Every now and then something happens that makes me realize how flawed I am as a human being, and today we had one of that those situations. For those of you who do not know, Armando has been outed. And by outed, we mean his anonymity, not his sexual practices (which are, to the best of my knowledge, still his own business).
At any rate, why does this lead me to think I am a flawed person? Because, while I think it is wrong to have had this happen (really, do the folks at NRO have nothing better to do?), and I am pissed that it happened, and that I am a signatory of the Online Integrity petition (and have and will adhere to it), my gut instincts was to blame Armando for some degree of the problem.
As a refresher, one of the tenets of the Online Integrity pact was the following:
Persons seeking anonymity or pseudonymity online should have their wishes in this regard respected as much as is reasonable. Exceptions include cases of criminal, misleading, or intentionally disruptive behavior.
So, in principle, I respect that people who choose to remain anonymous be granted that right. However, I have to admit that the first thing I said when I read that Armando was ‘outed’ (well, second- the first thing I said was “Who cares if he is gay?” before I figured out what they meant by outed was) was:
“You have to be shitting me- his real name was Armando?”
Additionally, it appears that his fingerprints are all over the web, leading an easy trail to his own identity, including this announcement that he was to be a speaker at the Bay Area Law and Technology Conference.
So where does that leave us? I can understand Armando’s desire for anonymity- he has already stated he will be no longer blogging, and while I disagree with him on virtually everything (although we agree on more things as of late), I think it is a loss for the blogosphere as a whole. At the same time, I can’t help but think that someone as high profile and as technologically proficient as Armando should have known better than to leave all the trails that he did. I know that sounds like ‘blaming the victim,’ but I can’t help but think that were my anonymity at a premium, I would have gone to greater lengths to protect it.
So those are my thoughts. What was done to him was wrong, considering his expressed desire for privacy and obvious attempts to maintain his anonymity, and in no way should anyone read this post as a defense of those who wronged him. Let’s be clear- Armando is the victim here, and I am really angry at NRO and the folks behind this.
And one thing I do know, for sure. This will happen again, and if blogging and participating in online forums in anonymous fashion is what you want, make sure you are doing everything you can to protect yourself.
BTW- What does GBCW mean?
Tom in Texas
GBCW = Goodbye Cruel World — A farewell post
Tom in Texas
As to the post itself, I understand your point: Armando should have done more to protect his privacy. I equate it to someone who uses their birthday as a PIN number. It’s a crime to steal it, but you were stupid to have done that in the first place.
g-rant
The NRO post was a deliberate “gotcha” and very unacceptable. It was not a “whoopsie, we accidentally used your full name, place of employment, and clients. our bad”. Despicable.
Just a point before I get really pissy, but this post smells of the “she was dressed like a slut and of course she got raped” crap. I hope that wasn’t your intention.
Pb
Wow, yeah, in fact, when I search in google for Dailykos and Armando, that page is… not in the top ten, even though it contains both of those words. But maybe if you post the link a few more times, the trail to his own identity will get easier.
srv
So are you going to delete the NRO Corner link?
Perhaps you can set an example for other right bloggers to follow.
Steve
As you know, John, there are a lot of bloggers who rely on “light anonymity” as opposed to deep cover. They know they are going to meet a lot of people in real life and that a lot of people will know their personal details. They assume that although their information is out there, bloggers will rely on a general code of conduct, like that expressed at Online Integrity, not to publicize information even though it’s available.
The fact that a random troll started hounding Armando is despicable but it’s fair to say it’s a risk he willingly assumed. We can condemn it all we want but we all know there’s nothing we can do about a random internet troll.
But for another blogger like the guy at NRO to participate in the outing, that’s quite simply beyond the pale. It’s something that other bloggers should punish with through delinking and bad publicity. And for the guy to publish all of Armando’s personal information, while respecting the anonymity of his own trollish correspondent – do I really have to point out the irony?
I don’t think Armando jealously guarded his identity as such, although he tried to keep it least lightly guarded. What he didn’t expect is that people would use his personal information not just to expose his identity, but to try and interfere in his relationship with his clients and with his employer. Trying to cost someone clients or a job because you disagree with them politically is not only despicable but may well be legally actionable. And it’s beyond appalling that NRO would take part in that.
Marcus Wellby
I would expect no less from NRO. The Corner is jeuvenile at best, and with the exception of Lowry, really offers nothing to online debate. Jonah G. is quite possibly the biggest retard in all of blogdom (political leanings aside, the kid is just boring and moronic).
Pb
I agree, but what do you expect, really. He’s a young Republican hack with nothing to lose by doing it, and probably much to gain. Probably an Ann Coulter fan too, and I bet she’s kicking herself now because she hadn’t thought of doing it first.
Blue Neponset
It is one thing to figure out who a blogger is, but is quite another thing to tell as many people as possible who that blogger is. Armando bears no responsibility at all for NRO’s hit piece.
demimondian
They key issue here is not the disclosure of his identity, but the subsequent use of that identity to harm his clients. Having them disclosed–which the NRO did–is beyond the pale.
Think of it this way. I’ve verified that a sufficiently determined person could find the initials of the man who is demimondian. From those initials and the identity of my employer, one could find a number of companies which have dealt with me in my professional capacity. Would it be fair to them to pressure them to do something on the basis of *my* identity and my activities outside of the professional sphere? I don’t think so.
Darrell
Where are the details of someone trying to go after his clients? Did that really happen or is it an urban myth? Any info on that would be appreciated.
Ben Hamilton
Was Armando really an attorney for Wal-Mart….I found the story but I won’t publish the link. WOW! Maybe that is the reason he didn’t want people to really know who he was. I can see a lot of lefties pissed about that. I mean both, Wal-mart and being “outed”. Ouch.
McNulty
I don’t totally agree with that but even if that’s the case, then the people that are taking Armando’s side aren’t doing him any favors saying “he was outed by NRO but i won’t link to it”.
Steve
Dude, it’s RIGHT THERE in the original NRO post. Some troll researched the fact that he once represented Wal-Mart and NRO publicized it to the whole world. Now Armando has to worry about who might go to Wal-Mart and try to interfere with his relationship with them based on his blogging activities, and what kind of trouble he might get into with his bosses if the firm’s relationship with Wal-Mart were imperiled. That’s not the kind of shit you lightly publicize, and I really don’t want to hear the argument that as long as the info is on page 20 of some random Google search that it’s fair game for NRO to publicize it.
Blue Neponset
Why?
The Other Steve
GBCW – Goodbye Cruel World… It’s a reference to the Pink Floyd song on The Wall.
The National Review has become a disgrace. I can’t believe I used to read it back in the 1980s.
Perry Como
If you check the Media Blog post at NRO (I won’t link to the scumfuckers either):
They called out one of his clients. No urban myth there.
Steve
It’s really not a big deal in that sense, although the troll who was shopping the information around probably thought so. I make no bones about the fact that I represent corporate clients, just like many of the other lawyers at dkos. It’s not an issue, cause guess what, we all work for some company or another.
The idea that Armando was secretly trying to advance some pro-corporate agenda would be more of an issue if it were true, but it’s not even close to true. When we’ve had discussions about First Amendment issues, for example, Armando has made it quite clear that he represents media clients and has a bias. The identity of the specific clients, mind you, remains a secret because it’s not supposed to be fair game for people to fuck with.
slickdpdx
The justification offered by Spruiell is not persuasive. A rotten thing to do. I think that there should be a link to the justification, weak as it is, but I will leave that to Mr. Cole if he desires to do so.
