The things we learn, hanging out here.

“I’ve written and published and been paid well for some luscious prose you wouldn’t show your grandma, and I wouldn’t show my kid.

That reminds me; there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you since forever … but, well, never mind.

One of the virtues of being old is that so little of your early life is immortalized in cyberland. I’m so glad things I wrote in college were only ever on typing paper. Not because they were stolen. Because they sucked.

The good thing is, no one ever hurt a journalist’s reputation by calling him a slimeball. But I don’t like to see this “Chilling effect” (I hate that phrase but I can’t think of another one) get institutionalized for everyone who wants to speak out. Rake politicians over the coals, not citizens.

Oh, by the way, I was in a wedding band in the ’80s, too. Talk about secrets you never want to reveal.

I don’t worry too much about these aholes out here cause this stuff is not tied to my business. Also, I’ve always been a little “in your face”, I guess cause I didn’t get the tude thing kicked out of me at a young age. I think you are stand up for defending your friend … hope he appreciates it. You had to busted during the “Rizzo” days … must have been an interesting experience. The cover you use is a good one and you should not expose ypurself to the idiots.

By the way, my reference to Ben’s Plage accusations is meant to imply that HE needs to look at it and decide for himself whether it needs to be addressed. Srew those other people, they will never worry about their karma because they are blinded by the B.S.

No matter how obnoxious some Kossacks act it still doesn’t mean it is OK to be a serial plagiarist. If Domenech has an explanation for his frequent use of unsourced quotes then he should publish it pretty soon.

Exactly right. There are two issues here.

The one that disturbs me, both personally and institutionally, is the tendency to gret every rising voice, from whatever affiliation, with a call to gang-tackle it and smear it with shit. Juan Cole has done that when the heat gets to be too much from the people who pick apart his arguments. He calls out the kossacks: writes things that say, in effect, “these people have histories, go look them up, silence them!” Then he quietly deletes them from his blog a few days later, but people who watch him save them.

I think it’s contemptuous and cowardly. But I have to think twice before I write those things about J.C., because I really don’t want him doing that to me. All it would take is for someone to connect the fairly connectable dots and suss out my true identity and figure out who to tell about this. There’s a reason I do this under a pseudonym. They might also find other juicy tidbits, like I once was picked up by the Philly cops in a house of ill fame (12th and Vine, G.N., in case you’re wondering) and that over the years I’ve written and published and been paid well for some luscious prose you wouldn’t show your grandma, and I wouldn’t show my kid. That sort of thing. No plagiarism recollected.

And, as always, I wonder if this would seem so amusing to some people, or even been noted here at all, if the person being called a “motherfucker” was a liberal Democratic commentator.

There’s yet another issue, which is whether bloggers ought to allow themselves to be absorbed into mainstream media. Wouldn’t that be like Neil Young taking a job as the back-up guitar in “The Monkees”?

That is cold-blooded.

I responded to one of his defenders attacks on the Democrats by simply replacing the word “Democrat” with “Republican” in his comment, and it seemed to be a reasonable, if partisan statement. The difference is that no one from the center can get a word in edgewise. The left and right are so consumed with bashing one another that neither sounds intelligent in a post. If anyone responds with a reasonable counterpoint they(x-right AND x-left) react as if they have been threatened with “Shock and Awe” instead of defending their positions with an open mind. Whatever happened to respect and compromise?

The art of debate seems to be degenerated to achieving “Power” at all cost. The idea that we can have a mixed view and potentially influence one another in a positive sense seems to be blasphemic to both sides.

Add to that the people who make personal attacks on individuals, and you have a total loss of all perspective as bloggers get mired in useless detail and argument over things that [don't matter] to anyone’s position. I think that they should refuse to post any of the streaming content that is glaringly personal, and post those that are reasonable, but counter opinions.

