If I might be allowed a follow-up to the previous post, the level of idiocy over at Small Dead Brain Cells really has to be read to be believed. Here's regular contributor Lance, thinking he's just posted something clever:
Raise the barricades! Someone has a pseudonym!
Lo be it for me to criticize another blogger...cough...but Kinsella takes the cake on this doozy.
"Raphael" then goes on to play some parsing games about what's on his birth certificate, what's real, what isn't, etc. But he confirms that at least part of his Post handle is bullshit.
So, does the Post willingly publish untruths, or has it simply been hoodwinked? Good question.
To answer him, no. No the Post hasn't been "hoodwinked" and no, you don't have a good question.
Warren, I don't expect you to drop your partisan wont, but one expects you to be smarter than this. The Nat. Post is only upholding some few hundred years worth of history in the publishing, suffrage and freedom of speech battles of the past.
Course, given your views on freedom of speech, I should expect nothing less than your desire to cast question on freedom of the press...at least the more conservative press. "We just caunght have that deary, now caun we."
Cheers,
lance
Not surprisingly, equally stupid or dishonest (does it really matter which?) commenters chime in, like this one:
It was beyond hilarious for Kinsella to seem offended and then cited as his private detective "Dr. Dawg". Just curious, is this jerk's first name "Doctor" and his last name "Dawg"?!?
Kinsella & Dawg: Nitwits of the decade!!!
Wow ... Kinsella and Dawg ... a couple of complete doughheads. Except ... except ... let's see what it is that Kinsella was griping about, shall we?
IS THE NATIONAL POST LYING TO ITS READERS?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 10:55 PM
The newspaper, I saw today, publishes columns by "Raphael Alexander." They may have in fact done so for a while (I barely read the paper when I wrote for it, and don't do so at all, now.) The "Alexander" columns are the usual stuff - regurgitated Harper PMO talking points, anti-Ignatieff screeds, blah blah blah. Yawn.
Thing is, "Raphael Alexander" is not this columnist's real name. Dawg's asked the guy straight out, too. Here's the exchange, from a few weeks ago:
Dr.Dawg Says:
March 1, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Is “Raphael Alexander” your real name? Just curious.
Raphael Alexander Says:
March 1, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Define what real name means...
"Raphael" then goes on to play some parsing games about what's on his birth certificate, what's real, what isn't, etc. But he confirms that at least part of his Post handle is bullshit.
So, does the Post willingly publish untruths, or has it simply been hoodwinked? Good question.
Let's think about that.
Why, dear me, it's not simply about "Raphael Alexander" being a pseudonym. No, it's about the Post publishing Raphael under what appears to be a pseudonym without making it clear to the readers that it is a pseudonym. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense, since most people assume that if someone is going to present information emanating from an anonymous or unaccountable source, the fact that it is an anonymous source should be made painfully obvious. So the Post has never admitted the pseudonymity to its readership, and Raphael -- when he is called on it -- tries to dance around the issue with lameass semantics.
In short, Lance, you utter twit, the issue is not pseudonymity -- the issue is lying about that pseudonymity. No one thinks "Dr. Dawg" is Dawg's real name, we all understand that. But Raphael has been passing himself off with that moniker for quite some time now, and it's a little classless to have never admitted it, particularly when you're writing for the mainstream media.
I would have thought Lance could understand the subtle but significant difference between those two situations. Apparently not.
And that is why we mock them.
AFTERSNARK: Dawg barks.
12 comments:
I left a comment there simply asking ET if she had any evidence for the claim that Dawg was posting there under various sock puppets. The comment was deleted.
And needless to say, I was not, although the comments from ET--increasingly libelous--continue.
Lance, of Catprint in the Mash, is the guestblogger, presumably with access to IP addresses, and hence to GPS coordinates. He knows damned well that I haven't posted there, but he's content to let it all ride.
To use CC-language: what a collection of pants-pissing, hypocritical cowards.
From what I've seen, Lance is not evil -- just really, really, really stupid. Nothing he's ever done has disabused me of that notion.
it wouldn't be quite as fun if ruffles hadn't adamantly insisted that "raphael alexander" was his actual name, if he hadn't sneered at pseudonyms and if he weren't a hypocrite.
presumably with access to IP addresses, and hence to GPS coordinates.
Write what you know, Dawg. Those two data points have nothing to do with each other.
But anyway, up to this point, I also thought Lance wasn't evil, just naive and kind of dumb. But he's learned well at the feet of the mistress and has adopted KKKate's nazi censorhip practices.
It's very easy to post under another name/names via proxies or CGI scripts.
Well, I've added quite a number of IP addresses (numerical) in this program. So far they always seem to point to the locality of the poster (I've used addies of the people I know).
Are you folks unaware of this?
I should say "approximate" location. I think it points to the local ISP. But even that should differentiate, say, me, from a bunch of other commenters from different parts of the country or even the city.
I should say "approximate" location. I think it points to the local ISP. But even that should differentiate, say, me, from a bunch of other commenters from different parts of the country or even the city.
That's the nit I was picking. GPS data is what is strictly obtained by the Global Positioning System. What you're talking about there is mapping IP addresses to the known GPS coordinates of particular network equipment, which isn't really more informative than a WHOIS.
Anyway, I'm really more fascinated now by Edwina Taborsky's Architectonics of Semiosis. Did *we* pay for any of that?
Architectonics of Semiosis?
Sounds rather too PoMo for a Conservative.
Well, at least one commentator wasn't very nice to her over at David Thompson's place:
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/07/very-big-langua.html?cid=75492624#comment-6a00d83451675669e200e008d6085b8834
I have a new Sokal worthy paper (ET's) for my classes from Dawg and CC; thx guys :)
Dunno why people keep thinking Dawg's real handle is so hard to find and how its a great triumph to track it down. He publishes in newspapers under his real name (as is proper) and chooses to blog under a pseudonym. So what? That's anyone's right. But writing a column with a real-sounding fake name is different. Dawg does not do that. Ditto CC.
Post a Comment