It should be noted that the incident did not occur at “The Corner” since a lot of folks are assuming it did and that assumption is incorrect.
g-rant
NRO is trying to backpedal. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:
Note this from the original post, from the anonymous tipster “W.J.M.L”:
Assholes.
Patrick Lightbody
g-rant,
I thought there was actually an exception in most states that if the woman is wearing provocative clothes that she was, under the eyes of the law, “asking for it”?
Anyway, I don’t buy the pseudo anonymity. If his blogging activities are in the same paragraph as his work activities, you have to assume that you’ll be trounced on by some asshole, as was the case here. I don’t “blame the victim”, but I certainly can fault the victim to a degree for not having some common sense to protect himself better.
Still, pretty screwed up to jeopardize his work, family, and lively-hood like that. No matter how much you disagree with a person, that is never acceptable. I agree – a de-linking and a boycott are in order.
McNulty
That’s the part of this whole deal i’m trying to figure out. Is this a bad thing because he kina, sorta, wanted to remain anonymous and was outed, or is it that someone who didn’t like his politics decided to try and fuck with his livelihood?
Ancient Purple
Reading the follow up justification from the NRO media blog just makes me sick.
The poster is actually saying that he was just a champion of the “cause” and was trying to prevent any conflicts of interest, and isn’t he (the poster) just the best for saving Armando’s clients embarassment.
Good grief.
Justin Slotman
Awwww–and you know NRO wanted to devote the day to talking about Zarqawi too. Poor “ignorant of what’s important to the Internet” schmucks.
I guess this would require any OI signatory to delete the Mediablog, but not The Corner. Right?
tBone
Door #2, McNulty.
Steve
The NRO guy’s claim that he was just calling attention to a conflict of interest is unbelievably lame. Some anonymous emailer writes in with a claim that Armando pushes a pro-corporate agenda at dkos (supported by a single link that shows nothing like a pro-corporate agenda) and you just reprint that, verbatim, cause as a journalist you know that whatever an anonymous emailer says is worthy of republication? Wow, maybe the liberal critique of the media as stenographers has a basis.
demimondian
Darrell asks for a link to the NRO outing of Armando’s clients. I hate to link to them, because this really is sleazy (and, yes, John, in my opinion, you should delink NRO for this), but it is a reasonable request — and, besides, it keeps them from denying that they ever engaged in the harrassment, so here’s the link. It really does talk about WalMart as an ex-client.
demi “holding my nose with all ten fingers” mondian
BumperStickerist
Tit for Tat –
‘John Cole’ is actually Sig Thalmeyer, the wi-fi enabled King of the Combine from just outside Marshalltown, Iowa.
He blogs from the cab while tending the crops. The West Virginia thing is just a ruse.
.
Blue Neponset
I think John has already delinked NRO.
von
As you know, John, there are a lot of bloggers who rely on “light anonymity” as opposed to deep cover.
That’s correct, and I certainly put myself in that category. There are plenty of folks in the blogosphere who could easily “out” my identity. It’s also likely that a determined stalker could track me down by my online fingerprints, although I suspect that I’m a bit tougher to track than Armando. I’m far less well known, at least.
But there’s another issue here. I, like Armando, am an attorney representing large and largish corporations. Unlike Armando, I am not beholden to the Democratic party, and therefore feel no need to apologize for representing large corporations. I’m also fortunate in that my personal biases generally accord with those of my clients.
But there is still a bit of a trap for me, in that I (and Armando) need to be careful that we don’t advocate a position directly contrary to one taken by our clients. For this reason, there are some subjects I simply don’t discuss — even though, truth be told, I’m probably as qualified as anyone in the blogosphere to discuss them. (Admittedly a low standard, but there you go.) Hilzoy (a co-blogger at ObWi) has a particular interest in the ethics of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. You won’t see a von post at ObWi on pharmaceutical companies, however. Indeed, the most you’ll see is a note from me that I think that Big Pharma does a huge amount of good. (Again, I’m fortunate that this is a position that I actually believe in and which cannot be contrary to the position taken by the relevant clients.)
On the other hand, were I generally outed, I would have difficulty posting anything in the future — for fear that clients would take some level of offense at it, even though it has nothing to do with their business. Maybe GC #1 hates the War in Iraq; maybe GC #2 thinks we should be waterboarding the bastards. Each could be pissed with the position that I’ve taken on such topics. It’s a risk that I would prefer to minimize, if at all possible. Light anonymity serves that interest well — as it also did, I suspect, for Armando.
BumperStickerist
Not to go all ‘Plame’ here, but as John pointed out Armando’s fieldcraft left much to be desired.
I’d point out that The Left seemed to not mind so much the whole ‘Who’s Augustine?’/Domenech search – though, obviously, they were pure of heart and motive.
And, further obviously, since Domenech turned out to have lifted a bunch of material and plagiarized it, that justifies the initial Outing of Augustine.
Which is to say, per the Rules of the Left, Armando’s entire record of everything he’s ever written is now up for review and should anybody anywhere find anything that is misattributed by Armando then Spruiell will be a Hero of Aravossian Stature.
Or something – the Rules of the Left are highly malleable
.
demimondian
Blue Neponset — You’re right: John has already delinked NRO.
Sorry, John.
Steve
I’ve represented Big Oil, in much the same capacity as Armando once represented Wal-Mart, ironically enough. I talk about it all the time at dkos and you know what, not one liberal has ever said a bad word to me about the fact that I represented Big Oil. Notwithstanding the stereotype that they’re all a bunch of Naderites over there who want to make it illegal to be a corporation, it’s not considered something I need to “apologize” for.
Uh, if Domenech had written his WaPo blog under the pseudonym “Augustine,” you might have a really, really excellent point.
Ancient Purple
Perhaps you would explain how substantiated and admitted plagiarism is equal to the supposition that there might be a conflict of interest by an attorney vis-a-vis his client because of his personal opinions posted on a blog.
McNulty
Tbone,
The reason i asked the question is because I think it’s pathetic that there are people out there who are so vindictive and so obsessed with some random guy on a blog that they’d go to all this trouble to try and fuck with them. I mean, i disagree with a ton of people here about all sorts of stuff, but i wouldn’t want them to lose their job. Well, actually, ppGaz sleeping on a park bench with a bottle of Thunderbird in a brown paper bag would make me smile, but nobody else. (just kidding)
But, it just seems like Armando made it so unbelievably easy to find all this out that i’m having a little trouble getting worked up at his loss of anonymity.
tBone
Agreed. And I think it’s even more pathetic that a major blog would legitimize and promote that kind of behavior.
I don’t necessarily think he made it “unbelievably easy,” but I’ll agree that if he was really concerned about total anonymity he should have covered his tracks better.
DecidedFenceSitter
McNulty,
Define easy, barring the wikipedia article, which was put there by a specific person who appears to have an agenda to have it there, how many links, only knowing that Armando writes for dKos do you have to go.
Using “Armando dKos” I can find other people outing him, but I have to find one place where he outs himself, and that is four pages in for the first instance not related to this.
Using “Armando Lawyer” I can’t find anything linking him in the first five pages.
So, tell me, define unbelievably easy.
