What's eating Michael Medved now?

I'm probably better off not writing this column.

I run the danger of giving two misguided and ambitious people the kind of publicity they evidently seek by attacking me and WND.

But by not answering the smear charges of these two people, I also run the danger of allowing them to fester and spread like a cancer.

The two people in question are talk-radio host Michael Medved and Jonathan Kay, author of "Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground."

Last week Medved rebroadcast a "best of" show from May in which he interviewed Kay on his radio show, syndicated by Salem Communications. In this interview, Medved and Kay target me, Jerome Corsi, WND at large, Alan Keyes, Lou Dobbs and others.

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Medved explains in the broadcast that his disgust with WND, which he refers to as "WorldNutDaily," began during a period in which he toiled for the site as a weekly columnist – a position from which he was terminated for lack of interest by the public.

What is odd about this explanation from Medved, as I have chronicled previously, is that long after that experience, years after, Medved called both me and my wife, Elizabeth, to tell us, in his words, that I was the most ethical businessman he had ever worked with in his life.

Now, for unexplained reasons, he denounces me as a charlatan willingly contriving conspiracy tales that even I don't believe – because I'm too smart for that.

Why would Michael Medved publicly say such mean things about me, while privately paying me extravagantly complimentary praise?

Why wouldn't an honest broker of debate, one who thinks quite highly of his own communication skills, never have the courage to grill those he so willingly vilifies in absentia?

If conspiracies are all in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, why are there federal laws against them?

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I've been asked many times by readers why Medved is so cruel to WND. My answer is very simple: I believe Medved is a compulsive social climber who craves acceptance by the Republican "establishment" and is willing to achieve that goal by demonizing others for what would normally be regarded between friends as simple disagreements.

I don't know how else to explain it. I've known the guy for 25 years. He has never uttered a critical word to me in private. On the contrary, it has always been laudatory praise in private. His venom is only displayed publicly.

Historically, here are the issues Medved cites over and over again as justification for his slander:

• Medved says WND overdid it on Y2K coverage. But Y2K was 11 years ago. Why is Y2K coverage in WND still an obsession with Michael Medved? This question is especially pointed given the fact that Medved joined WND as a highly compensated weekly columnist in October 2001. Now if Medved were sincerely bent out of shape about WND's Y2K coverage in 1999, why did he happily agree to join our columnist lineup in October 2001? Interestingly, it wasn't until February 2003, when WND let Medved go, that he began publicly badmouthing WND.
• Medved says WND is peddling conspiracy tales with its investigative coverage of globalist plans to integrate the U.S. with Canada and Mexico. The move to integrate North America is no longer a matter of dispute. It's a matter of fact, thanks to the reporting of WND and the New York Times best-selling book "The Late Great USA," by Jerry Corsi. I have no doubts the movement toward hemispheric government is still alive, but it has been forced underground as a result of our work. The largest publisher in America, Simon & Schuster, recently purchased from WND Books paperback rights to "The Late Great USA" and published a new updated edition of the book. Interestingly, I have not heard Medved characterize Simon & Schuster as part of the conspiracy-mongering crowd. To his credit, neither did he criticize the New York Times for allowing the book on its best-sellers list.
• Medved doesn't like WND's determined and continued coverage of the issue of Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility for the presidency. Perhaps Michael Medved doesn't place the same value on the spirit and letter of the U.S. Constitution that I do. Perhaps he doesn't think a candidate for president should be qualified by the standards of the Constitution. Or, perhaps he thinks it's just a matter that we should drop after a decent interval of pursuit or once that candidate wins the campaign. Again, I disagree. I do so respectfully. Michael Medved does not. In fact, Medved, who fancies himself something of a historian, betrayed an astonishing lack of constitutional scholarship in his program while addressing the concerns of a caller who suggested, rightly, that Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" requirement of Article II, Section 1. Medved said it was not necessary for a president to be the offspring of U.S. citizen parents because Alexander Hamilton wasn't. However, Article II, Section 1, specifically exempts those who were "citizens at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution." Obviously, Medved has not studied the issue much for someone with such vociferous opinions.

In his latest assault on WND, Medved found a new reason for his open "hostility" toward this news site. It's because of a "series" WND allegedly conducted alleging that soy causes homosexuality. He even claims to have interviewed the "reporter" who wrote it. However, despite Medved's decades in the communications business, he apparently is unable to distinguish between an investigative news series and a series of highly read and highly provocative opinion columns written by one commentator.

WND is known for providing the broadest forum for political and social commentary anywhere in the media – from far left to far right and in between. Heck, for a while, we even published commentary from Medved. Publishing said commentary does not suggest the management and ownership of WND embrace those opinions. In fact, the only commentator whose opinions I fully embrace is myself.

Still, given that WND has been publishing for 15 years, that's not much of an indictment, is it? I mean, does disagreement on those issues warrant the kind of vitriol Medved regularly dishes out?

You be the judge.

Ironically, in his interview with Kay, Medved comes very close to saying he does not accept the official explanation for TWA Flight 800's demise in 1996. That the government would put out a completely implausible explanation for a midair explosion of an airliner over Long Island Sound would certainly suggest "conspiracy." By the way, which news agency did all the breakthrough reporting on TWA Flight 800 and published a book on the subject? WND, of course, though you would never know it from listening to Medved's hateful diatribes against WND and its personalities, whom he refers to as "despicable exploiters."

I don't expect people like Medved and Kay to stop their taunting.

Everybody in show business or promoting a book needs a gimmick – even if it means ad hominem attacks and name-calling.

But I thought I'd take a little time and a little space to provide "the rest of the story."