Update below

Coincidence I’m Sure

by digby

Garance Franke-Ruta would be breaking her new rule against linking to (presumed to be corrupt) pseedonymous bloggers like me if she linked to my post from last night on Ramesh Ponnuru’s “Party Of Death,” but I can certainly link to her post from this morning which makes exactly the same observation more than twelve hours later.

It’s always possible that a reader just happened to have made the same extremely obscure observation at roughly the same time I did. It can happen. Or it could be that the observant reader read my post and did not credit me when he or she sent it to Franke-Ruta. Normally I would assume the second and let it go at that. Unfortunately, I can’t help but wonder now if Franke-Ruta believes her new policy allows her not to credit pseeudonymous work, which would make her little better than Ben Domenech. Let’s hope that’s not the case.

Disclaimer: I haven’t been paid by any political entity to write that or anything else. Ever. And my real name is Spartacus.

Update: Franke-Ruta forwarded an e-mail containing the tip, which made no mention of my post. As I wrote, it is entirely possible that someone out there came up with that exact obscure observation at the same time. Nothing is impossible. It’s also, considering the time of the e-mail, possible that the person read my post and didn’t credit it. It happens all the time.

My point, however, is that those of us who are pseudonymous are naturally going to have to be vigilant about such things with people who have a blanket policy of refusing to link to us. Psuedonymous or not, I have to protect myself. When someone refuses on principle to link to me and then publishes items that could be attributed to my work, I can’t just automatically chalk that up to coincidence as I normally would.

Franke-Ruta didn’t much like having her integrity called into question on this and I can’t say I blame her. I’m not too crazy about having mine impugned either.

Update II: The e-mailer had not read my post. In fact, he e-mailed me the same tip although I had already written my piece and posted it moments before, which he did not see. As it happens I informed him of the Garance Franke-Ruta connection in a return post, at which point he tipped her to the information.

So, Garance Franke-Ruta is in the clear, as is her e-mailer who independently found the same item that I did. It’s not pleasant being so suspicious of someone whose work I’ve been following for years and who has never shown the least tendency toward corruption. I hate when that happens.

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