I would like to address Cal’s comments:

(Contrast that with the tone of the comments I’ve seen here and around the blogosphere about Ben, by people who surely haven’t met him is sad. It’s petty, it’s despicable, and readers here should be above the sort of crap that gets spouted in threads like Georgia10’s, where my friend is called “smarmy dickhead,� “asshole-kid-moron,� “tending-towards-the-moronic,� and perhaps worst of all, attacks on his mother.

I know Ben Domenech, and no matter how you feel about what he writes or the conservative ideals he values, he doesn’t deserve the personal attacks being spewed forth here by those who haven’t met him. Rip apart his record in the blogosphere, disagree with things he’s written and the people he works for, but enough with the name-calling and personal attacks. )

I don’t know Ben. I don’t particularly care for his “Values”, but that doesn’t matter because I have zero personal stake in defending his opinions. I do, however, think that it is disgusting to see him or anyone else, smeared for the sake of smearing. Suffice it to say that those folks would most likely take a different tone if they had to address him while looking him in the eye. If you assembled these folks in one room, you would have a ready audience of auditions for Swiftboats or MoveOn with lots to say and little substance. (That is why I believe that Blogs should vette comments …. why argue with fools when you are trying to have discourse?)

I cannot speak to the charges of plagiarism because I haven’t seen evidence that is convincing. Plagiarism is wrong, of course, but it is also a mighty weapon when someone wants to challenge a position for high ground. I think that anyone who reads and exposes themselves to universal information is in danger of “plagiarism tendencies” just because of the molding of opinion and data that occurs in the course of shifting paradigms. I am more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to novices (like myself) than to “research freaks” like Cal ; ) because they fit into the professional category. ,

So, Cal, understanding that Ben is a professional, a big boy, and willing to put himself on the front line (so to speak) my sympathies are conditionally with him on the personal side …. however, he knows he is a lightning rod and should be prepared for an a** kicking now and then.

If the [Plage] accusations have any substance at all, he should address them clearly to establish integrity, and then move on. As for the whackers that are attacking him and those he cares about he should tell them to F*** Off … once, in print (with eloquence), and then keep their comments off off of the site.

Read the whole thing, including the comments. The complaint isn’t about those attacking his ideas, as tyou did, but about those making vicious personal smears and insults.

Oh, I did read the whole thing. But when you start off with something like that in your post and say “We must back somebody 100%”, I’m probably going to lampoon it.

I’ve never been a RedState fan myself. They tend to the Sean Hannity of blogs: they exist mostly to defend whatever position the GOP is taking on something.

I think it’d be much more interesting to have someone like Totten, or Jeff Goldstein, or Glenn Reynolds, whose views are a bit more nuanced. Hell, I’d take Bill O’Reilly.

Do I think they are hate filled and envious? No, I think they’re tired and angry. They’re just protesting in the wrong way.

No matter how obnoxious some Kossacks act it still doesn’t mean it is OK to be a serial plagiarist. If Domenech has an explanation for his frequent use of unsourced quotes then he should publish it pretty soon.

Contrast that with the tone of the comments I’ve seen here and around the blogosphere about Ben, by people who surely haven’t met him is sad. It’s petty, it’s despicable, and readers here should be above the sort of crap that gets spouted in threads like Georgia10’s, where my friend is called “smarmy dickhead,” “asshole-kid-moron,” “tending-towards-the-moronic,” and perhaps worst of all, attacks on his mother.

I know Ben Domenech, and no matter how you feel about what he writes or the conservative ideals he values, he doesn’t deserve the personal attacks being spewed forth here by those who haven’t met him. Rip apart his record in the blogosphere, disagree with things he’s written and the people he works for, but enough with the name-calling and personal attacks.

Bu I guess that’s not our “centrist” position here. Gods help us if we ever get big enough to have the leftist lynch mob called in and put to work, as has happened to this man. Stand clear; I’ll warn you I have enough skeletons in my closet to buyry us all. But is that really the way it ought to happen?