Patterico's Pontifications

7/24/2006

Because You Can Never Read Too Much About Sock-Puppetry

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:04 pm



Sock-puppetry is everywhere! Just check out this detailed Seixon post on Jason Leopold and friends. Here’s part of the summary:

This entire story demonstrates that contrary to Leopold’s PR push with his book to promote himself as a reformed journalist, he will go to obscene lengths to defend his fraudulent stories including using sock puppets to levy false accusations and then lie about it. Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story fares only slightly better, being caught lying to either cover up her own fraudulent claims or to protect Leopold. John Dean was their willing pawn, believing every word they said and repeating it to me even when the evidence mounted proving everything wrong. Even after I made it quite clear to Dean that Leopold wouldn’t even admit to knowing who he was, he continued to defend Leopold and concocted vast conspiracy theories to explain everything that had happened.

These people sought to silence a critic by creating false rumors and concocting a fabulist story about him being a DOD hack going after them. They lied and evaded at every opportunity when faced with the facts of their unethical behavior. When caught in lies, they threatened legal action and stone-walled. The fact that the editor of Raw Story engages in such behavior with such people should make anyone question that source’s journalism. If there was still anyone who didn’t know that Jason Leopold is a pathological liar who cannot be trusted for one second about anything he writes, consider this a wake up call.

. . . .

Al Gore, I think I found your digital Brown Shirts, and they’re all firmly planted in the Joe Wilson Truth Movement.

Oh — and did I mention? Seixon’s personal details were divulged at Think Progress, and his parents got a call about him at their home.

Yes, Mr. Greenwald: I condemn this. Do you?

UPDATE: Check out Seixon’s latest post, which shows Jason Leopold posting e-mails from Seixon on the Internet — complete with fabricated portions in which Seixon supposedly threatens Leopold.

I think I’d sue if I were Seixon. Get a computer expert and take Leopold and Truthout for all they’re worth.

[snicker]

Sorry, couldn’t finish that sentence without laughing!

P.S. Some of the stuff Seixon actually did send Leopold was probably not very wise. Read it and you’ll see what I mean.

Heh: A Good Blog War

Filed under: Humor — Patterico @ 7:21 am



There have been some good blog wars lately, but nothing quite like this. (Via See Dubya.)

UPDATE: Is anyone clicking on the link? It’s a joke. A pretty funny video. See the category? Sheesh.

Another Brief Greenwald Note

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:08 am



I haven’t had a chance to post about the Glenn Greenwald thing — in part, because I haven’t had time, and in part, because Ace has been all over it.

But I’m not done with the issue. And I want to contradict something that Paul from Wizbang said:

If you need more evidence the party is over, Patterico who was all exclamation points yesterday, is now pointing to Ace and saying, “It’s was all his idea.” Being a prosecutor, he knows a weak case when he sees it.

Paul closed comments before I even saw his post, so I couldn’t leave a comment telling him he was wrong — but he was.

First, the exclamation points in my post title were ironic, as they almost always are when I use them. I’m not really a “serious exclamation points” guy. The title of my post was: “Devoted Fans of Glenn Greenwald Emphasize the Same Points About His Resume — From the Same IP Address!!”

But, see, Paul, I didn’t really think it was a bunch of devoted fans of Greenwald’s. I thought it was one guy — most likely Greenwald. So the exclamation points were intended to convey: look at this amazing coincidence!! when I didn’t really think it was a coincidence at all.

I hate explaining things like that. But I guess sometimes you have to.

Second, I said it was Ace’s scoop, not to distance myself, but for a wild and wacky reason: because it’s true. Paul is referring to this quote of mine:

Anyone looking for updates on the Greenwald kerfuffle should probably go to Ace’s. Keep in mind that this was his [Ace’s] discovery (actually his commenter Shawn’s), not mine — I just provided him with some IP evidence.

Guess what, Paul? It was Ace’s discovery. It was a collaborative effort to uncover the IP deception, but Ace was the one who spearheaded it.

Here’s how it came about. Late Wednesday night, I was headed to bed when an e-mail came in from Ace, asking me to check my comment logs to see if anyone had left a comment from a particular IP address. One of Ace’s commenters had seen numerous comments on various blogs that that sounded an awful lot like Glenn Greenwald — but which had been signed under various other names. One of those comments was at Ace’s, and the other two were at Goldstein’s and Riehl’s blogs. Ace’s commenter suspected the commenter of being Glenn Greenwald, and Ace asked us to check our logs for a particular IP.

I went to the “Manage Comments” box on Word Press and popped the IP address in. A bunch of comments popped up.

They were all from Glenn Greenwald.

Ace and I discussed it on the chat box for a while, and then I suggested that we should speak on the phone. We struggled through getting some screenshots, and I e-mailed mine to him. Ace made it clear that he was going to publish a post on it right away. In fact, he was saying it all out loud as he was typing it, which was very entertaining, and allowed me to “hear” what an Ace post sounds like when read in Ace’s voice.

So we both posted about it at the same time. I think we were circumspect in the way we expressed it in our posts, though we privately believed and still believe he’s good for it (and that has come out in some overenthusiastic comments I’ve made). Since then, Greenwald has denied sock-puppetry, and I’ve worked on tying some of the evidence together. So has Ace. You’ll be seeing more from both of us in the coming days.

But it’s a very complex matter, made more complex by Greenwald’s denial. It’s a highly circumstantial case, without a smoking gun. It’s not something you could prosecute in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt, based on what we have so far — and it may well never be. But I think a good circumstantial case has been built, and it’s one that is plenty good enough for the court of public opinion.

But we need to bring it all together so you can see it in one place. And constructing a post like that, in your spare time, takes work and time. It doesn’t happen overnight.

But it will happen.

For those of you who want to see the case made in a cohesive manner, that’s good news. For the rest of you, there’s the scroll wheel on your mouse, which can take you down to the next post. I’ll even warn you, as I did in this post, with that magic word: “Greenwald.” Those of you who are sick of hearing about him are welcome to use that word in the title as a sign that it’s time to head for the scroll wheel.

P.S. It was brief — compared to what’s coming.

UPDATE: Ace has a little quiz based on some similarities I pointed out to him between the language of Greenwald and his suspected sock-puppets Ellers and Ellensburg. Better, in the same post he also has a hilarious “Boys from Brazil” poster that you don’t want to miss.

Cathy Seipp Does Outside the Tent

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 12:47 am



Hey, it’s nice to see Cathy Seipp in the L.A. Times — and especially nice to see her doing one of those rare “Outside the Tent” columns.

Too bad they didn’t get someone to do one of those pieces on the paper’s disclosure of the Swift program.

Those Sleepy L.A. Times Copy Editors

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 12:42 am



An L.A. Times article opens:

STEAL a toddler’s lollipop and he’s bound to start bawling, was photographer Jill Greenberg’s thinking. So that’s just what Greenberg did to illicit tears from the 27 or so 2- and 3-year-olds featured in her latest exhibition, “End Times,” recently at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

I shudder to contemplate what else the photographer did to elicit “illicit tears” from 2- and 3-year-olds.


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0695 secs.