I feel special, since the latest two blog two blog kerfuffles involved two people who have commented here, Deb Frisch and Glenn Greenwald. Given how few people comment here, I’m just pleased as punch that a couple of titans of the left side of the blogosphere commented here. Or it could be that those two just leave a lot of comments – one used to stalk Professor Bainbridge whom I linked to, and the other seems to keep an eagle eye on links to his site or mentions of his name and responded to those from my site.
While Ms. Frisch made comments that clearly crossed the line of acceptability, Mr. Greenwald is accused of sock puppetry, which I don’t think is all that big a deal – just kind of sad, really. While some bloggers are absolutely convinced, I’m not so sure, for a couple of reasons.
While the IP address Mr. Greenwald used here was from Brazil, it isn’t the same as the one I’ve seen at Ace of Spades. So does that mean the Real Mr. Greenwald didn’t comment here? Or could it be that Kevin Aylward is correct, and anybody commenting from Brazil runs the risk of being though of as a Greenwald sockpuppet? If IP addresses really were like fingerprints, how easy would my job of eliminating comment and trackback spam be!
The other reason is that this seems out of character for Mr. Greenwald who seems to have no trouble speaking his mind under his own name. I could well be wrong, but it does sound more like friends arguing from authority than Mr. Greenwald himself.
I don’t agree with many of Glenn Greenwald’s views on politics, but when he did comment here we were in agreement on the idea of federalism, and he expressed himself clearly and civilly. What blogs need is more of that, and less ad hominem, which is really what the sock puppet charge amounts to — an attempt to make Mr. Greenwald lose all the arguments because he’s a pathetic loser sock puppeter.
