Dear Stephen Taylor: Pay the fuck attention.

You know, I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this but it looks like there's no avoiding it. Apparently, the more psychotic of the Blogging Tories are on the warpath again, and looking to "out" anonymous bloggers. And by anonymous bloggers, I mean me.

Exhibit A: the clinically-deranged, racist Nazi Kate McMillan, who writes here of yours truly:

This is the same person who has invited others to do me harm, and posted a link to my address. Like Meaghan Walker Williams, showing up in my comments and threatening me with a visit from the Indian Posse, or in an earlier incarnation, setting up a blog, writing under my name, and posting my address along with a statement that I "hate Indians".

When people pull these stunts, they deserve to be hunted down and exposed for the cowards they are. So yeah, if someone verifies CC's identity, I'll be the first one to post his street address and home phone number on the front page of SDA.

He can take that to the bank.

Not surprisingly, Kate is being her typical, pathologically dishonest self, since the only reference I made to her location was a link to her very own, publicly-available web site. (What is it with right-wing retards and freaking out when others point out their public information? Jeezus, but there's some serious brain damage going on there. And if anyone truly wants to know what Kate is drooling about, they're welcome to read this. But I digress. Onward.)

We're not here to tediously catalogue the variety of Kate's mental illnesses, Stephen. Rather, we're here to discuss the possibility for a potentially very ugly phase in Canadian political blogging, and that would be an all-out "outing" war. And the reason I'm mentioning this to you, Mr. Taylor, is that you'd be right in the middle of it.

Apparently, Stephen, your precious Blogging Tories are so destitute of intellectual capacity that the only possible response they have to criticism of their rancid racism and homophobia is threats of exposure, with the occasional subtle implication of actual physical harm. And do you really need examples of their douchebaggery?

There was Kate herself, who took great pride in revealing Belinda Stronach's private cell number. And Mike Brock's obvious glee in outing one Don Beemer. And, of course, there was the fact that you personally had to put a leash on your own Blogging Tory "Neo Conservative" when he was all about finding out who I was and publishing that. (And I still have all that private correspondence between the two of us, Stephen -- please don't make me publish it to refute any denials on your part, OK? I'd really hate to do that.)

Now, if we might get back to Kate, I'm amused by how carefully she phrases her comment above -- she's not explicitly encouraging anyone to expose my identity; no, she's just more than willing to publish that information if it becomes available. Which brings us, Stephen, to what this has to do with you.

In the first place, if one or more members of your BTs manage to track me down and publish my personal information, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that that will immediately signal open season on each and every anonymous member of your Blogging Tory collective. And I'm guessing that I'll have help from a number of my regular readers. Oh, yes, chaos and hilarity will undoubtedly ensue as the Canadian blogosphere degenerates into a veritable orgy of private contact information splashed across numerous blogs, both left and right.

Now, some might say that I deserve to be outed since I'm not particularly polite when it comes to beating the crap out of the BT membership. But I've always felt that there's a simple solution to all of that -- if the vast majority of the BTs don't like being described as mentally-retarded, homophobic, racist dumbfucks, well, they can just stop acting like that. That's a pretty elegant solution, wouldn't you say? But that's not your biggest worry, Stephen.

Apart from your BTs acting like a bunch of whiny children, there's the potential fallout if someone on your blogroll gleefully "outs" me ... and gets it wrong. And, oh, the indescribable entertainment value that would have, as some poor schmuck is mistakenly "exposed," and suffers the inevitable abuse and harassment (not to mention the possible physical assault) because one or more of your BT members is too stupid to understand how IP traces work, or something to that effect.

Oh, yes, the backlash from that will be something to see, as I'll make sure that everyone who writes about it makes sure that their blog post refers to not just "blogger X", but "blogger X, a member of Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tories." I'm pretty sure that, if that happens, Stephen, you're going to have your hands full with damage control. So you have to ask yourself, Stephen, is this really what you want as your legacy? A full-on blog war whose only purpose is to wreck peoples' blogging hobbies?

Quite frankly, Stephen, I'm not sure what drives this outing obsession. Regardless of how asinine or criminally deranged I think someone is (and when it comes to your BTs, that's the majority of them), I've never been even remotely interested in outing them if they choose to remain anonymous. I don't have to -- I poke fun at them, I hold them up to public mockery and ridicule, and I move on. And that works for me. (And, by the way, I have never revealed a single piece of personal information about anyone that wasn't already in the public domain, most of the time by their own hand. So let's quash that bit of bullshit right now, shall we? Anyone who claims that I've published private information is simply lying.)

But it's becoming increasingly clear that way too many of your BTs are simply incapable of participating in an exchange of ideas, hence the fixation on destroying their critics instead. But that's rapidly becoming your problem, isn't it, Steve? Because you have two choices here.

On the one hand, you can get a grip on this and make it clear that trying to out anonymous bloggers is not acceptable behaviour for your Blogging Tories. I know you had to do this with that deranged psychotic "Neo Conservative", but it's now clear you have a bigger problem on your hands, and you have to deal with it.

On the other hand, you can (as you seem to have a habit of doing) bury your head in the sand and pretend none of this is happening, and wait for the inevitable meltdown, at which point things in the Canadian blogosphere will get ugly indeed. And, as I mentioned, if some unfortunate sucker just happens to be at the wrong IP address at the wrong time and gets fingered, I will make damned sure that I have all the documentation ready to go for the inevitable court case when that poor schumck goes after the perps who made his life miserable. And rest assured, Steve, I'll do everything I can to ensure that your name is part of the legal proceedings, since you're well aware that at least some of your BTs are dangerous whackjobs, which suggests that, at the very least, the word "negligence" should pop up in the lawsuit somewhere.

At this point, Steve, I think you have some decisions to make. You can either deal with this and get it under control once and for all, or you can sit back and watch your vaunted Blogging Tories finally expose themselves for the infantile, vindictive and dangerous nutjobs they are. And leave yourself open to potential legal action in the process.

Your move, Steve. And have a nice day.