Pb
DecidedFenceSitter,
Yeah, that was my conclusion as well. All the people saying “Look! Someone handed me this link! It’s easy!” obviously know nothing about trying to search for something. Yeah, it’s really easy… *once you already have the link*!
DecidedFenceSitter
Oh and combining “Armando, Lawyer, dkos” gives you nothing either except from the person who was probably the originator.
DecidedFenceSitter
Last one,
Oh and if you take the information available from the conference, barring his last name, so – “Armando, Dailykos.com, Lawyer” the conference is hit 15. And I find no other instances of his first name and his last name being linked together.
So is this what it takes, one slip of putting these items together, and you forfeit all rights? And remember, that last search was engineered to get a result, but I still consider it reasonable to search for it.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Looking at the bigger picture…
This is, IMO, an excellent example why the MSM does not – and should not – take the blogs (too) seriously as a threat.
Not too long ago, it was the hair-trigger bashing of the kidnapped freelance journalist in Iraq forced to record anti-American statements before her release. Now, it’s carrying out penny-ante vendettas against perceived enemies.
Both actions were done under the guise of “journalism,” but no truly professional journalist would either write before the facts are in, or write to settle personal scores.
kc
Outing someone who is trying to maintain his privacy is wrong, unless of course the out-or is Jeff Goldstein.
McNulty
OK, “unbelievably easy” was a bad choice of words.
I’ll go back to what i said in the other thread when someone brought it up. I said it would take someone with way too much time on their hands (and everyone is saying this guy was a troll at Kos so most trolls do have too much time on their hands).
BUT, he used his real first name (which isn’t exactly as common as John or Michael), and as i said, i think most people admitted to bar in a given state is public record and accessible online, and if he’d ever said where he went to law school etc, etc, someone could find this stuff out.
I’m not saying the guy deserved it. I’m saying i have more scorn for the dude who went to all the trouble than i have sympathy for Armando. I doubt he really cares.
John S.
I’m sure when McNulty watches The Accused, he has a hard time getting worked up over Jodi Foster getting raped because, you know, she made it unbelievably easy for a bunch of guys to want to rape her in the first place.
All hail the ‘she was asking for it’ mentality!
Gold Star for Robot Boy
(Ooops – hit submit before I was done.)
It seems many bloggers want the access, rights and respect afforded journalists of the MSM. But when it comes time to exercise the restraint and caution seen in the MSM, those bloggers balk.
Can’t have it both ways.
McNulty
I wouldn’t expect anything other than idiocy from John S, but speaking as someone that spent his first six years after college with the Philly PD and has seen real rape victims, mentioning rape and a blogger losing his anonymity in the same sentence is monumentally stupid even for you.
Tim in SF
The disclosure doesn’t further the debate. It’s personally damaging to Armando. Lacking any substantive argument, NRO goes after his off-line, real-world identity in an effort to embarrass him. The item (it’s not a story, it’s an “item” — that’s what you call little one-paragraph bits on the gossip pages) is an attempt to leverage that real-world identity against his posts to declare some sort of hypocrisy (as in, “how can he be a lefty and be involved with Wal-Mart?)
Yes, it’s gross, sloppy, intellectually lazy, and downright crummy. Armando is not a plagiarizer, he’s not a criminal, he’s not a bribe-taker, he’s a blogger like you or me. Not everyone has the freedom to speak in a public forum with impunity. He works in an area of the professional world which requires a certain level of discretion, namely, keeping his identity under the radar.
It can be argued that he didn’t do enough to protect his identity, but I don’t find those arguments at all convincing. I post under my real name, but I wouldn’t want someone posting my phone number or real address or employer information on a public site in retaliation for having an unpopular opinion. And if some nutjob took it upon himself to “take me out” by posting oppo-research on me, well, I’d have to say that the blogosphere would, on that day, lose a lot of its appeal and I’d likely move on to some other hobby. And that would be sad.
Pooh
For natural police like McNulty, it was unbelievably easy and then he says “What the Fuck did I do?”
John S.
Likewise.
And thinking that my ALLEGORY was meant to be taken literally is monumentally stupid even for you. I was speaking to your mindset, which I thought I clarified, but somehow that escaped you.
No matter, other commenters can judge your insipid drivel for itself without any further commentary from me.
Pooh
Sadly, I fear that as the blogosphere increases in influence, this type of thing will become more common. The people who seem to be the leading lights tend to be professionals where a loss of at least the sheen of anonymity could be hurtful (and, at the very least there’s the real possibility of Doocing just about anybody for blogging, period.)
Krista
My thoughts are that even if someone’s identity is discovered, or known, the ethical thing to do is just leave it at that. Many of us have had words with John Cole at one point or another, but it’s understood that it would be an incredibly scummy thing for any of us to try to get him into trouble with his employer.
John S.
Tell that to Jeff Goldstein. Apparently, he thinks it is honorable – not scummy.
Steve
I’m kind of surprised that Protein Wisdom is still linked. Maybe no one bothered to tell John. The post in question is still up, though.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
What’s the backstory on this incident?
Krista
Steve – that was already discussed, and John thinks that Jeff was justified due to having allegedly being harrassed by this fellow. I don’t agree, but it’s more of a he-said-he-said situation, whereas this one is much more cut-and-dry.
That doesn’t mean that Jeff’s site isn’t still a cesspool, IMHO.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
That’s an interesting topic: cesspool sites we avoid.
John Cole
A more dishonest representation of the Goldstein/thersites imbroglio would be difficult to create, but if I give John S. the time, I am sure he could do it.
I know you don’t like (hate, is more accurate) Jeff, but let’s try to be honest with what happened there.
BTW- All thersites was doing was spreading dishonest and malicious attacks about jeff- IOW, specifically the sort of shit that is not covered by Online Integrity.
Thersites can pound salt.
Steve
I understand there’s two sides to every story, but any defense of Goldstein’s conduct in that incident is just disgusting. The guy went so far as to suggest that Thersites anonymously posted sexual innuendos about HIS OWN KID, just to be able to pin it on someone from Jeff’s site. That’s fucking insane.
The “dishonest and malicious attacks” consisted of a claim by Thersites that the sexual reference was posted by Jeff or someone from his site. Well, it was an anonymous comment, so I guess no one knows for sure, but considering it came in the middle of a blogfight between Thersites and a bunch of PW people it was hardly out of line to blame it on the latter group. Certainly, it’s ridiculous to say “if you don’t produce the IP address in X amount of time, I’m going to assume it was YOU who posted the anonymous comment about sexually molesting your own child.”
But yeah, he-said she-said. It was an ugly argument, but Goldstein dropped the nuke so I guess he wins. I thought one of the premises of Online Integrity is that outing an anonymous person is a scummy way to win an argument.
One of the reasons I said Online Integrity was meaningless and doomed to failure is that it would be immediately disregarded the moment an incident like this took place. Oh, there’s an argument that the other guy was spreading “dishonest attacks”? Well, he’s fair game then!
Steve
To be clear – I don’t want to relitigate something you guys have already beaten to death. I’m just a little stunned.
John Cole
He refused to give Jeff the IP, period, and you are misrepresenting how the comment was made, to begin with. Someone just didn’t out of the blue, it was in response to a comment that Thersites himself made.
