When John Lott was caught using a sock puppet, Glenn Reynolds declared that he wasn't going to mention it on his blog because it wasn't "actual news". Later he chastised Greg Beato for doing a photoshop of Lott as Mary Rosh and downplayed the sock puppetry as "weird", rather than wrong:
Greg Beato, who sometimes takes it upon himself to lecture me on fairness and decorum, has demonstrated his commitment to fairness and decorum by photoshopping Lott in drag and conflating Bellesiles' false claims that a critic had forged emails attributed to him, with Lott's use of a pseudonym in chat groups, two rather different things, on the dubious basis that both were "Internet-related."
Lott has not covered himself with glory in this matter, and the pseudonymous-posting thing is kind of weird (though, um, certain bloggers are not in a position to criticize pseudonymous argument too much, and raising it after the main claim seemed to have been laid to rest seemed a bit cheesy to me).
That was then. Now it seems that mere allegations that Glenn Greenwald used sock puppets (allegations that are likely false, by the way) are actual news, sock puppetry is a "sin" and photoshopping is the best take on the affair:
The Glenn Greenwald sock-puppet kerfuffle. Short summary here, oodles more at Ace, and Dan Riehl. Best take on the whole phenomenon -- and at an appropriate level of seriousness -- here. Sock-puppetry is, I think, a venial sin. But a revealing one. And it makes me wonder if I was unfair to Greenwald's readers when I complained about the lame emails I get whenever he publishes my address. Maybe those emails are all really from Greenwald. . . .
And it seems that it's also worth another one two posts with links to more photoshopping.
What's the science between making mountains out of molehills? Perhaps Glenn's nanoscience research can figure this one out.
Oops, two Glenn's here. The one I am referring to of course is Reynolds, i.e. "the nanopundit".
Reynolds is a complete fool, whose vanity has made him unable to admit his awful past mistakes. Just one quibble though, Tim. Reynolds called sockpuppetry a 'venial' sin, which means that it can be easily forgiven.
You better look out or blair will start 18 posts about this.
Tim claims that "Glenn Reynolds declared that he wasn't going to mention it on his blog because it wasn't "actual news"" Yet the provided link does not support this claim. In fact, Reynolds writes that "Rest assured that if there's actual news, I'll mention it on my site."
In other words, Reynolds promises to report actual news. He may also report non-news as well. As you know, he writes on non-news (i.e., jokes and snark) all the time. He reserves the right to report some non-news and ignore other non-news. So, your "because" is not supported by the link you provide. Reynolds did not say or imply what you claimed he did.
Could you please correct the post? You rarely make this sort of mistake and it distracts from the high quality of your usual commentary.
Reynolds is an obscure law professor at University of Tennessee, for god's sake. It is a mystery to me why so many people pay so much attention to him. I guess those who do are gluttons for punishment.
Glenn Reynolds is obscure ?
David, it was one of only three things he felt important enough to mention that he missed blogging while on vacation.
Tim,
I am sure that I speak for many readers who disagree with you on some substantive issues when I claim that the reason that we read you is because we can trust you to provide an accurate description of the facts. Once that trust is lost, there is little reason to linger. The only time (I can't find the link) that I have pushed you on an issue of fact was an obscure use of terminology with regard to the Lancet article, a mistake which you corrected after some prodding.
It would be fine if you wanted to claim something like "Glenn Reynolds only bothers with sock puppet reporting when the puppets are used by his opponents" or whatever. But you wrote that Reynolds "declared" something which he simply did not declare. Instead, Reynolds declared that he did not consider the sock pupetry in that case to be "actual news." He "declared" nothing about why he did not mention it on his blog.
You really ought to correct the post, or explain why your use of "declared" and "because" is justified.
Reynolds was responding to this comment:
>I'm sure if this guy's initials were M.B. then this attract the gaze of the All-Seeing Eye of Knoxville.
He was giving a reason why he hadn't mentioned it: it wasn't actual news.
Could you parse Reynolds's wording a bit more closely, David? I think there are a few punctuation marks there whose significance has not been properly addressed yet.
Tim,
You do not know what precisely Reynolds was responding to. There were two comments prior to his on the thread. There was other discussion on the thread. How do you know what Reynold's mental state was? How do you know that he was responding to that specific comment? You don't/
To repeat: Reynolds wrote "Rest assured that if there's actual news, I'll mention it on my site." That's it. He does not promise to avoid mentions of sock poppets and other non-news. Indeed, any reader of his blog will know that he makes a regular practice of such snark, almost always directed against people/ideas he disagrees with. He merely promises to report "actual news" when and if it occurs.
You, on the other hand, first claimed that "Glenn Reynolds declared that he wasn't going to mention it on his blog because it wasn't "actual news"." In other words, the reason for his not mentioning it was that it wasn't actual news. Nothing Reynolds wrote supports this claim. How do you know that the reason he didn't mention it was because it wasn't boring or trite or distasteful or weird or inconsistent with his plans for global domination. Although you are free to speculate as to his reasons, you can not claim that he "declared" them since he didn't.
You now claim that Reynolds "was giving a reason why he hadn't mentioned it: it wasn't actual news." Now this --- suggesting "a" reason --- is a more defensible position, implying that there might be many reasons for not mentioning it, just one of which is its non-news value. If you were to edit the post to reflect this, to phrase it as you think that a reason is the non-news value, that would be fine.
Note that Reynolds actually wrote:
Reynolds claims, perhaps unpersuasively, that the reason for less (and delayed) blogging relates to academic fraud. Now, you are under no compulsion to believe him. But that is the most direct answer to the comments in the thread wondering why he has not blogged more on the topic.
The issue is that you claim that Reynolds "declared" something that he did not declare. He did not declare that "he wasn't going to mention it on his blog because it wasn't "actual news"." In fact, Reynolds makes no promises whatsoever about the likelihood of his mentioning Mary Rosh at a later date (although he does imply that this is not real news).
Please show where Reynolds "declared" that he "wasn't going to mention" Mary Rosh. In other words, not only is your "because" unjustified, even your claim about Reynold's plan to not mention Mary Rosh are nowhere supported by what he wrote.
PS. Thanks for your explanation on the Greenwald comments issue on the other thread.
David, you seem to be under the misimpression that Tim is interested in your childish insistence on your denotation over his connotation as to the word "declared." More importantly, you also seem to be under the misimpression that you and you alone can decide where Tim must append an "IMHO" disclaimer to anything he writes.
You have an obvious tell: When you find yourself writing a comment containing the phrase "please show where," you are self-selected as a troll. Just delete the comment and move to another blog.
Nash,
What is your problem? Tim and I have had interactions on this blog and offline. He kindly corrected one mistake that I pointed out to him on another occasion. He often answers my questions and explains things (like the location of Greenwald's comments) that are unclear to me. Most importantly, he does not seem to hesitate to call out trollish behavior. So, if Tim does not think that I am a troll, then you should get a clue.
If you want to be useful, please answer the questions that I posed to Tim above.
(For the record, if Tim finds my behavior trollish, then I will gladly move on.)