Eric Boehlert: No, Seriously! Kick Me!

Recently, Matt Welch and I utterly destroyed Eric Boehlert’s ridiculous claim that nobody at the L.A. Times was ever allowed to casually denigrate President Bush:

And I don’t even have to do a Google search to know for a fact that when President Bush was in office, there was nobody on staff at the Times, and certainly nobody writing off the opinion pages, who was allowed to so casually insult the office of the presidency on a regular basis.

Hahahahahahaha! Read Welch’s post and mine for the destruction of that singularly clueless claim.

I also observed that Boehlert’s whine about The Times’s terrible lack of respect for the office of the presidency was considerably undermined by the fact that he cross-posted his whinge at a site called The Smirking Chimp.

Boehlert has now responded — not with any undermining of Welch’s evidence, or mine, concerning his central complaint, but with this:

Fact: I did not “cross-publish” my column at The Smirking Chimp. Patterico might not now [sic] this, but in the wonderful world of the Internets, sometimes sites independently reproduce other writers’ work, which is exactly what The Smirking Chimp did with my column about the LA Times. As it does with many of my columns.

But Patterico makes a patently false claim about me in an attempt to portray me as a hypocrite; that I specifically cross-published my LA Times column at The Smirking Chimp. I did not.

Interesting, that word “specifically.” Almost like it’s a weasel word.

Let’s take a look at this claim that The Smirking Chimp “independently” republished Boehlert’s work, with no input from Boehlert. My conclusion: Boehlert is dissembling at a minimum, and more likely just flat-out lying.

Boehlert’s post appeared at something called “Eric Boehlert’s blog” at The Smirking Chimp:

Eric Boehlert’s blog

What does it take for a blog like that to appear? I decided to check it out last night.

I signed up at The Smirking Chimp last night, to get myself a blog just like Boehlert’s. I had to fill out a form, with my user name, e-mail address, and location. I then was e-mailed instructions, with a link I could click to log in and change my password. (I changed it to “boehlertsux.”) Once I went into my e-mail, followed that link, changed the password, and logged in, this is what what a portion of my user profile looked like:

The default user profile at The Smirking Chimp

See, the chimp is the default picture they give you at The Smirking Chimp when you first set up a blog. Boehlert had to specifically delete this and replace it with a different picture of himself.

Eric Boehlert: long-time member of The Smirking Chimp

Note the length of his membership: 3 years, 39 weeks. That’s a lengthy devotion to a site designed to mock the President of the United States.

Once I completed that signup process, I had a blog! Just like Eric Boehlert had conferred on him by magic, through no effort of his own!

My Smirking Chimp blog!

Here is what my profile looked like to outsiders:

My default profile

Looks mighty similar to Mr. Boehlert’s profile (except, of course, that he uploaded a non-chimp picture of himself):

Non-chimp pictures must be specifically uploaded

Only his happened by magic, while I had to work for mine!

So I started typing up a post. Here is what my editing screen looked like:

My editing screen

Finally, I published! Here was my finished product:

My post

Here it is with the (now defunct) URL:

The URL (no longer works!)

OK, I admit it. I voted for my own post, and gave it a 10.

It wasn’t enough.

All of a sudden, my world came crashing down around me. Within minutes, my profile was taken away:

Patterico: Banned at The Smirking Chimp

I tried to log in again with the “Patterico” user name and got this rough rebuke:

Account nuked!

Now, is it impossible that someone else set up “Eric Boehlert’s blog” with no input or authorization from Boehlert? Is it impossible that someone else uploaded his picture and set up the account almost four years ago?

No. Nothing is impossible. Why, my blog could be written by the reincarnation of Elvis.

But if someone else set up Eric Boehlert’s blog, let Eric Boehlert make that claim. Specifically.

I tried commenting at Media Matters to tell Boehlert some of the above facts: that his post was published at “Eric Boehlert’s blog,” for which he apparently had to sign up, in a lengthy process involving passwords and uploading pictures and such. But I am moderated at Media Matters. Here is the response I always get when I try to leave a comment:

Don’t bring your timely retorts here, buddy!

It usually takes a couple of days for my comments to appear. (It has not appeared yet as of the publication of this post, even though I left the comment around 5-6 p.m. Pacific last night.) After a couple of days, of course, nobody is reading the post any more.

That’s why they moderate me: to delay my rebuttals until the post is no longer being read.

Note the excuse: I haven’t left enough comments there. Except: I have commented at Media Matters! Again and again and again and again and again and again and again!

How many times do you have to post there not to be moderated for days?

I’m sure I haven’t found all the comments I have left there. I’m sure it’s been more than a dozen over the years.

Somehow, it’s not enough to allow me to make a timely response to Boehlert’s posts.

Boehlert makes a subsidiary point: that the L.A. Times and The Smirking Chimp are not comparable. That wasn’t my comparison, and Boehlert knows it. The comparison is between Andrew Malcolm and Boehlert. (There is no comparison, by the way.) Here’s the argument Boehlert is evading: if Boehlert claims Malcolm is no serious journalist because he denigrates the president, what does that say about Boehlert, who set up an account on a site specifically designed to denigrate President Bush?

See? When you state the argument honestly, it has some power, Boehlert. That’s why you construct strawmen instead. It’s the lazy man’s way out.

It’s your way out.

Oh . . . did I mention that Boehlert never addressed my main argument? Which was that he was dead wrong when he claimed that “when President Bush was in office, there was nobody on staff at the Times, and certainly nobody writing off the opinion pages, who was allowed to so casually insult the office of the presidency on a regular basis.”

Wrong-o, Boehlert old buddy old pal. That claim is dead on arrival. That’s why Boehlert is trying so desperately to change the subject.

******

P.S. I see Boehlert’s Smirking Chimp post now contains the following caveat:

Please note that these Media Matters columns appear here with permission but are not posted by Eric Boehlert.

This language was added in response to my original post at patterico.com. The cached version shows the language was not present in the original.

This is pathetic.

Boehlert claimed The Smirking Chimp posted his columns “independently,” writing a long sneer-filled post claiming I knew nothing about “how the Internets work” and posting on Twitter:

If @patterico were any dumber, it would hurt. I didn’t “cross publish” my column at Smirking Chimp, idiot.

And now his big defense is that he authorizes cross-posting, but he doesn’t press the publish button himself?

Unbelievable. By the way, that’s how virtually all of my posts work here at Big Journalism. I publish posts at my personal site, and then authorize them to be published here. Editors decide whether to publish them. I have never logged in or hit a publish button. In rare cases (as with this postscript) I will modify a post for this site; when I do, I e-mail the modifications to the editors.

Although I don’t hit the “publish” button myself, I would never claim that Big Journalism “independently” publishes my posts, or imply I had no involvement in the process.

Because, unlike Eric Boehlert, I am not a weasel.

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