Additionally, all that site did was serve as the centerpiece of personal attacks against Jeff. BTW, if you would like to know what happened, you can read about it here, including NTODD’s BS about what did and did not happen, which it appears many of you are repeateing gleefully. This is pretty informative, as well- which probably means you won;t read it:
But again- you don’t care. You hate Jeff, so you swallow whatever bullshit that liar Thersites and his cohort of charlatans can spew.
Krista
Honestly, Steve – I know so little about the incident that I was reluctant to make a judgement either way. However, I do know that some of Jeff’s commenters are…well…scary. I enjoy ribald humour, but some of them just appear to be very nasty and misogynistic and hateful. Because of that, it really would not surprise me if one of them made that disgusting comment about Thersites’ daughter. And I am in agreement that outing someone is a very scummy way to win an argument. I will not say that Thersites was without fault, as arguments online can get horrendously ugly. But…sorry, John. I still think that Jeff hit below the belt on this one.
Steve
Well, actually, I’ve gotten pretty much all my information about this off Jeff’s site, as opposed to Thersites’ nonexistent one, it’s just that I don’t happen to buy into absolute crap arguments like “it was actually Haggerty who started things by bringing his own daughter into a blogfight!” Who gives a fuck? Oh, gee, how terrible “dishonest” of Thersites to repost the offensive comment without mentioning that he brought his daughter up first. How the fuck does that make any difference?
How does any of this justify Jeff and his people suggesting that Thersites himself made the sexual comment about his own daughter as some kind of Rovian trick? And at the end of the day, how was outing Thersites and his wife anything other than a nuclear bomb dropped to win a blogfight, the exact thing we want to see less of?
Pooh
John, I don’t think anybody is saying the Thers is anything other than a jackass, but then I don’t think anybody is saying that Malkin is likewise a jackass. Publishing her personal address was wrong and publishing Thers real identity was as well, and frankly I think it reflects poorly on you to not only defend JG (which given that Thers is an arse, is understandable) but to further spread the information.
The whole point of integrity is that for it to exist you have to stick to it even when it’s hard – by signing on to OI, JG vowed not to do what he did – even in the face of provocation. As Krista mentioned it’s not dissimilar to some of us getting together and wrting nasty messages about you to the Admin at WVU.
Look, there is no hero in the story, and I’m not for one second defending the indefensible, my only point is that Goldstein specifically agreed not to do what he did.
Krista
Mm…I can agree that he shouldn’t have brought his daughter into the argument in the first place, but IMHO, that does not mean that the commenter went beyond the pale.
This exchange occurred on Jeff’s site, correct? I like to think, John, that if two commenters here got into it (not that THAT ever happens), and both were being equally obnoxious, and one made a comment like that, that you would immediately express your disgust and ban that commenter. If the offended party then chose to express their upset far and wide across the blogosphere, at least people would be able to say, “Well, John told off the guy who said it and then IP banned him, so at least HE was decent about it.”
And if I’ve completely misinterpreted/misread the situation, then I apologize. But this is what I’ve gathered from what I’ve read of it thus far.
elendil
So you say one thing, and then say the opposite in bold in the next paragraph? So deft.
John S.
I know you and Jeff are BFF, John, so whatever floats your boat.
Pooh
Didn’t it basically happen exactly this way earlier today?
Steve
Part of the storyline, as you see from Jeff’s thread, is that someone posted the personal info on Jeff’s site, which Jeff proceeded to delete as he should, only he didn’t do it for several hours because he wasn’t at the computer to see it. In the meantime, and continuing even after the info was deleted, Thers’ commentors came to Jeff’s site and didn’t let up.
So Jeff, having already recognized that it was wrong to out Thers by deleting the offending information, proceeds to fly off the handle and re-out Thers as a way of expressing anger and frustration with Thers’ COMMENTORS. That’s just fucked up, and really, if he said it was a weak moment I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, but instead he and his blogbuddies have all stood by it. Thers didn’t do anything at all between the time Jeff deleted the original outing comments and the time Jeff re-outed him in anger, so it’s really, really hard to come up with any defense other than heat of the moment, which has long since passed.
John S.
Which was my point exactly. But of course, I’m misrepresenting poor little Jeff Goldstein.
John Cole
No. Krista, and that is just it. the comment started by Thersites and some OTHER jackass having an argument on THERSITE’S wesbite. Thersites brought his kid into it, the other jackass responded with a response that EVERYONE agrees is over the top.
Thersites then went on to try to pin it all on jeff and his commenters. Jeff asked repeatedly for the ip address so he could look through his own logs and find out if it was someone from his site. Thersites and his band of hacks chose to not give the ip out or EVEN investigate it with the IP provider, choosing to instead run with the issue, generate more traffic, and further smear Jeff- who was merely a bystander.
A.) If standing by a friend when you think he is being unfairly attacked reflects poorly on me, then so be it. Theristes did nothing but smear Jeff, lie about him, and egg on FireDogLake and atrios to do the same. His acolytes continue, to this day, to do the same thing.
B.) I will pay attention to everyone’s advice as to what Jeff should and should not have done after each and everyone of you is the target of months (well, years, actually) of coordinated personal attacks. Do I prefer that Jeff had never mentioned that scumbag by name (and, btw, Jeff redacted all the information when a commenter posted it the first time- even though it was public information linked on Thersite’s and his wife’s site), well, sure.
But do I blame him for finally having enough, after months of being shit on?
Not one fucking bit. And I will continue to defend him. Those assholes did everything they could to try to ‘game’ Online Integrity. Fuck them.
John Cole
A weak moment? MOMENT?
Imagine having 100’s of people like, well, Paddy O’Shea but more malicious and with no redeeming qualities (paddy is at least funny from time to time, and not as mean-spirited mostly) nipping at your heels, calling you pasty, saying you are a degenerate, a stay at home mom, a failed academic, a loser, mentally unbalanced, on psychotropic drugs, etc. And then remember that 99.5% of those people were DIRECTED to your site in coordinated waves by Atrios, Thersites, and others.
And then, someone on your site posts someone’s personal information, and because you are not at the computer the moment it happens, they unload on you for another few hours.
Yeah. A weak ‘moment.’ Anyone who can;t understand what happened needs their head examined, as does anyone who can;t not find it in themselves to cut him some slack. You saw how I reacted when Jane Hamsher pulled the same bullshit on me (‘Why aren’t you responding? Why are you not blah blah blah blah wine piss moan’).
Why am I not responding?
BECAUSE I LEFT THE GOD DAMNED COMPUTER FOR EIGHT MINUTES YOU IGNORANT PAIN IN THE ASSES.
Nothing bad has happened to Thersites (his phone number was not posted, his home address was not posted, no one tried to get him fired, no one called his employers, etc.)- he just had to take down what was basically an anonymous hate site. Boo-fucking-hoo. He can start another one, and choose another anonymous nom de guerre. I would recommend “Total Asshole.”
Krista
Good point. And something tells me that no matter how nasty one of us got towards John, he’d still never do it.
ppGaz
Heh. Well, my email address is in plain sight, and if I reply to you, it will be with my real name. I’ve even put my phone number in plain sight and I have spoken with persons who got the number during its short window of visibility. I might be the most easily reachable and identifiable person on this blog.
However, based on some of the things I’ve seen on the ‘Nets lately, I may go a little more anonymous than I have in the past. There are a lot of truly shitty people out there.
