Greenwald Comments: Gone. All Gone.
Glenn Greenwald’s old comments appear to be, well, gone. All of ’em.
Weirdest thing, that.
Remember the post where he gave an (insinuated) defense to charges of sock-puppetry? Last time I checked, there were over 600 comments to that post.
Today, there are none.
Apparently, it happened during his installation of Haloscan for comments. He’d really like to restore all the old comments, but, you know, that apparently just isn’t going to work out. So unfortunate.
(h/t Freedom Fan.)
Oh: just one more thing, since we really should talk about Mr. Greenwald’s “substance.” In a post today, part of Mr. Greenwald’s “substance” is an approving reference and link to one “Mr. Montalban at Sadly, No.” Greenwald cites “Mr. Montalban” with approval — reverence, even — but uses the very formal designation “Mr.” to refer to the Sadly, No! blogger. Which allows him to forego using “Mr.” Montalban’s first name.
Which is probably a good idea. Since the first name of “Mr. Montalban,” you may recall, is . . . “Retardo.”
Ah, the substance!
UPDATE: Smiles, everyone! Smiles!
UDPATE x2: Greenwald defenders say: hey! all he did was change comment platforms.
I fall back on the old liberal saw: I question the timing.
UPDATE x3: In comments, Xrlq wonders what the big deal is. Well, it may not be. It’s just that Xrlq’s pal Tim Lambert and I were having a little debate over the meaning of some comments on Greenwald’s site, here, and Lambert was starting to convince me that these comments showed Greenwald’s guilt even further. (Lambert was actually trying to argue the opposite point, but he did it so unconvincingly that he ended up providing evidence for the point that he was trying to disprove.)
I was really interested in this further evidence of Greenwald’s guilt.
And then the comments disappeared.
It could be innocent, I suppose. If Greenwald has been wronged on the issue of disappearing comments, well . . . chalk it up to karma.
UPDATE x4: Oh: hi, Glenn!
How ever so convenient.
Tom the Pooklekufr (3323cf) — 7/30/2006 @ 9:57 pmClearly, you have a crush on glenn greenwald. Just admit it and get it over with.
jpe (b6f329) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:14 pmYou’re really not working hard enough at this insane stuff. If you’re going to be conspiratorial, at least throw in a reference to the Illuminati or Timecube.
jpe (b6f329) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:15 pmClearly, you have a crush on glenn greenwald. Just admit it and get it over with.
Your computer monitor must have the reflective properties of a mirror.
Patterico (50c3cd) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:16 pmGosh durn @!$$@ gottim!
A blogger changes comment platforms. I don’t know what could be more damning than that.
Please, you have some sane points, but this is just boring, and throwing mud is demeaning for someone who can actually compete intellectually.
fishbane (3389fc) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:30 pmGood DAY, sir.
I SAID GOOD DAY!
Jeff G (881746) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:40 pmA blogger changes comment platforms. I don’t know what could be more damning than that.
What is it you lefties say all the time?
I question the timing.
Patterico (50c3cd) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:42 pmMr. Montalban???
What a total. Freaking. Asshat.
BTW, here’s the first comment on that post:
These people will truly not be satisfied until everyone is dead…
MikeEss | 07.30.06 – 5:02 pm | #
MikeEss: Proud member of the “reality-based” community.
John from WuzzaDem (dfd3ae) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:43 pmSmiles, everyone. Smiles!
Patterico (50c3cd) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:45 pmSome of the comments can be found here (google cache).
Polybius (915617) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:46 pmAh, Google cache. Is there anything it *doesn’t* know?
Patterico (50c3cd) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:50 pmHey fishbane, your “compete intellectually” comment is crapola.
I just read Greenwalds latest post. Far from being “substantive,” as he likes to crow, it consists entirely of mischaracterizing his opponents’ position, and in stating that those who are pro-war are so because they are working out feelings of personal powerlessness, they were wimps as kids, they’re chickenhawks, etc., etc.; it’s the same non-intellectual or anti-intellectual drivel typical of the left blogosphere.
I did get a fleeting impulse to point out to Greenwald the reason why ad hominem is a fallacy, i.e., even if one has terrible motives for arguing X, that doesn’t mean the argument isn’t valid….But then I thought: Why bother? Greenwald surely knows what ad hominem is, and that’s the way he likes to blog.
But intellectual it ain’t.
Brian (5f2dda) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:53 pmBits, Pieces, etc….
Why do these people dislike Pat Buchanan? Oh yeah – he’s a dickhead. Almost forgot. Comments? What comments? Oh, those comments….
