Here's Margaret Cho of all people, defending Michelle Malkin:

Malkin tries to speak louder in to the microphone to drown out the chants of the protesters. The American flag taped up behind her falls down. This gets a smattering of ironic applause among the confused and scared looking audience. I don't blame them for being scared. I am scared for her. The protesters keep breaking into the hall at intervals, interrupting Malkin's train of thought. She hunkers down and keeps going, tough and diligent. She is a lot like me I think, an "Anti-Cho." They chant "SHAME!!!SHAME!!!SHAME!!!" but she refuses to be shamed by their taunts.

I feel kind of proud, that racial politics have progressed to the point where we can have a young Asian American woman who doesn't have to live within the constraints of a minority identity, which presumes liberal bias just by nature of the fact that if you are oppressed by the majority, you would want to place yourself against the majority. Malkin's position is actually a kind of genius, and a new way to look at our role in American politics. We don't have to take on the mantle of distressed minority. We can be as prejudiced as whites!

Race really doesn't matter. Malkin is both a revelation and revolution. It is fairly obvious that she is being courted by conservatives, fussed over and groomed as the all new Manchurian Candidate. She fits their need to diversify like an orthopedic shoe. It is a match made in GOP hell. The unholy union works to everyone's advantage. The right wing gets a brand new bag, a Skipper to Ann Coulter's Barbie. Not only that, she's Asian, so that liberals will have a harder time calling her a racist even though she has completely racist views. Malkin gets a lot of publicity and talk time for her book, which will generate sales on both sides. The right will buy it to support their own, the left will buy it to see what all the screaming is about. Boy, there is a lot of screaming. Not since Salman Rushdie released The Satanic Verses have people been so pissed off at an author. I would love to issue a fatwah against her, but I am not sure how to go about it.

The protests are counterproductive, because the right wing loves it when the left gets angry. The off camera shouting makes us look like savages, and that is the exact image that they love to show again and again. Malkin bravely pushes forward. She seems like an intelligent and interesting young woman, albeit misguided, and I feel protective towards her. I hope the right treat her well, and don't throw her away once the fury has died down. Perhaps she will write a follow up book about how the Holocaust didn't happen.

I'm writing this as I watch a tape of Malkin on C-SPAN2, and it's a bit shocking to see an obviously sincere young Asian woman being shouted down in a free country by people who cannot tolerate having anyone even hearing her. The Berkeley audience actually listening to Malkin applauded periodically, and quite a lot at the end. Ms. Malkin was just asked whether "if all the 9/11 hijackers had been short Filipino American women" (she's that!) she would support racial profiling. The audience applauded enthusiastically. Her answer was that she'd be screaming for it, and angry if she wasn't profiled. More audience applause. (I guess I'd say the same thing about short middle aged Americans of Norwegian descent.)

Nice to see the audience show annoyance with the hecklers who regularly make it into the room with the sole purpose of disrupting.

Berkeley. Much as I love the place, I hate the intolerance of the leftist ideologues (and their unthinking followers) there.

Of course, it's no longer limited to Berkeley....

The irony is that Berkeley was the birthplace of the Free Speech movement -- something originally joined by student conservatives. It wasn't long before it became a "free speech for me but not for thee" movement.

MORE: Just heard that Malkin's book signing had to be canceled for security reasons.

Welcome to the world of free speech in Berkeley, folks.

MORE: If I could add a tidbit, I would note an often-overlooked historical fact: J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment program:

There was one lonely voice in the Roosevelt administration opposed to the Japanese internment - that of J. Edgar Hoover. The American Civil Liberties Union gave J. Edgar Hoover an award for wartime vigilance during World War II. It was only when he turned his award-winning vigilance to Soviet spies that liberals thought Hoover was a beast.