Are Michael Malice better than other people?

☑ Yes †

(UPDATED) Russian-American anarchist Michael Malice offers a rough-around-the-edges/rat-bastard/imperious–resentful–blustery persona. Honed to a brilliant shine, that troll façade is what Japanese car designers called “surface entertainment.” I’m a fan.

The Malice value proposition

1. lightning quickness

2. thoroughgoing rejection of any notion of “equality” – so many around Malice, and nearly all teeming the earth, are “cretins,” especially cashiers, who are overdue for replacement by touchscreens

3. erudition in American political history that I would deem unique if Malice hadn’t hosted so many of his historian heroes, of whom he was clearly in awe, on his chat shows (cf. booklist)

4. love of fine clothes, with a defined æsthetic of glittering blazers and high-collared shirts always accented by a lapel pin (for neckties are as nooses)

5. love of perfume

6. love for his fans, who definitionally are not “cretins”

He’s a serial talk-show host

He’s got two running right now.

• Version 1.0 of “YOUR WELCOME” worked exclusively with in-studio guests and worked well with that way of working. But if I wanted Skype interviews, I’d watch any number of YouTube amateurs, or CBC afternoon political talk shows. That’s what Malice gives us with V2.0 of “YOUR WELCOME” and with Night Shade, a news-recap show with little to recommend it even though I listen to four out of five episodes. (Via RSS, which the show’s “network” can barely keep running. That network can barely keep one of its founders out of the hoosegow, either.)

  I’m the one who dared to tell him what a piece of shit Version 2.0 of “YOUR WELCOME” is. (“Unsolicited advice is never friendly.”)

• Michael Malice in a T‑shirt flooded by a second-rate studio’s blue cast is nobody’s value proposition, let alone his.

  

• Malice’s tic of blowing a sigh through flapping jowls got old the second time he used it. Then again, a news-recap show like Night Shade is such an uninspired idea it belongs on CBC Radio.

I’ve read Ego & Hubris twice

I wish I had been as self-assured a grade-schooler as he was – sitting in a chair while the rest of the (“cretin”) children obediently plunked down onto the floor.

Umpteen references and full interviews on his shows buttress the message in Pekar’s biography that schools are prisons. Every time I think that, I hear Lisa saying “I like school.” I liked school, too. I aced everything except phys ed and shop (obviously) and I almost went for a third university degree. I wouldn’t do any of it over again – but, unlike Malice, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else.

I listen to his public livestreams

• He’s warm and welcoming to his friends, admirers, and donors. He insists such donations are not expected but are appreciated. He’s got a whole schtick about how even a donation of a buck is meaningful (agreeing with Owen Benjamin on that score).

• He’s a troll who’s unconcerned with feelings, except for his feelings toward his fans, and except when receiving unsolicited advice.

• He’s more fallible and human than he lets on. He’s as much of both as “cretins” are. He gets anxious (stated on a livestream) when on a “cut.” (Taleb-compliant Malice deadlifts.)

• Malice finally admitted he’s afraid of getting deplatformed – an admission that came after umpteen Night Shade and guest segments explaining how suppression of ideas, or outright censorship, is now a technical impossibility.

Malice decided to be an author and willed it into being

• Read between the lines and not only have his proposals sometimes been rejected, not only has he written one or more proposals for other authors that were rejected, what bothers him most about the process is the wall of silence a proposal might receive.

• He felt the same about the radio silence from the editors of his next book, The New Right, which will use the heavily original typography of Minion, which his conglomerate publisher got for free with InDesign.

  I hear nothing but unique authorial voice in his selection of chapter titles and epigraphs, as read on YouTube. (“When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke [and] dead, [and want] your kids raped and brainwashed – and they think it’s funny.”)

• I believe him when he says he read 60 books before writing Dear Reader. I believe further that he bought every book he could in the North Korean bookstore. I’ve seen him insist that the absolute priority must be ending the enslavement of the North Korean people.

Anonymoose manqué

Malice loves Canada, and considers Toronto his almost-favourite city. He likes Toronto so much that he pronounces that word like an American – with all six Ts – only some of the time. If he comes up here, we need to get him on camera with Ed the Sock, his non-union Canadian equivalent. (Who’ll be taller?)

Here’s whom, or what, Michael Malice most resembles: Anonymoose, from Paul Chadwick’s Concrete series (cf. pp. 142–145 of Vol. 1: Depths).

Malice got burned, yes, but only metaphorically. Now he’s the one dishing out sick burns. The Michael Malice mask hides not his pain but his kindness and, if he’ll excuse the vulgarism, his humanity. I’m a fan.

In a perverse turn of events, Malice apologizes

(2018.12.26) Not to me. We’re not there yet. YouTubé Christmas Eve livestream:

And I’m very, very sorry – and I hate that expression; it always sounds insincere – I am very sorry that this made you sad. If you like my stuff and you see yourself blocked, I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings. I think that’s awful. So apologies to you, openly.

(“Assuming you’re not terrible. Should I go through your tweets and see if you’re terrible? [Laughs] The very first thing in your bio is ‘Anarcho-sodomite.’ ”)

I have the impression that because I dared to comment on Malice’s Facebook that the new show format just is not working (“Unsolicited advice is never friendly”), and because I dared to publish the Michael Malice Booklist, of which he is aware, I, who “like” his “stuff,” will not be extended the same graces.

He’s supposedly coming to town shortly and I’m sure it’ll go great if I manifest enough gall to attempt to talk to him.

† Malice’s epitaph: His surefire test to determine if one is right-wing. “Are some people better than other people?” If the instant answer is yes, you’re right-wing. Pregnant pause and lengthy academic prevarications, or any other response? You aren’t.