Media Matters for America: Vegans, transsexuals, and "fake Holocaust survivors," oh my

In an April 18 weblog entry, right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel responded to a Media Matters for Americaitem that highlighted her"speculat[ion]" in an April 16 post (since removed) that Cho Seung-Hui, identified as the Virginia Tech gunman, might have been a"Paki" Muslim and part of"a coordinated terrorist attack." As Media Matters pointed out,"Paki" is a disparaging term for a person of Pakistani descent. Schlussel attacked Media Matters, writing:"Media Matters bragged to the Wall Street Journal that it was responsible for taking down Don Imus. I suppose now that Don Imus is gone, they've assigned the vegan lesbian transsexual 'interspecies erotica' devotee they had monitoring the Imus show to monitor my site." She also attacked"nutty, angry" MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who awarded Schlussel third place in his April 17"Worst Person in the World" segment for her"Paki" statement. In addition, Schlussel falsely claimed that billionaire philanthropist George Soros"is the funder of Media Matters."

Schlussel went on to attack Soros at length, writing that"the Jewish Soros is a fake Holocaust survivor, who--instead of 'surviving' the Holocuast [sic] --helped the Nazis perpetrate it" and that"Soros bragged on CBS' '60 Minutes' of helping his adopted father round up Jews to send them to their deaths at the camps and confiscate their property." Schlussel added:"Yes, this war criminal and proud Jewish Nazi is the money bags behind America's new self-anointed 'Media Watchdog.'" The only source Schlussel offered for these claims was David Horowitz and Richard Poe's thoroughlydiscredited book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (Nelson Current, 2006). As Media Matters has noted, several conservative media figures have distorted Soros' experience as a 14-year-old boy in Nazi-controlled Hungary to suggest that he collaborated with the Nazis....