(photo: vividBreeze/flickr)

Isn’t it interesting how the US establishment media, even as it went out of its way to push the Republicans’ distorted talking points on Hilary Rosen’s comments concerning Ann Romney, simultaneously ignored things that might not reflect well on Mrs. Romney or her very wealthy husband — things like the full history of her birthday party host Fred Malek, aka Nixon’s Jew Counter?

And no, Malek was not merely following Nixon’s orders, as Timothy Noah points out:

But here’s what Malek left out. Four of the people on Malek’s Jew list got demoted, with Malek’s active involvement. This is what Malek denied to the Post‘s Woodward and Pincus in 1988 (when Woodward and Pincus identified two of the four but were unable to prove the Malek link). “In no way did I take part in moving anyone out of the BLS,” Malek told Woodward and Pincus. “If I had even been peripherally involved or asked to alter someone’s employment status I would have found it offensive and morally unacceptable, and I would have refused.” Please note this comparatively rare instance in which a Washington hack tells a lie in the subjunctive tense. Malek was more than peripherally involved. And he most certainly did not refuse.

The proof is a memo that was withheld from Woodward and Pincus but was made public many years later. The memo, from Malek to Haldeman, notes the imminent demotions of Harold Goldstein, Peter Henle, Leon Greenberg, and Ben Burdetsky. I have no idea how many of these four were actually Jewish, but all four names appeared on Malek’s Jew list. (Malek’s memo did not mention the 13 by name but a  different memo  to Malek from White House aide Dan Kingsley did. Shiskin, oddly, didn’t make Malek’s list of 13, even though he was BLS director at the time.)

When you add all these details to Malek’s story, it acquires a very different meaning. Far from subverting Richard Nixon’s anti-Semitism, Malek enabled it. The fact that Malek later helped install the Jewish Shiskin as commissioner of BLS is not particularly relevant because by then Nixon had presumably moved on to other bizarre and/or hateful obsessions. (I’ve checked the unedited tape of Naftali’s Malek interview, and Malek doesn’t mention the demotions there either.)

Kinda like how the establishment press runs to demonize every single brown-skinned guy with a non-Anglo name caught up in an FBI entrapment net, yet gives far less attention (especially national attention) to right-wing terrorists like Kevin Harpham and James Cummings who don’t need the FBI to bait them into attempting violence.