Krista
Well, John, you seem to know more of the history of this than I do, and obviously feel very strongly about it, so I’ll leave it be.
(Some of Jeff’s commenters still creep the hell out of me though — I’ll stand by that statement.)
John S.
And let’s all remember Jeff’s exemplary behavior over the Wally Hettle / Paul Deignan dustup, where Jeff urged:
Because petitioning your readers to call someone’s boss and complain about their behavior on a blog isn’t the same as trying to get someone into trouble with their employer honorable. But there I go, misrepresenting again.
John S.
Strike the ‘honorable’ from the above.
Steve
Ok, hang on here Outrage Guy. I said I’d give him the benefit of the doubt if it was a weak moment, so it stands to reason I’d give him the benefit of the doubt if it was a weak some-longer-period-of-time.
Everything you’ve said is fair. Jeff Goldstein takes a lot of shit – and he dishes a lot of shit, too. You want to point out that the Thersites of the left are a bunch of assholes, you get no argument from me.
The point I thought we were in agreement on is that even when a bunch of people are being assholes to one another, there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed. The argument had escalated to a certain level, there was only one option available to Jeff to escalate it further, and he took it. The point of Online Integrity was supposed to be to encourage people to take a deep breath and not cross that line regarding personal information. Cause let’s face it, whether your name is Jeff Goldstein or John Aravosis or Michelle Malkin, it’s not often you out people in a calm, reflective moment!
This is another point I wish you would reconsider. I don’t actually know that no one has harassed Thersites further, although maybe you do. But as we learned from the Malkin press release episode, once you put personal information in front of a bunch of rabid blogreaders, you can’t really control what they’re going to do with it. Maybe no one called Thersites’ employer and tried to get him in trouble, or maybe they did – but they very well could have, and I think it’s dangerous to play the “no harm no foul” card.
Didn’t Atrios only post Erick’s IM handle, and someone ended up calling Erick’s office or home or whatever? Atrios didn’t post that specific information, but still, he shouldn’t have opened the door.
If your position was “Jeff shouldn’t have done what he did, but I understand why he did it, and the guy was a total ass so I shed no tears,” then I’d respect that. Only you don’t seem to be on board with the first part of that sentence. Maybe I’m misunderstanding.
Pooh
Sorry for the confusion – the standing by the friend part does not reflect poorly on you at all (I may have gone about it differently because I would like to think that I would have told Jeff that posting the information was too far) – however, I don’t see the point of reposting at length the commentary containing the personal info at issue.
And FWIW, I think this is one of your better posts – now that I try and unpack it a little, my own thoughts on the various Goldstein incidents mirror yours on the Armando outing – there’s a nagging desire to play the “he was asking for it” card.
And I agree with Krista, no matter how nasty any of us got, I can’t see you ‘exposing’ any of us out of spite.
Pooh
Just so. And I adopt the whole of Steve’s comment by reference.
Incidentally, if Thers has them where can I go to get minions of my own?
tBone
Minions ‘r Us. They have a fire sale every summer, so watch the Sunday papers.
Krista
You can’t have minions. You’re already my minion. So a minion’s minion would actually be classified as a flunky.
Krista
tBone – that was creepy. Before I wrote that post, I wrote another one, then erased it, which said that he could get them on sale at Minion Depot, and to check the insert in his Saturday paper.
Christ, no wonder scs thinks we’re all one person.
John Cole
Of course I can not be 100% sure anything happened, but given that Thersites manufactured 9,000 scenarios for which he could play victim, I am reasonably confident that had anything ACTUALLY happened, it would have been headline news at Eschaton or Firedoglake for the next, oh, 220 years.
I’m just not even wired that way- in fact, I can honestly say that I never even onced wondered what Armando’s last name was- it is, in my way of thinking, wholly immaterial.
Krista
Now, exposing himself TO us, out of spite….that I can see him doing.
Steve
When you say you can “see” him doing it, do you mean… when you close your eyes?
John S.
Not to Thersites, whom I could give a shit about.
But your pal Jeff HAS posted a call to action to get folks to call someone’s employer and get them in trouble in the past, as I posted above.
Krista
LOL…only every night, sweetpea.
ppGaz
That is pretty low.
John Cole
Ok, John S. You want to explain what really happened with the ‘call to action’
Pooh
It was an offshoot of the whole Deignan/BitchPhD thing…
Ancient Purple
Can I be your shill or your toadie, Krista? And if so, are you then my dominatrix?
And if so, is there a prison shower scene in all of this?
And if so, will this come back to haunt me when I am outed as being controlled by a Canadian dominatrix named Krista who forces me to do shower scenes because I am her shill and/or toadie?
Please let me know as I live for this.
ppGaz
{ thud }
MAX HATS
It’s incredibly scary what people can do to people out there via the internet. Thanks to rage-fueled internet communities, any action on or off the internet can harm one’s career. Just today there’s news that Juan Cole was denied an academic position due to internet-based lobbying against him.
It even goes into the realm of the personal. When I was occasionally lurking on freerepublic, there were two cases that come to mind. The first, as far as personal destruction against strangers over political orientations go, was somewhat justifiable. A freeper posted the names of everyone on ANSWER, someone apparently put a lot of time into finding which of those were in the military, and then freepers flooded their CO’s with emails. I say somewhat justifiable because in the military there are rules against participating in certain political activities, and I have no doubt ANSWER is on or over the line. But I still found the principle of trying to destroy strangers’ careers disturbing. If I found out PFC McDickerson was in the Official Ann Coultier ‘Key the cars of liberals for freedom’ fan club, no way I’d try and bury him for it.
The second instance, also on freep, is so much worse. Some misanthrope high school loser gets offended by something his high school teacher says, and considering the mental state of who we’re talking about (soon to be apparent), it could have been anything. He makes an article about her on freep, detailing her injustices towards him, links to her personal website, which if I recall made mention of her being a democrat or anti-war or something, and requests she get ‘freeped.’ And she was. People are hotlinking pictures of her, pictures of her kid, commenting on how ugly she is, emailing her school administration, just doing everything they can. And this is on the word of some high school kid who doesn’t like his teacher.
It’s bad enough on the internet, where you don’t know if some unbalanced person is looking at something you said writhing in hatred and resolving to bring you down, but this sort of thing can even happen as a result of totally offline interaction. Nothing you can do, just another unintended consequence of internet communities.
Brian
Talk of misrepresenting things. I have never read this ‘Thersites’ person’s blog, that I know; I do follow Eschaton. Atrios links to goldstein’s arguments repeatedly, because Goldstein is an ass who makes stupid arguments. I have never seen these “coordinated attack waves” you seem to be alleging.
Pb
Whoa. How the hell did I miss that.
ppGaz
So, this what a ban looks like?
Wow. Not as rough as I thought.
Steve
The real Brian is a Goldstein fanboy. If you delved into the cesspool of PW comments, you’d see Brian every once in a while looking for some positive reinforcement.
Darrell
ppg, given how you question whether every poster is a ‘spoof’, seems you might be a wee bit skeptical of a poster claiming to be Brian who writes that Goldstein is “an ass who makes stupid arguments” . Makes perfect sense, right?
ppGaz
I’m skeptical of every poster unless I know who they are, Darrell, or I know that they have some consistent or explainable viewpoint that is actually their own.
A test you can’t pass, BTW. You avoid claiming a viewpoint so that you can play stupid word games all day with people.
