RICK PERLSTEIN 8/15/07

The right's preeminent shrieking harpy—no, not Ann Coulter; even worse than Ann Coulter—importunes me with an"e-newsletter" about the latest goings-on at his David Horowitz Freedom Center. A tidbit that caught my eye:

One strong measurement of the effect we're having (and the need for what we do) came in the form of request from the head the FBI-California Highway Patrol Joint Counter-terrorism Task Force who called this week to ask if their group could use our flash video"What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad" as a training film.

See What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad for yourself, and let the California Highway Patrol know if you think this is productive use of their officers' time, and a useful contribution to California's public safety:

DAVID HOROWITZ 8/17/07

Does anyone wonder where the Tom Hayden-Jane Fonda SDS radicals went? The ones who chanted “Hey, hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today?” and cheered on the Communists in Vietnam, and went into the streets to demand America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and became suddenly silent when our troops were pulled and the Communists proceeded to slaughter two-and-a half million Cambodians and Vietnamese? Well today they are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, calling for a capitulation in the war in Iraq and referring to George Bush as Hitler, or perhaps merely suggesting that his mentality is fascist, while insisting and that America’s war in Iraq is a mask for conquest and imperial goals.

These aging New Lefties are also busy digging graves for the Jews in the Middle East by pretending that the genocidal Muslims in the Palestinian territories are really victims and that they only express genocidal desires because they’re frustrated and reduced to desperation by American and Israeli power. The lefties I’m referring to are grouped around magazines like the Nation and the American Prospect and websites like Daily Kos and Common Dreams; their organizations are among the netroots and Democratic Party caucuses like the “Campaign for America’s Future,” which are mandatory stations on the road to the White House for the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates.

These observations are provoked by an email I received from one of their number, a political piranha with intellectual pretensions named Rick Perlstein. His email read: “Couldn't find your jihad vid on YouTube as promised in your email today. What's the YouTube URL? – RP” Of course I knew who Rick Perlstein was, and the lack of a hello in his email or any modicum of civility, which even a political opponent could be expected to muster, might have caused a less generous fellow than I can sometimes be to ignore the communication or just tell him to get lost. After all, on past occasions he had attacked me pretty viciously, and this email was not a response to anything I had actually written but to an e-newsletter that my staff had put out which bore my signature.

But that is not the way I deal with people. Instead of treating him according to his deserts, I did what I usually do in such cases and let the insulting style float by me while responding thus:

“Dear Rick, I'm not sure which of our three videos you’re referring to. You can access all three at www.terrorismawareness.org....”

To which he replied: “Your e-newsletter says ‘What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad’ is on YouTube, which I’d like to embed on my site.”

By this time I had a pretty good idea that whatever he was going to do with the video was not going to be pleasant, but I went along with the program anyway: “I’m happy to be collaborating on something with you. I’ll have to pass this question on to my technical people…”

Perlstein did “embed” the video (which can be accessed here) on his website along with this commentary ...