The American Spectator

The Nation's Pulse

Score another one for the bloggers. Not only did the pajama pundits blow the whistle on Dan Rather's misrepresentation of the president's Air National Guard record (Rathergate), and CNN correspondent Eason Jordan's false accusations that U.S. servicemen intentionally targeted and killed journalists in Iraq (Easongate), but last week the blogs Protein Wisdom and Blackfive outed a potentially dangerous leftist university professor. The principals have rather tediously designated this scandal Ramseygate, as in JonBenet. You'll see why.

p>As the late Rod Serling might have said, meet Deb Frisch, a psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Arizona. Prof. Frisch is a longtime supporter of leftist causes and Blame America Firsters. Not long ago she wrote an unintentionally hilarious defense of Prof. Ward Churchill -- popularizer of the phrase "little Eichmanns" -- for the far left webzine Counterpunch , from which I quote: "there is nothing absurd or outrageous about using the term 'Eichmann' to refer to the stockbrokers who died that day [i.e. on 9/11]." But we are most likely to find the professor's tirades in the comments sections of various conservative blogs, quite often attacking Christianity, as in this joyous Christmas post in which she ranks Christianity the worst of all religions: br> /p>

[I]t is time for the scientifically literate left to stop pretending that Christianity is a harmless cultural institution. The Christian theory of god and creation is at the bottom of the heap of plausibility -- under Judaism, for sure (same kooky god -- but no kooky son) and maybe Islam, I don't know. It is WAY below buddhism and pantheism. The scientifically literate left needs to grow a spine and stop coddling Christians in the name of tolerance. Merry ephing Christmas.

br> Or, as in this recent post from her blog, where she advocates that liberals behave like "whackjobs": br>

I agree that the right suffers from its share of whackjobs -- I disagree that liberals should refrain from acting like them. I'm just as into kumbaya, om, peace, be the change you want to see as the next leftie but I think you need to speak the truth about how nutty the rabid right is and how conservative "mainstream media" is.

br> Trite, silly stuff. But last week Prof. Frisch went too far. Over the edge, you might say. Apparently Frisch has been trolling Jeff Goldstein's conservative Protein Wisdom blog for some time, but last week something set her off. (What exactly is unclear. Prof. Frisch did not respond to my email.) Suddenly Goldstein begins receiving -- from Frisch -- thinly disguised death threats against his two-year-old son. It isn't just the tone and vocabulary Frisch uses throughout her rant that is so scary, it is more the creepy imagery, like dialogue out of a slasher movie. I am not a psychologist like Prof. Frisch, but I think I recognize paranoid schizophrenia when I see it:

topics:
Education, Mainstream Media, Religion, Islam, Iraq