Fucking troll.
ppGaz
Make a list of all the current posters on the blog, in the last 60 days or so.
Now make a list of those I’ve suggested are spoofs.
Divide the second number by the first, and tell me what you get. What percentage of posters do I suggest are spoofs?
When you get done, explain to me why you think you can pull shit out of your ass whenever you feel like it, and then sit here and nitpick other people all day about facts?
Then make your apology for making shit up …. again.
Darrell
Dear ppgaz, gotta go now, but I’ve got a health tip for ya. You mentioned a health problem you had not long ago, stroke or heart attack or irregular heartbeat or something like that… anyway, I resurrected my Juiceman Jr. juicer a couple weeks ago. I bot it maybe 2 yrs ago and didn’t want the hassle of cutting up the fruits and veggies and cleanup.. laziness on my part.. I eat pretty healthy already, but I gotta recommend juicing to you. Seriously. If I drank what I prepare in the mornings not knowing what was in it, I’d swear it had ephedrine in it for the energy boost it gives you. Small apple, small pear, plum, 1/2 carrot, wadded up greens (spinach or parsley).. I’m sure there are better recipes out there. Do it. Live it. thank me later and juice so you’ll be able to curse me for years to come
ppGaz
Only when you post :-)
Yes, heart attack. Thx for asking.
ppGaz
I thought he was an animatronic simulated righty.
tBone
Muh-wah-ha-ha. Everything is going according to plan . . [cue organ music]
You ain’t the only one.
Darrell
I’m really going now. But I was entirely serious. I’d recommend this to anyone, but especially someone who is recovering from an illness or other health problems. I recoil at the claim of any ‘miracle’ cure, which this certainly is not, but it’s still incredible.. you will definitely thank me should you follow this advice. I’m sure I’ll get off this juicing ‘kick’ after a couple of months as a result of laziness, but I gotta tell you, I need less sleep, have more energy, better workouts in the gym, etc. It’s got to be even better for someone bouncing back from illness. Not sure if it will help your bad humor though :)
Give me your fav recipes should you try it.
ppGaz
Thanks Darrell.
CaseyL
My mom had a juicer, and loved it to pieces. Unfortunately, you had to dismantle it into pieces to clean, which took longer than making the juice and ended up with blades, screens, and Mystery Bits scattered across the kitchen counter.
After about a month, Mom went back to getting already-made juice. It was just too much trouble.
Has juicer technology improved since then?
srv
Just find Naked Juice or Bolthouse. No juicer hassles and just as addictive.
Bas-O-Matic
BTW- All thersites was doing was spreading dishonest and malicious attacks about jeff- IOW, specifically the sort of shit that is not covered by Online Integrity.
Thersites can pound salt.
Actually this isn’t what happened at all, John.
First, someone posted, on Thersites blog. in a thread concerned with Goldstein, and in a thread in which people from Jeff’s blog were commenting, in a response to something that Thersites said to one of Jeff’s partisans, that Thersites’ one year old daughter had “good dick-sucking lips.”
Thersites posted something about it at his now defunct blog (hence no links; even the google cache is fading), but in no event did he attribute this to Goldstein. Despite what Goldstein says, Thersites did update that post twice at Jeff’s request to clarify that Thersites didn’t think that Jeff was responsible or at fault in any way. Thersites also said in that thread that the person who posted the comment was not necessarily a commenter from Protein Wisdom, though he did later say in the thread:
The whole episode freaked Thersites out, but as far as he was concerned, the incident was over then and there and he wanted to put it behind him. Thersites also has not posted at Protein Wisdom since then.
Then in a subsequent Protein Wisdom thread, for reasons wholly unrelated to “the comment”, someone posted Thersites ans his wife’s personal information.** Thersites asked Jeff to remove the information, which he halfheartedly did***
However, Jeff didn’t really clean up his comments, so Thersites personal information remained there. Also it was Jeff himself in his post concerning the “outing” brought “the comment” back up. Thersites had not mentioned it since it happened.
A lot of people that know Thersites went over there to complain about his personal information still being up and some of them also brought up “the comment” and it was in response to those third party’s acts that Jeff reversed course on posting Thersites personal information. For the actions of third parties.****
At some point earlier in that afternoon Thersites did apparently say “[Jeff’s] commenters out my identity, AND my wife’s (which is how they found out mine), and make a horrible comment about my child.” On his blog. In response to Jeff’s commenters posting his and his wifes personal information. But it was not why Jeff changed course, it was the people trying to defend Thersites at Protein Wisdom.
For some reason Jeff and his Commenters focused on Jeff’s offering to match IP’s and Thersites denying the offer (primarliy because he wanted to put the incident behind him) as an excuse for doing this, requiring a hyperlegalistic standard of proof (only matching the IPs could tell the truth, when in reality it could only prove that someone from Protein Wisdom did make the comment but could not prove conclusively that someone from Protein Wisdom did not) to substantiate (the likelihood) that someone from Protein Wisdom made the comment.
The commenters even went so far as to make up bizarre stories about Thersites deep dark motives for wanting to put the incident behind him (he posted “the comment” himself!)
At any rate, Thersites subsequent statements on “the comment”in “public fora” are this SadlyNo! thread (in which he endorses a much briefer statement of the facts by me that pretty much jibes with what I’ve written here*****), and this alicublog thread (in which he endorses a summary somwhat different than the one I make in the SadlyNo! thread******). He also made a post at his own site in response to Jeff’s about face on posting the personal information.*******
So that’s the extent of Thersites “spreading [of] dishonest and malicious attacks about jeff.” A statement of opinion on his blog at the time of the initial incident. One comment at his blog, on the afternoon that Jeff’s commenters posted his personal information. And a subsequent endorsement at Alicublog of a characterization of the events that (given what information is publically available) gets details wrong about the sequence of how things happened, made after Jeff reversed course on posting Thersites’ personal information.
I’m sorry, even if you stipulate that Thersites somehow did wrong here (something I’m not really seeing, but for arguments sake) the gravity of the harm of revealing Thersites personal information far outweighs it. Jeff may be a friend of yours, but quite simply what he did was wrong. The details are somewhat different (it was in comments to begin with, not Jeff’s front page) but in every substantive respect what Jeff did to Thersites is the same as what was done to Armando. People were giving the same “it was public information, they werent trying to hide it” excuses (the guy at NRO, not you; I agree that people who want to reamin totally anonymous are way too cavalier with their personal information ).
It’s always ugly when people do this shit (and for the record I’ve seen people attempt to out “semi-anonymous” people on left-wing blogs as well). And it’s always wrong.
*I think it was one of Jeff’s commenters too. And it’s a perfectly reasonable assumption that it was a reader (if not a commenter) of Goldstein’s, even if it’s not provable such that it would stand up in criminal court. The comment was made in a thread concerning Goldstein, where Jeff’s commenters were commenting, and Metacomments quite simply was an insular blog that didn;t see much comment traffic from strangers (at the very least, I’m pretty sure the person got there from a link at Protein Wisdom for that reason alone). Does that prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt? No, but it does support an inference. And in the end, as with Thersites himself, I don’t think it says anything about anyone but the douchebag who made the comment.
