Blawg Review

It's not just a blog carnival; it's the law! ~ a fool in the forest

Open Letter to Giacalone

David,

Your summary of the case you call LexBlog Kev v. Blawg Review Ed is incorrect. The chronology you present is inaccurate, and the inferences you take from your facts are now spread around the interwebnet, adding confusion to obfuscation. :-J

I don't think your version of the story fairly presents all the facts, which could not possibly be known to you from reading only blog posts and comments. As you have taken upon yourself the role of consigliere in this so-called fight, it is important that you know all the facts.

To correct your misunderstanding, I will attempt to provide more information, referring to notes from my email correspondence with another blogger who should not be dragged into this mess, as he has not so much as blogged a word about it. So, I have removed his identiying information from our email correspondence quoted below.

David, here's what you didn't know.

Last week, I noticed that someone had come to the Blawg Review website from a link on LexBlog that disclosed enough in its permalink that I knew it was bothersome. I didn't even want to go there, so I asked another blogger whom I trust to check it out and email me a copy of the text of Kevin O'Keefe's post.
Editor at Blawg Review to Friend
January 4

By the way, will you do me a favor? Go check out this recent post from Kevin O'Keefe and copy and paste his post into an email to me. I don't want to go there right away, but I'd like to know what he's up to.

Thanks,

Ed.
[January 4: Friend replied with the text of that post.]
Editor at Blawg Review to Friend
January 4

Please don't post about his faux controversy; not that you would. I'm not rewarding his snark with any mention of it.

Ed.
[January 4: Friend replied with a snide remark about what he almost wanted to post in a comment to O'Keefe's post, but wouldn't, exercising discretion.]
Editor at Blawg Review to Friend
January 5

Blog Fight Club. love that. had more fun with it than he did, i think. would like to leave it that way. he made quite a mess of his blog with those posts. talk about self-destruct. ;-)

Ed.
Followed by this final thought in a separate email.
Editor at Blawg Review to Friend
January 5

If you were wondering why I got into that Blog Fight Club after telling you I was not going to acknowledge O'Keefe's snarky comments....

Kevin Heller took him on in my defense, and I prefer to handle those criticisms directly rather than have others make my case.

So, that's how it broke out late last night.

But hey, all's well that ends.

Ed.
David, I'd like to make a couple of important points, to put this all in context. There was never a fight in my mind. And, if there was anything that could be described as even a dust-up, it was in Heller v. O'Keefe. If anything, my post titled Blog Fight Club was the bastard offspring of their unholy acrimony.

I have never communicated with Heller about this, and his response to O'Keefe's post should not be taken as moral support for my position vis a vis O'Keefe, of which he was uninformed at the time, except from reading about it on LexBlog.

Although I really didn't like the tone of their posts when attacking or defending me, I never criticized them for that, not even in the post, Blog Fight Club. But I disassociate my anonymous self from their remarks and the uncivil discourse.

But, now I have to respond to your mischaracterization of this so-called "public Blog Fight." I didn't pick a fight with O'Keefe. Heck, I didn't even want to get into a fight if he wanted to pick one. But I felt obligated to set the record straight by posting Blog Fight Club, after Heller's sharp response to O'Keefe's post.

It is disconcerting to me that few, if any, of the followers of this faux fight who have blogged or commented about it seem to have fully appreciated the allusion to the movie Fight Club, with which I attempted to make light of this brouhaha by inferring that this so-called fight is all in the minds of the principal actors, or at best is all for show.

All of these experienced bloggers know well that a fight draws a crowd, and it was quite obviously self-serving of both Kevins to create controversy on their blogs where there was little, if any, serious disagreement between them, or with me. Many other clever bloggers got in on the action, picking sides, cheering and jeering.

As our friend Evan says in his latest podcast, I too know a little bit about generating blog traffic. And it made sense to me, as long as a good fight had broken out elsewhere in the blogosphere, to draw even more attention to Blawg Review with a headline that includes a movie title and, now, with this post that includes the names of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Attention, not for my anonymous self, mind you, but for the benefit of Blawg Review.

For more tips about blogging, see Blawg Review #38 and be sure to listen to Evan Schaeffer's latest Legal Underground Podcast where he pretends to be angry with me for remaining anonymous. :-J

I hope everyone had fun watching the show, but it looks like it's over, folks. I think this is the credits running now. Please watch your step when exiting the theater.

All the best,

Ed.

P.S. It's amazing that some people are too obtuse to appreciate humor in a blog post, even if you go to all the trouble to add a photoshopped picture of a man with a dog's head and body to illustrate the point.

P.P.S. David, you're quite entitled to excise the word blawg from your vocabulary and your wee-blog, as you once almost did with the word blog. But look at all the fun you would have missed.