But unlike like her blond, blue-eyed sisters in right-wing punditry—Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley et al—Malkin has been forced to grapple personally with the issue of race. “I mean, look at me,” she once told a college audience. “I’ve been called a Jap, Chink, Gook, Dog-eater.” One day in kindergarten, she came home sobbing after being the target of racial insults from other children. “My mom wiped my tears…and told me everyone has prejudice,” she recounted. “I am eternally grateful for this [lesson].”

Today Malkin says this anecdote—highlighted in her Wikipedia entry —has been largely mischaracterized by the mainstream media. “It’s strange to me that this is what people would seize on,” she tells me. “The point of the story was to contrast overt racism with liberal racism and holier-than-thou, sanctimonious, this-is-not-racism racism. Overt racism, to me, was always easier to deal with. After a while it gets stultifyingly boring to me. I blog every day, I break news, I’ve written four books—and people just want to harp on the fact that I’ve been very open and candid about race and conservatism. I just think it shows you there is no such thing as post-racial America.”

She goes on: “I think that the racism and the sexism, particularly of liberal bloggers, is really something to behold.”