White Feather

Oh. My. God. This, via Tbogg, is amazing. The arrogance. The Chutzpah. The ignorance. It reaches new levels. Just yesterday Josh Marshall wrote "Michelle Malkin and friends slide deeper and deeper into self-parody." So their response seems to have been "You think that was deep, you have no idea how deep we can go. Take that."

Apparently, some of the Malkin crowd have got the brilliant idea to send white feathers, a symbol of cowardice, to members of Congress who voted for the war funding resolution.

The White Feather has been a symbol for cowardice. I suggest that white feathers be sent to the leaders of the Senate and House for the cowardly vote that abandons our soldiers around the world.

Voting for the war funding resolution gets you a symbol of cowardice? Huh? That alone sounds absurd, but it gets better. For the white feather as a symbol of cowardice has a very specific historical reference, specifically (see here for more)

In August 1914, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather. With the support of leading writers such as Mary Ward and Emma Orczy, the organisation encouraged women to give out white feathers to young men who had not joined the British Army. One young woman remembers her father, Robert Smith, being given a feather on his way home from work: "That night he came home and cried his heart out. My father was no coward, but had been reluctant to leave his family. He was thirty-four and my mother, who had two young children, had been suffering from a serious illness. Soon after this incident my father joined the army."

A white feather was handed out to able bodied, military aged men, who were not in uniform, during WWI to symbolize their refusal to serve their country in times of war. Huh. Gosh who fits that description. Where would we find able bodied men (and in this day women) who believe their country needs military service, but who won't provide it. Calling on military aged men to serve their country in time of war, or brand them as cowards. Now what does this remind me of?

Incidentally, feathers were not sent to MPs for voting funds for the war, or disagreeing with the PM on the execution of the war, or for supporting withdraw from Gallipoli. Those are not the kinds of things that drew a white feather.