DRAWING A BLANK (ENHORN)

As reader "Lance Uppercut" wrote in a comment here this week, I am "totally famous," dude. On Monday the Canard's regular gig earned a rather emphatic recommendation from the leader of the widest-read blog community inside my area of coverage. No doubt, I'm quite appreciative of it. To my great relief, the reviews these past few weeks have been overwhelmingly positive. But the attention has inevitably brought a few non compos-ites out of the woodwork. Take for instance the e-mail reproduced below, one of the most self-important, dare I say arrogant, correspondences from one of the most frustratingly impossible individuals with whom I've ever traded electronic packets of information.

I'll save you the whole story, but this guy misinterpreted a line from a recent edition of the web column that pays the bills around here. Apparently he somehow believed I'd insinuated that Army Spc. Casey Sheehan was not killed in Iraq. The totality of my Sheehan coverage should have been enough to dispel the impression. Yet after I made an alteration for clarity, noted it in the same space and e-mailed a conciliatory after-note, he persisted in willfully misrepresenting my work in a post at his Corante-hosted personal weblog.

So this is the text of what I believe was the third of an eventual six e-mails this guy sent me during the past week:

You haven't learned a thing. You're back to acting like an arrogant prick journalist instead of what you're supposed to be, a humble blogger.

It WAS a mistake. You didn't know what a Gold Star mother was, and didn't know Cindy Sheehan is one, by virtue of having lost her son. You called her an "alleged" one and put gold star in lower case.

And you didn't use strikethrough to correct it either.

You're going to be read very, very closely over the next weeks and months, Bill, and you're going to get hammered a lot worse than this, by a lot more people.

And it's unnecessary.

I don't think you're ready for this, frankly, and I hope you leave the blogosphere soon.

Sorry to be so harsh, but I tried to get you to listen, and you refused to.

We agree — it is unnecessary! The most ironic part is the allegation of arrogance from somebody who appointed himself the absent-minded editor of my fledgling blog round-up.

I don't want to embarrass this guy (UPDATE: I mean, no more than I have to). Let's call him D. Blankenhorn. No, too specific. How about Dana B.? But for what it's worth, I've been in the blogosphere formally with the Oregon Commentator and Armed Prophet since early 2003, and before that was a daily reader going back to the weeks following 9/11.

If I was the irrational litigious type, I'd probably holler "libel" and make threats about a team of lawyers that I probably don't have. But hey, after biting down onto a mid-sandwich vegetable wire at a Foggy Bottom eatery last month and letting it slide, I can let this go. (Note to self: Switch to an all-carnivorous diet.)

So Blankenhorn took an ill-advised shot, and missed badly. If his complaint really demanded a substantive refutation, it would include all the e-mails and a full accounting of the events, plus an unflinching fisking of his utterly bizarre blog post on this "alleged" kerfuffle. For the only rebuttal so far required, check the comments, and feel free to snicker at my own technical clumsiness. (Note to Corante: Your comment boards upload too slowly.)

So that's it. Unless provoked further, I'll stand down. No need to get into a no-holds-barred cage match on these here Internets.

P.S. — Perhaps this should have been an installment of "Great Spams of the Internet."

UPDATE — I don't completely agree with the back-handed defenses of my work to be found in Mr. Blankenhorn's comments, but they do underscore my point about just how far he missed the mark. And apparently Blankenhorn or someone at Corante has edited the comments, because my "clumsiness" remark no longer makes any sense.

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posted by WWB at 2:26 AM |