A fellow editor at the Washington Times once characterized McCain as “an ill-tempered racist who sat on the other side of my desk for many years and carried on loud telephone conversations almost every day full of racist and ultra-right comments, and often got into loud verbal fights with both reporters and editors in the newsroom.” McCain admits to having in the past carried on a long association with William White, the neo-Nazi writer and activist who threatened blogger Charles Johnson and harassed columnist William Pitts — and whose articles have appeared in The Washington Times. Indeed, to be singled out at the Times for being a racist is a hell of a thing; even the managing editor’s wife has gone public with her assertions that blacks are born with collectively lower IQs than whites, and is otherwise tied to a variety of white supremacist organizations and outlets. All in all, McCain is simply more apt to find himself tied in some way to any given racist than is the average Joe except in such case as the average Joe is a racist like Robert Stacy McCain.

Even then, the problem with McCain and those who have joined him in stripping the conservative movement bare of dignity is not one of racism, but of incompetence. A political movement can survive the deserved enmity of a few ethnic groups; it cannot survive more than a couple guys running around threatening newspapermen to duels or whatever the fuck is going on these days.

I recall the Lionheart incident, where Lionheart posted he thought Charles should be shot like a nazi, because Charles exposed his BMP leanings. At that time, some people began to back off Lionheart, because this really wasn’t the sort of behavior decent bloggers should be normalizing. Seems that’s changed in the last few years, so that when Stacy McCain does something similar, some bloggers are fine looking the other way.