WuzzaDem (72c8fd) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:56 pmWhoops…fishbone, you we’re talking about Patterico competing intellectually, not Greenwald.
Well……………….never mind.
Brian (5f2dda) — 7/30/2006 @ 10:56 pmGood thing Greenwald practiced constitutional law where he didn’t have to worry about things like “chain of custody”.
“Oops. Now who last had those comments? Your honor, we need a brief recess. Technicalities, you know. Or you can just take my word for it. They exonerated my clients Wilson, Ellison, et al.”
AnonymousDrivel (9b954d) — 7/30/2006 @ 11:46 pmOoooh! Look who now has trackbacks! Heh.
Pablo (08e1e8) — 7/31/2006 @ 12:11 amWhat is it you lefties say all the time?
What lefties? I’m a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist.
Why do you “conservatives” always …. fill in your favorite goofiness.
fishbane (3389fc) — 7/31/2006 @ 12:24 amTo be fair, I just did the same thing with my blog. The comment thingy provided by blogger is unwieldly and stupid, so I switched over to haloscan, which also allows you to do trackbacks. And while you can have the two comment systems set up at the same time, it’s confusing and the comments posted to one won’t register on the other. GG probably still has all the comments from blogger, but just has them hidden.
Sean M. (db71f3) — 7/31/2006 @ 12:48 amIf Greenwald had any intetrity he would find a way to restore the comments. They are just as much a record as the original post, with corrections, clarifications, opposing points of view, etc. It is a poor excuse to say it’s due to a change in comment mechanism.
I also agree with Brian, the substance of GG’s postings is virtually nonexistent. His most recent post seems particularly vapid and seems to hit a new low even by Greenwald standards.
The left does not seem to notice. Despite the puppet bruhaha, he claims he will be guest-blogging at Salon next week. And now the comments are gone, the record is wiped clean. How inconvenient.
I made an effort via the comments section (now gone) to refute a simple, glaring error that was the foundations of one of his posts last week, but was just jeered by the residents, even though one of them conceded I was correct. Some visitors may be persuaded by arguments, but his core won’t listen to anything.
Not sure what to do, but nice to vent.
Gotta Know (f41eca) — 7/31/2006 @ 4:02 amDon’t sweat it, man. The more the Left elevates that phoney blowhard the dumber they look.
Every time I read one of his posts he’s misrepresenting someone, and not just conservatives and libertarians. He misrepresented Alan Dershowitz in one of his recent posts, where he claims “Alan Dershowitz wants to disqualify human beings as counting as “civilians” if they are even near the “terrorists.” That’s not what Dershowitz said. Greenwald took a blogger’s distortion on Dershowitz’s thoughtful essay and distorted it even further. The guy is shameless. When he smeared that New Republic journalist as the “new Stephen Glass” it was projection.
Let the Left elevate this liar and propagandist. It’ll bite ’em in the ass.
LoafingOaf (71415b) — 7/31/2006 @ 4:29 amThis one strikes me as a non-story. The vast majority of Greenwald’s comments are from sycophants who think he can do no wrong. Those comments are gone, too. If there is a story here, it’s that Greenwald is too tech non-savvy to port comments from System A to System B.
[Yeah. I was interested because your pal Lambert was making the case that certain comments at his site showed Greenwald was innocent. I looked at them and concluded that, if anything, they showed the opposite. So I found it odd that they disappeared . . . now. — P]
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 7/31/2006 @ 6:09 amHaving read a few of Greenwald’s posts recently I’ll just say that if anyone is part of a cult it is Greenwald’s defenders.
He uses a tired rhetorical trick that is anything but intellectual. He starts by taking a statement by someone he doesn’t like – Bill Kristol has been a favorite in the posts I’ve read – quoting out of context or deliberately mistating their fundamental point, then he links this to administration officials declaring it as how they ‘feel’ or what they ‘think’, then knocks it down as flawed, evil or stupid.
It isn’t even very good strawman arguing and calling it intellectual or asking people to respond to his points on an intellectual basis is asinine.
Perhaps the most fundamental point in debate or discussion is to be able to restate someone else’s opponent’s position accurately. This demonstrates that you are listening and can respond to what they are actually saying rather than what you can put in their mouth through – let’s be frank – fundamentally dishonest rhetorical posturing. If you cannot even restate your opponent’s position debate cannot continue because you are not debating your opponent but rather an artificial construct of your own.
That is Greenwald’s technique. It is tedious, dishonest and boring, and it is made all the worse for the fact that he has diarhea of the keyboard.
Now, politicians do this all the time – it is SOP for them. Take something your political opponent said, misconstrue it and cram it back in their mouth to use against them in a political context. Its crappy but effective as a method to influence people that consume soundbites rather than information.
