Monday, February 16, 2004

Pseudonymous weblogging Earlier this month, Nick Confessore of TAPPED wrote "In Defense of No-Name Bloggers", responding to what he called a "very weak attack" by Salon's Christopher Farah against those who post on weblogs under assumed names.  Confessore notes a critical distinction in correcting Farah's reference to them as "anonymous" authors, observing: That's incorrect. They're pseudonymous, like, say, the authors of The Federalist Papers. And it's an important distinction. Anonymous writing can indeed be poisonous, because it frees the writer from any consequences whatsoever for his ideas. . . Blogging continuously under a pseudonym, however, is a very different matter. Someone like Atrios or TMFTML has an intellectual identity and a reputation to defend. A very good point.  (Credit NetLawBlog for the pointer.)   9:15:30 PM     My Backword Peter Nordberg of Blog 702 has some favorable words about these last two postings and some thoughtful comments on the criteria that can be used to judge what he describes as the "ethics" of legal and political discourse.  In my series of longish postings on the "John Edwards - cerebral palsy - junk science" topic over the last three weeks,  I have made clear my disagreements with Walter Olson on certain key points on this topic, but I would be remiss if I did not observe at the same time that Olson and his colleagues with the Manhattan Institute have made major contributions to the overall topic of abuse in and abuse of the court system and its participants over the last ten years.  The Overlawyered site, in particular, continues to be a cornucopia of craziness, a fountain effusively overflowing with the fatuousness and folly that permeates our legal system.  (I watched a Dennis Miller performance last night, and I just can't help myself.)  I do think that Olson's mission is ultimately political and not legal, and thus he and his colleagues do tend to describe in terms of sharp black and white ideas and concepts that I view in shades of grey.  But that is the nature of political discourse, and that fact has to be accepted.  Olson has been very gracious in linking to my comments and in responding, and even was good-humored about the fact that I did at one point confound his own comments about Edwards with those offered in a guest editorial by his MI colleague, Jim Copland [NRO, January 26], and thereby did perhaps engage in a bit of caricature myself.  I would echo Nordberg's thoughts on the markers of quality in discourse, and borrow from a well-worn phrase in commenting that we can disagree with those we respect, and do so without being disagreeable. 7:51:09 AM

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