I am mad! I am just furious!! So angry that I am tempted to use words like ‘tarnation!� and “consarn it!!!� Why, I feel so upset that I…

No, it’s no use. I just cannot sustain artificially created anger. And yet it amazes me that this ability seems to come easily to third-tier pundits who live in a permanent state of low-threshold fury, where the slightest provocation is enough to send them over the edge, ranting at their favorite targets.

The latest example of this comes from Michelle Malkin, to whom the Plain Dealer allocates precious space on its editorial page on January 27, 2005 to vent a thousand words of indignation at the Department of Homeland Security because it had recently sent a permanent resident (aka ‘green card’) approval form to Eugueni Kniazev, who had been killed in the World Trade Center attack.

So Ms. Malkin is outraged by what amounts to (drum roll, please) a governmental bureaucratic mistake. She hides the silliness of her concerns with the familiar pre-emptive tactic that is now used to silence any opponent: i.e., the recipient was killed during the September 11 attacks and anything said or done in their name is automatically exempt from criticism.

She takes this particular incident and that where two of the 9/11 hijackers were given flight school approval, to extrapolate into a reality-free zone and conclude that this means that the DHS is hopelessly incompetent and probably allowing vast numbers of people into the country to freely carry out more attacks.

She also invokes the grief of the family of Mr. Kniazev, raging on their behalf at the insensitive DHS for subjecting them to this reminder of their dead relative.

In the real world occupied by the rest of us, we know that correcting faulty information in the computers of big organizations is a frustrating and often futile exercise. Families of deceased people get mail for them for a long time afterwards, from the institutions they were affiliated with to marketers of credit cards, phone companies and the like, so one more mailing from some government agency is hardly likely to cause a fresh wave of overwhelming grief.

So what might actually lie behind Ms. Malkin’s fury? It becomes less mysterious if one is aware that Ms. Malkin is the author of a recent book approving the internment of all Japanese-Americans (including children) during World War II and has been on the minor-league punditry circuit arguing for racial, religious, and nationality profiling to be taken now against all people of Middle Eastern origins and of the Islamic faith.

Ms. Malkin manufactures synthetic rage over the action of some hapless (but hardly evil) clerk at the DHS in order to support and advocate actions that should cause genuine outrage. Indignation-fueled rhetoric is being used to either hide vacuity or to promote agendas that cannot stand close scrutiny. Judging by the talking heads on political talk (or more appropriately “yell�) shows, it seems like a strategy that can be translated into a lucrative career.

So excuse me while I go and practice getting angry some more. It can’t be that hard if the likes of Ms. Malkin can do it…