But it is most certainly *not* intellectual or edifying.
Dwilkers (a1687a) — 7/31/2006 @ 6:28 amXrlq,
I put the explanation in the update (x3). Go say hi to Tim for me.
Patterico (50c3cd) — 7/31/2006 @ 6:44 amPatterico:
“Glenn Greenwald’s old comments appear to be, well, gone. All of ‘em.”
Not only that, but he’s missing some SOCKS!
Hmmmmm.
His laundry equipment is made by General Electric, which also is a big military contractor…oh yeah…it’s a CONSPIRACY.
BTW, in my business, it’s a VERY BAD SIGN when the company keeps moving their headquarters…it nearly always means that they are trying “lose” the internal company documentary “paper trail” in the move.
Steal the lifeboat…head for shore!
Regards;
Bilgeman (71415b) — 7/31/2006 @ 7:02 amYeah, maybe xlrq can accuse this guy of being my sock puppet again.
Tim Lambert (04d02b) — 7/31/2006 @ 8:01 amOr maybe Lambert can drone on about how everyone but him is guilty of falsely describing people as sock puppets.
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 7/31/2006 @ 8:06 amPatterico,
I am interested in your point regarding Tim Lambert and the disappearing comments, but I went to the link and simply can’t follow it. Also, I couldn’t understand how the disappearing comments tie into the story. Were there relevant comments over at Greenwald’s that disappeared?
Also, I found your Update x 4 to be very intriguing but have no idea what it was about, was that an inside “joke” to our man?
Gotta Know (f41eca) — 7/31/2006 @ 9:06 amOBSESSION. by patterico.
Shorter Rightwing Meanies (e92581) — 7/31/2006 @ 10:09 amDwilkers at comment 22 hits it right on the head. Rhetorical gamesmanship with strawman posturing is not only common to politicians, but also appears to be a favorite propaganda device of expat liberal lawyers with NYU degrees sock puppeteering from out of Brazil.
Monsoon (001e7b) — 7/31/2006 @ 10:43 amOf course, y’all remember when Confederate Yankee = the entire right side of the blogosphere in the Gospel according to GiGi.
Those of us who did the math remember something else. Glenn Greenwald is a douche.
Pablo (efa871) — 7/31/2006 @ 11:14 amI suppose you don’t know that Glenn Greenwald has risen to Internet fame in a mere 9 months, is a best-selling author whose blog is quoted on the Senate Floor and whose posts lead to frontpage articles in the New York Times!
Not Really Ellison (c3a60d) — 7/31/2006 @ 11:34 am[…] It’s all about the substance, baby. And the civility, too. […]
Cold Fury » Blog Archive » Good DAY, sir! (6f4592) — 7/31/2006 @ 12:29 pmPatterico you silly twit. So Glenn demurs in using Retardo’s first name and that makes him vile. Could it be maybe he doesn’t approve of it?
flawedplan (f1f347) — 7/31/2006 @ 12:57 pmI thought your party was so keen on individualism, but here you are, striking out at differentiation. Your problem with Glenn and Frisch and Retardo is that they are not each other. There’s your cult mentality.
On a related note, Andrew’s Sullivan’s archives before January of this year seem to have gone missing. At least the link to them doesn’t appear to work. It just goes back to the front page.
Bill B (1600b6) — 7/31/2006 @ 1:13 pmThe way we do the things we do…
One of the reasons this site switched from manual coding to Movable Type four years ago was this: The commenting system has been hiccuping lately, and while I don’t get……
dustbury.com (5a1bcd) — 7/31/2006 @ 1:41 pmThat is damned yummy foolishness. What hole did you yank that out of, flawed?
EMBRACE RETARDO!
You know you want to, and he wants you to…
Pablo (08e1e8) — 7/31/2006 @ 2:08 pmAnyone who is interested in the intersection between Tim Lambert, deleted comments, and sockpuppetry should read Update II at the bottom of this post.
Evil Pundit (13f668) — 7/31/2006 @ 2:32 pmFollowing in Jason Leopold’s footsteps. Perfect.
B Moe (2cbcfb) — 7/31/2006 @ 5:14 pmWell, if Mr Greenwald, who is apparently not all that poor, were to get a real site with WordPress™, instead of relying on a free blogspot.com site, he wouldn’t have had to install haloscan, and he wouldn’t have lost his old comments.
Dana (1d5902) — 7/31/2006 @ 5:27 pmEvil Pundit, I put that comment into moderation for a short time because it was off topic and had been posted by a sock puppet. When I had time, I restored it with an appropriate warning label.
