post is more grammatically coherent than his usual, fobbed off prose, it still makes no sense so there's nothing I can really offer in reply.
While we're on the subject of presidential endorsements, I already see that liberals at Tapped and elsewhere are making hay over Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. They should. It's slimy. And you can argue all you want that Obama's association with Barron and McClurkin mean nothing (I'd actually contend that the views of Barron and McClurkin are far more reprehensible than those of Robertson), but don't simultaneously criticize the Robertson endorsement as spelling Giuliani's conversion to the religious social agenda. You can't have it both ways.
Finally, neither Boyd, Yglesias, or anyone at the Prospect has responded to my queries about Robert Dreyfuss, the magazine's "Senior Correspondent" on national security and foreign policy, who is a disciple of Lyndon LaRouche, or about their magazine's hawking his LaRouche-published book on its website. This reticence is understandable, considering how embarrassing it must be to have such an individual as a colleague at your place of employment. But that won't stop me from bringing it up.