An Attempt to End the Pissing Contest
Radley Balko clearly doesn’t like me. That probably won’t change. However, I don’t enjoy being in pissing contests and I’d like to end this one.
He got his facts wrong this time around, but it was impolite of me, I think, to point that out in the way I did, by saying that Glenn Reynolds made a mistake in relying on Balko for his facts. Regardless of the accuracy of my claim, I didn’t need to say it that way.
I don’t appreciate it when someone misstates my arguments, refuses to respond to my corrections, and calls me “sleazy.” I don’t appreciate people taking potshots at the way I do my job. I do a good job, in a position I’m proud of.
But I can’t control how others behave. I can control only how I behave. Someone else’s behavior doesn’t excuse bad manners, and on reflection, I think it was bad manners for me to phrase my complaint in the way I did. It doesn’t make my complaint any less valid, but it was not polite, and for the lack of courtesy, I apologize.
Did your wife make you write this?
[Nobody made me write this. You’re on the verge of getting banned for being an ass. — P]
Tefnut (dfa9f2) — 11/26/2006 @ 2:30 pmWell, if you need cheering up, this materilist (philosophically) has just the trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JSR_6qfXTg
Horace (cbe5f9) — 11/26/2006 @ 2:53 pmSome might not consider it worksafe.
Horace (cbe5f9) — 11/26/2006 @ 2:55 pmVery classy, Patterico.
We may have disagreements now and then, but I have always appreciated how you go out of your way to keep the tone at a high level.
(BTW, I thought Tefnut’s comment was funny until I saw who wrote it. I guess it depends on how you take it…)
Doc Rampage (4a07eb) — 11/26/2006 @ 5:21 pmI’m impressed with your blogging manners, Patterico, and it pains me to read your website and know that Texas lost a good man when you moved away.
DRJ (8b9d41) — 11/26/2006 @ 5:32 pmI didn’t start this.
But I’m fine with ending it.
But it’s odd that this comes right after a post in which you again make unfounded attacks on my credibility. It’s almost likely you had to get in one last shot before calling for a ceasefire.
So I’ll agree to end the pettiness. But only after making a few clarifications:
As for your latest attack on my credibility, it’s very clear from the context that my intent was to point out that police didn’t announce exactly what drugs they found, or in what quantity. I made quite clear in other posts that police did announce that they’d found “suspected narcotics.” I never tried to hide that fact. My point was that generally, police are quick to announce after a botched raid what drugs they found and in what quantities to prove that the raid was legit.
It’s now been several days. We still don’t know what drugs were found, where they were found, or in what quantity. I found the lack of specificity telling the day after the raid, and my suspicion continues to grow the longer it takes them to tell us what they found. The flow of information in these cases always seems to be much, much slower when police are under suspicion. When police make a successful drug bust, every gritty detail is usually ready for public consumption by the airing of the evening news. When a raid ends badly, the flow of information slows to a trickle. I find that troubling.
You’re free quibble with whether or not I ought to find this lack of information suspicious. I’m checking it against the history of raids I’ve researched. I’m sure you have your own personal professional history to check it against.
This would be a legitimate thing for us to debate.
But it’s dishonest to characterize that post as deliberately misleading or “wrong on the facts” — that is, to suggest that I’m being willfully dishonest.
Several commenters to your post — who are apparently more familiar with my work on these raids than you are — made these points.
I’d also recommend you read my paper before posting in the future on how “rash” or “emotional” I am about this issue. I’ve spent eighteen months researching this issue full-time, including conversations with police, prosecutors, judges, police chiefs, civilian review board members, and academic criminologists. You’ll find the people I talked to cited in the footnotes. Three former police chiefs have endorsed it. It was even recommended as a valuable contribution to the debate in a review in the newsletter of the California Association of Tactical Officers. They didn’t agree with all of it, of course. But they did note that it was well-researched, and managed to express the disagreements they did have without attacking me personally.
Reading it will make you more familiar with my position, and less likely to mischaracterize me in the future.
As I say, I’m fine to end all of this. But I didn’t start it. Also, for the record, I’ve never said you yourself were “sleazy,” as you suggested in the course of carrying this debate over to the comments section of the Volokh site (moving the fight to the comments section of a new, widely-read, highly-trafficked blog is a weird way of “ending the pissing contest,” isn’t it?) What I wrote is that your ad hominem attacks on my credibility were “sleazy.”
I did call you “lame.” But that was after you attempted to psycho-analyze me, and dismiss my edited, published, cited-by-the-Supreme-Court work on this issue as nothing more than an overly-emotional reaction to a bad experience I once had with one police officer. I’m pretty sure you aren’t a psychiatrist. I’m certain I’ve never met you. So that post was a pretty ridiculous attempt to discredit my position with yet another ad hominem attack, this time on my motivation.
So with an eye toward ending this “pissing match,” I apologize for calling you “lame.” But not for calling that particular post “lame.” Because it was.
Radley Balko (0334b1) — 11/26/2006 @ 5:51 pmPatterico, very classy to take the high road. You are IMO at or near the top of the list of political bloggers in terms of respect and decency.
aunursa (a9674e) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:14 pmWell at least Balko posted under his own name. I’ll give him credit for that.