** And I’ll also add that the person who did the initial outing completely invented any activity by NYMary over at Ann Althouse’s blog. (And she also never once commented at Protein Wisdom) Thersites got into it with Althouse because she did substantially the same thing with misleadingly selective quotations from an Atrios comment section that she did with, coincidentally enough, Jeff Goldstein and the crashing of the M&M float (an imbroglio I seem to remember you being involved with).
*** See, eg. (So you will not hear me refer to “Thersites” or “NYMary” by their real names. And I won’t refer to the name (or city) of the NY Community College where he teaches and where his wife is an adjunct instructor.) This is how “cool” Jeff was being about it
**** And I must say that it is quite a trick that a person who says:
Can later say:
Note that Thersites was responsible for what his partisans said but Thersites’ partisans holding Jeff responsible for what his (presumed) partisan did/said is ridiculous and totally justifies Jeff posting Thersites personal information. That’s some tortured logic.
*****
*****
I will link here and suggest that, for one thing, the orignal comment may not be the only thing that’s been done. Also, Thersites said that this was “essentially correct” and not entirely correct.
******* Original still in google cache:
Bas-O-Matic
Thersites then went on to try to pin it all on jeff and his commenters. Jeff asked repeatedly for the ip address so he could look through his own logs and find out if it was someone from his site. Thersites and his band of hacks chose to not give the ip out or EVEN investigate it with the IP provider, choosing to instead run with the issue, generate more traffic, and further smear Jeff- who was merely a bystander.
Thersites is on Blogger. You can’t get IP addresses of commenters except through Blogger. Thersites has indicated in Atrios’ comments that after several go-rounds with Blogger, their response has basically been show us a subpoena. Thersites is not under and never has been under any obligation to share with you, Jeff Goldstein, or anyone else the details of how he wished to deal with that issue.
At any rate, you still are getting it completely wrong. Thersites never mentioned “the comment” after it was initially made until after Jeff’s commenter’s outed him. So it is beyond me how his mentioning it after the fact could somehow justify posting his personal information or how Thersites was engaged in “smearing Goldstein” in order to “generate traffic.” Thersites was calling Goldstein a paste-eater, a clown and a dork over his academic beliefs and believe me Jeff was not and has never been “civil” to Thersites (their history actually goes back to September).
Theristes did nothing but smear Jeff, lie about him, and egg on FireDogLake and atrios to do the same. His acolytes continue, to this day, to do the same thing.
Really someone posted about this today? I didn’t see it. (See above on alleged “smears” and “lies” certatinly a low threshold being applied here)
And firedoglake and Atrios are completely irrelevant to this issue.
B.) I will pay attention to everyone’s advice as to what Jeff should and should not have done after each and everyone of you is the target of months (well, years, actually) of coordinated personal attacks. Do I prefer that Jeff had never mentioned that scumbag by name (and, btw, Jeff redacted all the information when a commenter posted it the first time- even though it was public information linked on Thersite’s and his wife’s site), well, sure.
Co-ordinated? Hardly. Jeff attracts a lot of attention because he is so caustic. There was no secret meeting where everybody decided to go after him.
Of course I can not be 100% sure anything happened, but given that Thersites manufactured 9,000 scenarios for which he could play victim, I am reasonably confident that had anything ACTUALLY happened, it would have been headline news at Eschaton or Firedoglake for the next, oh, 220 years.
Someone said something vile about his daughter and someone posted his personal information. I’m not aware of any other “scenarios for which [someone] could play the victim” that were being “manufactured” other than this horsehit about IP adrresses that Jeff and his defenders have been using to gloss over the fact that what was done was wrong. (Also, see above about the possibility of other things being done).
Random Guy
The wingnut blogosphere is in trouble when the prominent blogger which I had previously regarder as having the most integrity out of all the right-wing bloggers unwaveringly defends a complete tool like Goldstien for outing anonymous bloggers, and tries to find a justification for another outing by blaming the victim.
Sigh. When I perviewed the fever-swamp that is Right Wingnutosphere, I use to be able to justify the nastiness, the spitefuness, and the complete lack of ethics by taking a step back and saying, “Well, at least the Right has ethical, honest bloggers like John Cole.” I guess I didn’t know you too well back then.
rachel
This is my juicer. It also makes noodles, nut butters and it’s great for pesto. You can use it for grinding meat too, but the texture it too paste-like to suit me.
Richard Bennett
Anonoblogging is a chicken-shit pursuit at best, and to anonoblog and while getting speaking gigs on the basis of your anonymous identity is hypocritical. The guy wasn’t making any effort to protect his anonymity so fuck him.
Jay C
Just for the record, Mr. Bennett, it is not at all clear that Armando got his speaking gig at the BAL&TC “on the basis of [his] anonymous identity” – he is, after all, a lawyer – notice the “Law” part of the conference title?
Krista
Yes, it will come back to haunt you.
But you’ll like it.
Your contract is in the mail, please sign in triplicate, have it notarized, and return it in the SASE provided.
Thank you.
Krista
{thud}
DecidedFenceSitter
Krista, I want to ask, but you know what, I think I’ve done enough personal sharing on this blog for a while.
Krista
DFS – relax honey…we’re just all kiddin’ around. Jeez, I could never be a dominatrix — I’d be constantly apologizing…or giggling at the absurdity of the situation.
John S.
I already posted the link to it, but I’d certainly be willing to give my synopsis.
After Professor Hettle threatened to speak to grad student Paul Deignan’s adviser regarding his behavior on Bitch PhD’s blog, Jeff decided to get involved in the flap for the following reason:
Then he proceeded to hand out the phone number and name of Hettle’s department chair, and urged his readers to contact him to voice their displeasure with Hettle:
Despite the fact that Hettle’s antics were thoroughly unprofessional, Jeff decided to stoop to his level. He openly called for his readers to complain to Hettle’s boss in the hopes that he would be fired.
So when I say:
In response to:
Am I still willfully misrepresenting your friend?
Dom
He met Plame, got outed.
Plame usually outs completely.
Yes, it’s a suicide watch.
Buddy
‘Unbelievably easy’ is probably accurate. Search for
Armando Kos lawyer
on google gets his full name on the first page (the NPR transcript)
Search for the ubiquitous
Armando Kos
gets it on the third page. Once you get the last name, stuff on the CCN website dating back to 2004 where he was using his full name to post exists, the stanford link, the Majority Report stuff (where he went on air using his full name, again), the link to his company, the truthout link from may 24, a link to something on ‘the washington note’, whatever that is, a link to a post on the confirmthem website from dec 2005 using his full name, (and pretty damn scarily) a link to his physical address and phone number, etc. The cat was out of the bag and the trail was all over the internet with links ‘outing’ him well before the NRO thing.
Frankly, none of us is ‘private’ anymore. Anyone with a bit of want-to can dig up all kinds of info, through public channels, and sit right on our doorsteps if they want. That is the risk we take when posting on the public internet, and it’s been that way for a long, long time, unless we are UTTERLY careful about what info we allow to get out. To remain ‘private’ I suspect one would have to never use a credit card, have a telephone, or use any of the modern conveniences of life.
Now I’m not defending the NRO stunt, but the idea that Armando was ‘private’ about his identity isn’t entirely accurate. You don’t go on a syndicated radio program (at least twice from what I can see) using your full name if you wish to remain anonymous, and in this day and age, if someone knows your name, its pretty simple to find out all kinds of info on you, quite legally.
