When Jeff G. announced his retirement, many people wondered what obligation or opportunity had convinced him to abandon a successful blog with a devoted following. As it turns out, Jeff has apparently become a sort of self-serve bounty hunter, searching the land for people who have besmirched his honor with their anonymous comments on the internet, and making a violent citizen’s arrest before sentencing the perpetrators to his own personal penile system.
Now, I seem to remember conservative bloggers mocking the sensitivies of Arabs who claimed that Israeli Occupation forces, or Coalition troops in Iraq had “humiliated” them, but I can certainly sympathize with the urge to lash out. However, if you’re going into business as a two-fisted duellist, you might want to make sure that your methodology for indentifying and locating your detractors is pretty air-tight; otherwise, the inevitable arraignment hearing might prove even more awkard than anticipated.
Case in point. In this post we noted Jeff’s announced departure (delayed, apparently, due to an ever-growing backlog of honor killings). Jeff’s response was to appear in the comments and demand satisfaction for a hateful remark someone had left on his own site. When it became obvious I hadn’t posted the comment in question, he and his enablers began a frantic tag-team Googlequest to unmask the culprit, and were last seen combing through trash dumpsters in suburban Pennsylvania.
All well and good. But now some other pseudonym has left a comment apparently wishing cancer on Jeff, who acted quickly and deduced the guilty party by throwing a dart at Atrios’ blogroll. Today’s winner? Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog. As with me, the honor came as a complete surprise to Steve, since he hadn’t made the comment at Protein Wisdom (and had signed those few he’s made in the past). But unlike the state Lotto, with Jeff’s own Shirley Jackson-style Lottery, you don’t actually have to be “in it to win it.”
Anyway, it’s suddenly clear why Goldstein resigned from blogging (”I may be back at some later date, but for now, I just don’t have the time”) — there’s only so many hours in the day, and he’s got to devote the daylight ones to tracking down his imaginary enemies while the trail is still fresh. Fortunately, he’s got his PW Irregulars keeping him supplied with a steady stream of utterly random candidates for assault; athough, I’m sorry, but anyone who begins their recruiting drive for lynch mob members with the words, “I crave a boon,” should really be kept in a cool, dry place for their own safety.
Actually, I did make some comments, as Steve M., in response to a post by Dan Collins a few months ago. (Collins had linked a post of mine, with a sneer.) I’m not interested in Goldstein, or I wasn’t until now. I didn’t even know until this morning about his (pseudo?) retirement. I didn’t write the comment he’s got his knickers in a twist about, and he and his band of merry men seem astonished to learn that an IP address from a large company could be shared by all the office and cube slaves in that company. (Oh, and he wants *me* to prove I’m innocent by helping him stalk whatever co-worker wrote the comment he doesn’t like.)
Left by Steve M. on July 30th, 2008