Jane (5a66ce) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:17 pmWell at least Balko posted under his own name. I’ll give him credit for that.
Me too.
Btw, my real name is also known by everyone who reads my site regularly.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:20 pmI have never seen such piss ant nitpicking. Even worse, it comes from a blogger who provides an excellent forum for important discussion.
RJN (e12f22) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:24 pmTefnut has been banned. He was trying to get banned. In a recent comment, he said, “I know I said I was leaving, but if you guys are going to stop pissing at each other, I feel like being a surrogate pisser until I get banned.” He also said many other things, including calling me a “complete moron.”
He won’t be appearing here again.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:38 pmGood job, Patterico.
On another topic, David Ehrenstein complained about being banned from your site. He won’t say exactly what caused that, so I’m asking you. Was it his language or his giant penis links that we over at Cathy’s World know so well?
Sorry I missed your lunch on Friday! I had the day off.
Bradley J. Fikes (19f52f) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:40 pmInterestingly, his IP comes from a domain typically associated with comment spam.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:40 pmIn a spirit similar to Balko’s comment, I will bury the hatchet after clearing up numerous misstatements in his comment:
As for your latest attack on my credibility, it’s very clear from the context that my intent was to point out that police didn’t announce exactly what drugs they found, or in what quantity.
It’s very clear that you 1) quoted a relative saying there were no drugs, 2) claimed police wouldn’t say what they found inside, and 3) claimed police had yet to announce any seized contraband — all while failing to mention that the police had claimed to find suspected narcotics.
I firmly stand by my opinion that this is wrong on the facts. Many, many people reading your post were misled into thinking the police had found nothing. The police did say what they found: suspected narcotics. They did announce seized contraband.
I don’t believe I have ever said that this was “deliberately misleading” on your part; that’s simply more careless wording on your part — further mischaracterization of my position, as you have done so often recently. What I said was that you got the facts wrong. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you were dishonest.
Reading it will make you more familiar with my position, and less likely to mischaracterize me in the future.
I have not mischaracterized a single thing you said; by contrast, as I demonstrated in a previous post, you mischaracterized several of my arguments.
moving the fight to the comments section of a new, widely-read, highly-trafficked blog is a weird way of “ending the pissing contest,” isn’t it?
I found it odd that you mischaracterized my position in several ways, I called you on it and you replied with “whatever” — and when Kerr did the same thing to you, misunderstanding your points, he apologized. Very different treatment.
But after I left a comment noting the irony, one of the commenters there noted that I’d been rude. On reflection, I decided he was right. So I did a post to apologize. You can probably check this all through timestamps.
So you have the order wrong: I didn’t decide to apologize and then move the fight to Volokh. Quite the reverse. But my apology is not a concession that I have mischaracterized you; I have not — nor is it a concession that you behaved properly; I don’t believe you did.
So with an eye toward ending this “pissing match,” I apologize for calling you “lame.” But not for calling that particular post “lame.” Because it was.
Your comment is not made with an eye toward ending the pissing match, but rather a new list of grievances. Since it is filled with misstatements — I assume not deliberate ones, but misstatements nonetheless — I feel the need to correct them.
I note that you never did correct or apologize for your entirely made-up claim that I want the police, and the police only, to investigate these claims. When I pointed out that I never said that, I got “whatever” in response.
You could learn something from Kerr.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:55 pmInterestingly, his IP comes from a domain typically associated with comment spam.
That comment referred to Tefnut, not Ehrenstein.
Fikes’s comment came in unexpectedly in between my comments.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 6:58 pmRadley, let me be as charitable as possible.
Perhaps your statement was ambiguous, and so poorly worded that a reasonable reader would conclude that you were saying the police hadn’t claimed to find potential drugs inside. So, even if you intended to highlight your suspicions regarding the amount and nature of drugs, many people reading your post (not just me) concluded that you were saying the police had found nothing.
In any event, you were right about the amount and nature being insufficient to justify the raid, as I acknowledge in my latest post.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/26/2006 @ 7:22 pmBtw, my real name is also known by everyone who reads my site regularly.
Sorry Patterico, I wasn’t referring to you but rather recalling a few sock puppets that have made the rounds here.
I do read your site regularly and think it is fabulous. I just don’t post that often.
Jane (5a66ce) — 11/27/2006 @ 4:30 amPerhaps not “that way,” but the point needed to be made somehow that relying too heavily on any other blogger for facts is probably not a great idea, and that relying on one with a track record as spotty as Balko’s is a horrible one. It’s not about hurting anyone’s feelings, it’s about improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the Blogosphere wherever possible. If you can find a kinder, gentler, less offensive way of saying “this guy is frequently full of crap, so read him to your heart’s content for entertainment, but take his factual assertions with a 20-lb. grain of salt,” then by all means, do.
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 11/27/2006 @ 5:39 amSomeone named NC tried to post these comments. He e-mailed them to me. I can’t find them in the spam filter so I’ll just post them here.
Here’s NC’s comments:
Patterico (de0616) — 11/27/2006 @ 11:39 pm