There has been much ado about MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir's contemptible attack on Sarah Palin, which has now resulted in Bashir resigning from the left wing network. But to those of us who write from the right his remarks are anything but unique. Despicable remarks are hurled at us all the time and the only difference about the Bashir flap is that ours usually come anonymously via email or snail mail. In my experience, the most hateful responses I've ever received are for columns addressing either gay rights or radical Islam.

In 2007, I wrote a column for the New York Sun titled Madrassa Plan Is Monstrosity in which I objected to a proposed Arab language public school in Brooklyn.  Ground Zero was still a huge hole in the ground and the principals involved in the school had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The column created quite a furor. I received an invite from CNN to go on the Paula Zahn show but I was in no mood to butt heads with the mainstream media. I had been receiving hate mail very similar to the Bashir/Palin contretemps in addition to negative reaction in the press.

My worst anonymous email came with an EU address and instead of the slavery anecdote that Bashir utilized, my correspondent related what occurred in the concentration camps and suggested that I should be the receiver of the same treatment that Bashir said Palin deserved. I wrote about this experience for the July, August 2008 issue of the New Individualist magazine and I recall getting a message from the editor, Robert Bidinotto during the editing process. He wrote:

"As for that European email-completely outrageous and disgusting. Too disgusting to print, really; it would have grossed out readers as much as it did you and me. I could therefore see no reason to run it rather than just characterize it. Sorry you were on the receiving end of that ugliness."

It's ironic that MSNBC anchors are always making assertions about hate coming from the right, but I'm not aware of any conservative pundit with the exception of Michael Savage, deliberately wishing ill on their political opponents. Personal insults are de rigueur, however, against a conservative columnist, and one has to develop thick, impenetrable skin to withstand them.

Here on Staten Island, I am regarded in the LGBT community as a homophobe because I wrote columns defending the Boy Scouts.  Those who know me personally laugh at that assumption, but I discovered that those who don't retain a great deal of resentment towards me. When a coffee shop was scheduled to open near my home that had a pleasant Greenwich Village ambiance, I noticed that the walls were bare. I offered to loan some artworks to spruce up the place and even painted an Art Deco café piece. I showed the owner pix of the works and he seemed delighted to accept them. However, when I brought them to the café and handed him the receipt to sign and he saw my name, his entire demeanor changed. While he did accept the paintings he never hung them and when months later I sent my son to pick them up he retrieved them from behind a piano still in their wrappings. Oh well, different strokes....

When I was with the New York Sun, Gawker.com took delight in attacking nearly every column I wrote, yet after viewing my gallery on my website, www.aliciacolon.com, conceded that I had a minuscule talent. 

I have been called the 'c' word among many other nasty epithets and even made the Democrat Underground's The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 280.  This last insult I wear with a badge of honor because sharing that list with me was George W. Bush, whom I venture to believe, is sorely missed by Americans right now.

I'm not a viewer of MSNBC but my home page is lucianne.com where I can read every article published from the right and left. I can also watch videos of their anchors making the usual verbiage support of this administration.  Considering the continual decline in the ratings of the leftwing network, Martin Bashir may merely be the first of the rats leaving the sinking ship.