That may not be a good thing, but it is what it is, and it is how it is.
kc
BTW- All thersites was doing was spreading dishonest and malicious attacks about jeff
Thersites should have just threatened to dick-slap Goldstein – apparently that sort of speech and/or conduct is not considered malicious by the right blogosphere.
It’s a shame thers took down his original site following Goldstein’s repeated posting of thers’s real name and work place (and his wife’s name, etc), since it contained “9000” instances of Goldstein making a giant ass of himself – making fun of people’s pictures posted on another site, etc.
kc
Jesus, Mr. Cole, you just cut and pasted a big chunk of text re-outing someone. In a comment thread following a post where you feign disapproval of outing in general.
Nice work.
kc
And at the end of the day, how was outing Thersites and his wife anything other than a nuclear bomb dropped to win a blogfight,
It wasn’t.
And Cole just did it AGAIN.
What a fucking asshole.
tBone
How, exactly, do you “re-out” someone? It’s not like that information was suddenly sucked into a time vortex after the Goldstein/Thersites dustup.
I don’t agree with John’s defense of Goldstein but can we keep the hysteria to a bare minimum here?
Steve
Gawd, if you want to attack John, attack me too for linking to the offending post in the first place.
I thought about it before I did it, but you know what? This cat is all the way out of the bag at this point.
Also, when will people realize that uncovering someone’s personal info by doing research via Google is a lot different from posting that info at a high-traffic site? You could get a hundred harassing phone calls and someone would still make the argument, gee all I did was print info you could find on Google. That’s great, but somehow I wasn’t getting the 100 calls when the info was just on Google.
Buddy
I didn’t state they were equivilant, just that the idea that NRO ‘outed’ armando is not really true. He was already outed, by himself, on syndicated talk shows.
madmatt
I have had my email posted by blogsite owners when they don’t like my comment…unleash the trolls and threats…its not like logic can work for your groups.
Ancient Purple
Cue the ignorant Richard Bennett to come in an miss the BIG factor.
Bennett, let me explain the BIG issue here: someone posted his CLIENT LIST. If your indifference is a general “fuck him,” then I expect you have no complains about posting private information about people because “anonoblogging is a chicken-shit pursuit at best.”
Would you mind if we told people where your children attend school? How about the names and addresses and specialties of the doctor’s your wife visited? Maybe a full accounting of the exact route you take to work every day including times and the 7-11 you stop at for coffee?
The purpose of that would simply be intimidation and harassment. We aren’t just talking about listing Armando’s full name and law firm, but his client list.
If that is okay with you, then you are an even bigger fuckwad than I originally suspected.
Ancient Purple
They outed his client list.
Is this okay with you?
Cyrus
That’s not really what happened. (The “justification for another outing” part. Assuming of course that you are talking about Armando, just to be sure.) John makes it abundantly clear in the original post that his original, reflexive reaction was inappropriate, and his “official stance” on this is unqualified disagreement with NRO’s actions. If you’re saying he was justifying the outing by having that original, reflexive reaction and/or posting it, well, I sure as hell hope we don’t all get judged exclusively by our gut reactions. I remember a thread in the aftermath of Katrina here (found because I was Googling the archives for something else; no, my memory is not THAT good) where some liberal was accused of thinking a red state deserved the hurricane based on a comment saying basically what John did above — something like “I know it’s wrong but my first response was ‘he was asking for it’. Now that I’ve had a chance to think and learned more about what happened, here’s my opinion…” It was unfair to hold a gut reaction against that guy, and it’s almost ridiculous to hold John’s gut reaction against him when he makes his official position so clear and everything.
A propos of nothing, Jeff Goldstein’s cock-slapping comment about that might have been my first exposure to the man (errr, very poor choice of words). I can’t and don’t want to justify everything that’s been said or done towards him, but he seems nuts. I’m sure he’s a more open-minded and considerate friend in person than he is online, John, but only because he can’t possibly be less.
In an episode with a whole lot of name-calling back and forth — I wasn’t following the feud between Jeff Goldstein and Thersites since it apparently started months ago, but when I came in Thersites was making a fair amount of personal attacks — John Cole sided with his personal friend. I think he’s incorrect, but get some perspective here.
(For completeness, my own opinion? Well, I don’t want to just say ditto, but I agree with Steve’s last paragraph. For what it’s worth.)
Zifnab
I mean, hell. Imagine you’re a doctor, and someone started passing out your list of patients. And then imagine your patients start getting calls at 2am from random wackos in different states who want to tell them your doctor is a godless heathen who sidelines as an abortionist, has a second wife in Omaha, and molests kittens for fun. And imagine having to explain to said patients that they are receiving these calls because you happen to run a blog in your free time.
Imagine what that would do for your business.
The Other Steve
Armando’s client list wasn’t private… Once they found what law firm he worked for, it was right there on the firm’s website.
Steve
Aren’t we going through a pretty silly thought process here?
1) Armando used his last name on the radio, so his name wasn’t private.
2) If you plug his first and last name into the lawyer directory, you find the firm he worked for, so his firm wasn’t private.
3) If you go to the firm’s website, you can see a list of the firm’s clients, so his client list isn’t private.
4) And so on. I’m sure his wedding is a matter of public record…
Isn’t it pretty obvious that Armando didn’t want every random person who casually bumped into him on the Internet to know this information, even if it was all accessible to a dedicated investigator? I don’t go around Googling any of you.
Anyway, what NRO published was a link to an extremely obscure page which disclosed that Armando had personally represented Wal-Mart in an antitrust matter, which is quite different from a link to the firm’s overall client list (which, as it’s a big firm with over 100 lawyers, isn’t particularly illustrative of anything).
99% of us seem to be in agreement that you’re an ass if you PUBLICIZE someone’s personal information, regardless of how super-secret that personal information might be to someone who is truly looking for it. Even if John Cole’s phone number is right there in the book, I’d be an ass for printing it on my blog.
RETARDEAU
“99% of us seem to be in agreement that you’re an ass if you PUBLICIZE someone’s personal information, regardless of how super-secret that personal information might be to someone who is truly looking for it.”
Except John Cole is in that 1% when it’s Jeff Goldstein publicizing the information, because, why someone called poor Jeff names!
Maybe if Jim Geraghty (or whoever the NRO hack was) sent some traffic Cole’s way and threatened liberals with sexual assault and constantly wrote about his perverted humiliation fantasies, John Cole might see the Armando thing differently, too. Or maybe Cole only has hagiographical, double-standard-bearing capacity for Jeff Goldstein and no one else. Who knows, but I’m sure a number of my lefty comrades will barrage me once again with this latest “evidence” that John Cole is an honest conservative.
Par R
Appropriately named, RETARDED, says, in part:
Ancient Purple
TOS,
That was the firm’s client list. Armando’s firm is huge. There is no way you could guarantee that if you pick a particular firm on that client list, Armando was the counsel for that client.
Ancient Purple
Crud.
Just saw that Steve at 2:59 PM said the same thing.
Sorry for the double mention.
Nabu
How much do you want to bet that Armando will be reincarnated on Daily Kos under an actualy anonymous handle?
He compromised his own identity. He knew the risk. He has “officially” retired. End of story.
Kazinski
I’m late to the thread, but that is just as well I should get the last word.
How many of the commentaters here decrying the outing of Armando, felt the same way after the Kossacks participated in the outting of Jeff Gannon/Guckert?
One was much worse than the other.