I've been writing some pieces for HuffPo on former Washington Times editor Robert Stacy McCain (co-wrote Donkey Cons with Lynn Vincent, Palin's biographer), whom I and the conservative blogger Charles Johnson are attempting to expose as a white supremacist. In response, he's made a series of goofy attacks on the two of us, though he isn't actually refuting anything; it seems he wrote an article for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance under a pen name, along with a number of racially charged messages on various internet forums under that same name and occasionally even his real one, and has also posted links to the neo-Nazi site overthrow.com at the popular conservative forum Free Republic. He's a character.
I've just finished a piece that further details his various racist escapades, with particular attention to the 2002 Times article he wrote regarding Professor Jonathan Farley, the black mathematician at Vanderbilt who received hundreds of racist e-mails and death threats after writing that the Confederates were traitors, and who has since just given up and moved to Austria after having received continued harassment. I spoke to him at length over the weekend and he seems convinced that McCain was intentionally setting out to destroy his career; what's more, it's now evident that at the very same time that McCain was writing this "news article" about a black man who was receiving death threats from neo-Nazis, he was also in direct and constant interaction with various neo-Nazis himself and also in the regular habit of writing racist comments in various forums under a false name; we're still trying to get through all of them. Remember that this fellow currently writes for American Spectator as well as the popular Republican blog network Hot Air, and has been defended and praised by dozens of prominent conservative bloggers.
Please let me know if you'd like to see the piece.
Ben Schwarz sent to me your story on posing as a devout Muslim. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you; Ive been on vacation for a few days.
I dont think this is quite right for us. The nonblog pieces we commission tend to be riffs on the news, which is what we find our audience wants from us.
Ill look up your book, as Im a bit fascinated by the successes of the Intelligent Design movement.