Tim Lambert (04d02b) — 7/31/2006 @ 5:50 pmMany commenters here are forgetting that Haloscan has a forum in which advice is given for preserving Blogger comments. And Glenn Greenwald has very clearly visited Haloscan’s forums.
He could have done what Two Dogs did, or myriad other bloggers who maintained Blogger comments. But he didn’t. Why?
Because he’s a douche.
Tom the Pooklekufr (3323cf) — 7/31/2006 @ 6:56 pmThat link seems not to work right.
Here is a link to one of Glenn Greenwald’s posts on “blogging anonymity” at the forum.
You may have to log in to see it.
His question?
” Is it possible to prohibit the leaving of comments anonymously – i.e., to require that a name be used for every comment?”
Heh.
Tom the Pooklekufr (3323cf) — 7/31/2006 @ 6:59 pmAgh.
My linky-fu is not working- 13 hour shift has made mind soft.
For an example of a non-douche blog that preserved Blogger comments alongside Haloscan comments, go here
Tom the Pooklekufr (3323cf) — 7/31/2006 @ 7:09 pmUPDATE x4: Oh: hi, Glenn!
Heh.
John from WuzzaDem (dfd3ae) — 7/31/2006 @ 10:23 pm[…] Pattycake Pattycake, Pasty’s flack; Axe-handles, cock-slapping, Thers’s kid — ack! – You’re Pasty’s man; But Greenwald cites “Retardo”– ‘proof’ he’s a sham! […]
Sadly, No! » Retardo “Dice” Clay (d83a19) — 7/31/2006 @ 11:51 pmYou mean these comments?
SayUncle (df1c8d) — 8/1/2006 @ 6:51 amSay Uncle that’s great, make sure Patterico knows about them, maybe he can attach them or reference them in his post.
Gotta Know (f41eca) — 8/1/2006 @ 9:51 amThis matter is really very simple. Greenwald deleted his visitors’ comments in the aggregate because he got tired of deleting them individually. He routinely deleted mine which noted his hypocrisy and sock puppetry.
It was amusing because some of his users were foolish enough to cut-and-paste my posts into theirs in order to respond to them, so even after Greenwald deleted my comments, a record remained.
In addition, Greenwald zapped comments which served as an audit trail, showing that his omniscient sock puppets had never actually visited his own blog, which further substantiated the charge of his devious sock puppetry.
Now Greenwald has installed a comment service which can be used to ban users with whom he disagrees. Of course the irony in all this is Greenwald’s puffery that he makes his living as this super-defender of first amendment free speech protections, but then sends all his visitors’ opinions into cyber oblivion.
Similarly, the entire sock puppet scandal illustrates how Greenwald is a laughable fraud, who simultaneously promotes himself as a great fighter of fraud.
The terms “shyster” and hypocrite come to mind.
Freedom Fan (bd3038) — 8/1/2006 @ 12:49 pmWow, That was fast. google and the wayback machine and yahoo cache’s are all gone.
SayUncle (c9f2d2) — 8/1/2006 @ 2:25 pmHeerr someone forgot MSNThey’re still alive and kicking at Blogger, just not linked from the blog.
Pablo (08e1e8) — 8/1/2006 @ 2:45 pmThanx SayUncle. Here’s one of my personal favorites:
Greenwald has neither deleted the comments from these freeper idiots, nor banned them, despite the fact that what they are doing here borders on the definition of ‘spamming the comments’.
That right there tells you that Glenn has far more courage and integrity and cajones than these right-wingers, who frequently delete and ban any dissenting comments.
Freedom Fan (bd3038) — 8/1/2006 @ 5:01 pm-Michael
[…] “It’s not like the left to ‘disappear’ something as crude and tasteless as that photo without a bare minimum week of belittling their critics as hysterically over- reacting morons,” said uber-blogger Dan Dagenforth of RightWorld. “That process is well established, and must resolve itself before the offending content silently vanishes. It’s the suddenness that has everyone puzzled.” […]
Point Five » Missing Hamsher Photo May Mean Major Deal Struck (10b060) — 8/2/2006 @ 8:35 pmOddly enough, Atrios used to do that too.
I note also that the 2003-era DK archives seem to have gone down the ol’ hole:
http://www.dailykos.com/archives/002198.html
BigHeadlineNewGenerator (698f21) — 8/3/2006 @ 12:18 amI fall back on the old liberal saw: I question the timing. – Patterico
Well guess who’s using that “old liberal saw” now:
This must be a nonpartisan cover then.
Psyberian (9b3c88) — 10/8/2006 @ 9:19 am