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First off, I just want top say that if William A. Jacobson believes that exposing conservatives who commit adultery when, say, attending out-of-town conventions or legal conferences is wrong, I have no reason to question his sincerity, motivations, or possibly overwhelming feelings of guilt he might feel when he sits down to dinner with his family and they bow their heads in prayer to a, hopefully, forgiving God.
Bless Bill’s heart.
As for Ed Whelan: fuck him.
As if it wasn’t enough for him to have worked in Bush OLC which, if not marking him with the Sign of The Beast, at least earns him a 664, he pretty much publicly dicked himself over (ala Dan Collins) on the internet. That isn’t to say that this wasn’t a teaching moment for Ed. He just applied the lesson to the wrong party.
Blevins desired to be unaccountable—irresponsible—for the views he set forth in the blogosphere. He wanted to present one face to his family, friends, and colleagues and another to the blogosphere. That’s understandable but hardly deserving of respect.
Although I find it hard to believe that Whelan’s family, colleagues, and friend were previously unaware of his anger issues and general dickishness, so maybe not.
On the 0ther hand, Whelan claims a win in this for his team, citing George Mason law professor Michael Krauss:
On the substantive debate between Blevins and Whelan, I think Whelan easily has the upper hand, but readers can decide this for themselves. On the propriety of hiding behind a pseudonym while sniping at a critic who is out in the open, I see no redeeming argument. I hope the South Texas tenure committee is watching and taking note.
As the Bushie’s say: Mission Accomplished.
(Added): I don’t want to write an additional post about this, but this comment from "John Hancock" defending Whelan and accusing publius of slander over at Washington Monthly is a work of genius wingnut Pretzel logic:
So you are quite sure that what publis said was demonstrably false?
I do not know who publis is.
In any event, yes. Publius claimed that Whelan "enjoys playing the role of know-nothing demagogue." Whether Publius is of the opinion that Whelan is "playing the role of know-nothing demagogue," Whelan has made clear by outing Publius that he does not "enjoy" it. That means Publius’s statements are demonstrably false. They constitute slander.
Posted by: John Hancock on June 7, 2009 at 2:58 PM
Yes. Another Q.E.D. Case closed. In your face. Suck it. moment.
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Fucking prick.
Great. He found another dick who agrees with him. A bigger dick, given the comment about tenure.
prickin’ fuck
This is such bullshit. It happened to AKM over at Mudflats (except the outing was done by a pissed-off congress person), and it’s about intimidation and aggression. I read many pseudonymous bloggers, and I don’t give a shit who they are if their writing is excellent, credible, and supportable. The words themselves are what matters. Besides, If I know that, say, Hilzoy, is Betty Smith, how does that make her any more credible to me? I still wouldn’t know who she is in real life. Yes, I could look her up, but it would still be virtual knowledge. I go by what the writer is writing and not who the writer is.
However, there will always be assholes who can’t deal with being criticized, and so, attack the messenger.
There hasn’t be such a big array of dicks since GayPornCon ‘08. This is not to be confused with an array of big dicks, which may have applied to GPC08, but clearly doesn’t apply to this group display of male penis envy.
What I’m missing in all the retrospectives on this is the key moment: when (and how) Whelan discovered publius’s offline identity. With so many other aspects of this resembling schoolyard bullying, I’m starting to suspect that this whole incident stems not from actual offense on Whelan’s part but from the most basic of bully motivations; to make an example out of someone. In that context, any up-for-tenure pseudonymous blogger would serve, provided you had the identity info ready to go.
This is actually the sort of chain of events that happens all the time at the middle school level. a)hear some random secret about somebody from a different clique during homeroom –> b)accidentally crash into them in the halls between classes –> c)demand apology –> d)reveal devastating secret to crowd gathered in hope of seeing a fight –> e)your clique WINS!, you become more important within your clique. With Whelan acting like such a fucking brat, it seems reasonable to suspect brat tactics.
Blevins is lucky Malkkkin didn’t send out her troops to ‘out’ him.
“Oh, pity the wingnut wefare ho
On two hundred grand a year or mo’.”
Really, someone with lifetime tenure at the Scaife-juice-chugging Institute of Legal Studies isn’t in a position to talk about accountability.
Does Michael Krauss hope for the same degree of inquiry into “extra-curricular activities” by the tenure committee @ Boalt [UC Berkeley’s law school, which employs John Yoo.]?
Michael Kruass doesn’t allow comments. No back-talk from the riff raff for this high falutin’ shyster.
I found it odd that Jacobson didn’t reference TBogg’s critique of Willie’s own recent expose blowing the lid clean off the DC condiment cover-ups. I was also amused at his seemingly being offended by T’s referring to Condi as brown sugar. I attempted to post an inquiry but…
Jacobson is such a classic tool, I’d pay good money to watch an MRI of him watching The Daily Show followed by 24 and the Sound of Music. I’d bet he rings the bell at the sight of Nazis.
“There is no reason to blog pseudonymously. Therefore, I have alerted the formerly pseudonymous blogger’s employer…”
Whelan said someone told him who publius was. (The penalty for squealing is …?) I’d have to suspect Whelan was, as he typed, tired of having his (metaphoric) ankles bitten, & decided that since he couldn’t adequately defend himself, he would force a confession out of someone.
Poor fellow. I certainly wish his fucking “ankles” a rapid recovery.
It would appear that all conservative lawyers are pestilential scum.
my real name is duncan black.
The concept of “outing” a psuedonymous blogger is absurd. The people who do or want to do that frequently cite “taking responsibility for their postings” as the reason. They almost always confuse ‘anonymous’ and ‘psuedonymous’ – almost every time this has come up, the person being outed has been posting under the same psuedonym for some time. When someone does that, you “know” them as that ‘nym. When you see that ‘nym (if you’ve read their stuff for a while), you generally have a pretty fair idea where they’re coming from, idologically. So “outing” someone is generally done with malicious intent, i.e. getting them in trouble with their employer or family, and is pretty much always done by someone who has no argument, i.e. Ed Whelan the douchebag. The only time I can see value in “outing” someone is in situations like with Lee Siegal or John Lott using sockpuppets to argue with those who disagreed with them while seperating themselves from the “fray” and making it seem like their positions have more support than they really did. That is seriously dishonest.
Dontcha just love how Whelan’s sock-puppets give him hand-jobs?
I could care less the real identity of the blogger I read. You can tell Publius has a strong legal background just by his postings. Whelan was being vindictive and meant to undermine Publius’ career. Not being in academia, do tenure committees take blog sniping into account? He certainly wasn’t representing the college while blogging.
Whelan has made clear by outing Publius that he does not “enjoy” it.
On the contrary, I’m of the opinion he probably touched Li’l Ed the whole time.
You don’t, by any chance, work in the parrot-training industry?
Followed the link to the Jacobson web site, known as “Legal Insurrection” (maybe he should hook up with Confederate Yankee). Apparently, he thinks his readers are idiots (probably not an unreasonable assumption, actually), because underneath the name of the site is this:
Does he really think his readers do not know how to pronounce “Legal Insurrection”? Again, given his audience, that may actually be the case. And he defines the terms in opposite order in which they appear in the blog title.
Idiot.