The evolution and extinction of a far-right blogger:

In the wake of the absurd charges by David Horowitz, that the New York Times travel section was ("in an apparent retaliation for criticism") providing information about Cheney and Rumsfeld's vacation homes that put them at risk, one blogger went over the top. The blog, informally named The Flying Monkey-Right Blog, but with a URL of thepoliticalinsight.blogspot.com, wrote this: (dead link) (caught by patriotboy) (emp add)

So, in the school of what's good for the goose is good for the gander, we are providing this link so YOU may help the blogosphere in locating the homes (perhaps with photos?) of the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

Let's start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen. Do you have an idea where they live?

Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring.

After heavy criticism, that last paragraph was changed to:

Go track them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring.

The above was quoted and criticized by the always behind the times Andrew Sullivan. In any event, the post was modified further to read:

Go track them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where they shop, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring.

The blogger, Denny K, substituted "track" for "hunt" and "where they shop" for "where their kids go to school", but the post was still radioactive.

In response, someone created a blog with a single post, one that gave the full name of "Denny K", where he lives, where he works, his telephone number, and a Google map of his house! (These blog vs blog fights can get pretty nasty.)

And now it appears that The Flying Monkey-Right Blog has been dismantled. All links to posts on http://thepoliticalinsight.blogspot.com die. The blog doesn't exist any more (actually, going to the blog's main page triggers a redirect to http://topnetdeals888.info, a kind of domain parking page). And that's not surprising. It was calling for violent action against various New York Times employees. It will be interesting to see what legal trouble this guy has gotten into. It's almost a guarantee that the Times got their lawyers on this case. Remember, once you put something stupid out on the Internet, you can try and scrub it clean, but that's virtually impossible unless you are really obscure - which this blogger wasn't.

For the full story on this, including observations of other right-wing bloggers who fanned the flames of this bogus charge against the Times, like Red State, Malkin, et al, see this post by Glenn Greenwald.


posted by Quiddity at 7/07/2006 06:18:00 PM