Wednesday, January 05, 2005

What about me, Nick???

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman appears to be making blogger enemies as fast as he can. Today it was Jim Geraghty's turn:

I was angered to find that in Jim Geraghty's 12/29 column "Kerry Spot," the National Review has published a slander about me: In addition to calling me "a nasty little man," Geraghty's piece maliciously and recklessly states....

Yata, yata, yata. My point here isn't to give nominally broader coverage to Coleman's grievance. Rather, my point is to have a little more fun at his expense.

Like, for instance, his reference to "the" National Review. It isn't "the" National Review, it's simply National Review. I don't know if Coleman thinks there's more than one of them, though given the siege mentality of a lot of today's libs, I suppose it might be possible. Frankly, I kind of like the idea, even in the same sense that there's ESPN and ESPN 2, and MTV and MTV 2. But, regardless of that, it's the sort of astonishing to see an ostensible writer, much less "journalist," make such a grating grammatical error.

Another "for instance" is the same angry, bitter, vicious tone that is obviously his trademark. Such as....

This passage is recklessly cut-and-pasted, verbatim, from a scurrilous blog published by anonymous character assassins.

The Master of TKS identifies this endearingly referenced site as Fraters Libertas, which is neither "scurrilous" nor assassins of anybody's character from my at least semi-regular following of their product. I suppose "anonymous" fits, since I can't find any of FL's author's real names. I guess that makes "the" Coleman one for three in this instance, which is actually quite an improvement for his fact-checking abilities. The remainder is just more seething rage from a lib who's been accurately pegged and put in his place by yet another merry band of "extreme bloggers."

FL noticed the Coleman's whining to NR, BTW:

As to Coleman's scurilous, incorrect, character assasination of us as: "...a scurrilous blog published by anonymous character assassinsand...vile slander from the sewers of the Internet," I guess we'll consider that a quid pro quo. Or an E Pluribus Unum. Or something.

Doesn't sound like they take the St. Nick too seriously, either.

All parties were in agreement that the nepotism issue was slight, defused by the fact that my father had been dead for as long as he and Howell had been married and that I was already an award-winning columnist of standing at the Star Tribune. [my emphasis]

More of NC's evidently trademark horn-self-tooting as well.

Oh, geez, was that another veiled penis reference? Man, now he's got ME doing it....

Geraghty's vile slander from the sewers of the Internet is a ripe example of how bloggers conduct a smear campaign against Mainstream journalists.

Amazing, isn't it, how a petulant bleat about "vile slander from the sewers of the Internet" so deftly morphs into its own vile slander of bloggers in toto as conductors of "smear campaigns." And note the self-important martyrdom thrown in at the end, right on schedule. Golly, if you didn't know any better, you'd think that the Coleman was working from a template, wouldn't you?

Perhaps it's psychological in nature, but determination of such would reside in the perview of "the appropriate professionals," right alongside his apparent penis fixation.

The insinuation that I owe my 32-year-career as a journalist and 22-year career as a columnist to a "stepmother" who married my father after I had begun my professional career is intentional defamation and an injury to my professional reputation.

Given what a shambles the St. Nick has made of his own "professional reputation," I hardly think that FL or TKS could do much more to it, even if they were so inclined. Indeed, I would think that the Coleman would want to have a few scapegoats handy who can't currently defend themselves, but that would require him to possess enough personal objectivity to do a little self-assessment, and temper tantrums like this one clearly rule out that possibility.

I hereby demand a full retraction and apology from the National Review.

Generally speaking, screeds of this genre that end in overt "demands" tend to end up generating a great deal of laughter before they get round-filed. Geraghty, however, generously owns up to one factual misstatement that was not actually his but that of Fraters Libertas, and in any case was of the ticky-tack variety. Which is another way of saying that he was considerably more generous in his overall reply than I would have been. My guess is that this latest installment of the Coleman's perpetual venting caught him by surprise, and he didn't wait long enough for the emotional backdraft to pass before posting his response. Either that, or that's just the kinda guy JG is.

Pity that he allowed the Coleman to get over on him as aggrieved victim to an extent the Coleman and the Strib haven't let the Powerline guys remotely approach. Makes Geraghty look like a lesser blogger that the Coleman could handle.

I did have another point, actually. Where's my angry letter? I took more personal shots at the Coleman in one post than Hinderaker, Johnson, Meringoff, Geraghty, The Elder, Saint Paul, JB Doubtless, and Atomizer put together. What's the matter, Nick? Don't I count?

Again, it ain't the Morrissey method, but I'm difficult to put in a single box (at least until the requisite two holes are drilled in the top).

But in that, and TKS', spirit, let me, unsolicited, retract and apologize for this joke I posted at the Coleman's explicit expense. Next time I'll just have him slip on a banana peel and fall into the river and then have the Powerline gents rescue him, in the overall manner of the Niagra River scene between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in Superman II.

"You know when I said you guys were 'extreme bloggers'? This is really embarrassing...."