Still nothing. I blame Bush.
Interestingly, daleyrocks, commenting over at RSM’s place, is beginning to circle back to the original accusations made by DDA Frey, namely, that I’d serially harassed someone and was the recipient, for said harassment, of a cease and desist letter.
Writes daleyrocks:
You keep forgetting that other possibility, that Jeff is lying his ass off. Let’s keep that on the list to keep it honest.
Evidence that somebody has stolen Jeff’s ID? None, not even a second hand conversation. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
When a guy claims he doesn’t delete comments and then is forced to admit he did delete damaging comments in this thread, what am I to think? Remember Jeff deleting those comments he wrote about Patterico accepting crazy GOP or special interest money for his blogging? I do. This is a feature with Jeff, not a bug.
That he claims Patterico was looking for a public pat on the back for teaching his daughter a lesson about politics, without presenting any evidence of such claims destroys Jeff’s claims that such arguments are about language. He claimed Patterico was dishonest and unprincipled in that post without evidence. He claimed Patterico was an anti-semite without evidence. He claimed Patterico was accepting crazy party money without evidence. He memory holed two out of the three of those allegations and partially backed off the third. Explanations of irony, parody, and satire often follow, because people just don’t understand language or something. BS, it’s not about language when Jeff does this stuff because he’s not following his own rules. As I’ve pointed out innumerable times, he’s making it up as he goes. You folks are just willing to be gulled.
People can disagree, Jeff just has a quick trigger to the personal and has a tendency to try to justify it after the fact, or memory hole it.
[my emphasis]
daleyrocks is also reiterating Frey’s claim that, because the harassment stopped, the victim has no incentive to come forward or to re-send any cease and desist letter.
Of course, I called for the release of the letter and any emails before Frey floated that particular explanation, having no way of knowing my supposed victim would take such a stance. And, because I am pressing the issue in an effort to clear my name, I submit that the victim, the victim’s lawyer, and Frey all have every incentive to prove my denial bogus, if they truly believe me responsible. If not, they should publicly retract and apologize.
But they haven’t done any of that. They’ve released nothing. If Frey is to be believed, someone sent harassing emails using my name. But rather than help us all find out who that is (all Frey need do is provide the name of the lawyer, a name I’d already know had I actually received a cease and desist letter, and someone presumably paid by a client to act as intermediary with me), Frey is content to remain silent and guard any and all information. Because he’d rather see a potential identity thief get away unscathed — with harm already done to both me and the supposed victim — than to have to admit he made false and hasty public accusations without having first seen any proof. That is, given the opportunity to choose between revealing the truth and saving face, Frey chose the latter.
Honor.
But back to daleyrocks. Someone might want to explain to the poor dear that the reason I have “no evidence” that someone stole my identity is that Frey won’t let me know who the supposed victim is, who the victim’s lawyer is, where the cease and desist letter was supposedly sent, what the email headers from the alleged emails tell us, and so. Hell, I’ve even contacted the LA County DA’s office to see if I can get that information.
As for the rest, Frey kept going to “moneygrubbing” in his descriptions of me, including for a second time just a few days before I wrote my first of two posts on his (potential) antisemitism (for the record, we concluded, with the utmost conviction and certainty, that we can’t know either way if Frey is antisemitic).
And my “evidence” for Frey being disingenuous in his praise of Obama is that he’d written of Obama as “scum” prior to telling us all he is a fundamentally good man and a patriot. I don’t equate “good man” and “scum” — nor do I equate Ayers and Wright with patriotism. Perhaps Frey accepts playing groupie to unrepentant terrorists and anti-capitalist antisemites as marks of a fundamentally good man who wants what’s best for this country. I don’t, and I didn’t believe at the time he did, either. Now? Well, we don’t know one way or the other, frankly.
What I do know is that the way Frey think language works is dangerous, for reasons I’ve shown repeatedly by way of both explanation and performative (and far in advance of my first run-in with Frey). And I know for certain that daleyrocks has never ever ever shown that I’m “making it up as I go”; that’s simply an arrow he doesn’t hold in his intellectual quiver.
Far more likely — and predictable — is that daleyrocks doesn’t understand how language and interpretation must necessarily work, despite my best efforts to explain it.
Yet, those who do get it? Duped.
Someone could explain to daleyrocks that smacking himself upside the head with a ballpeen hammer is always going to hurt, and he’d still keep trying to find a way to do it that won’t.
If he wants to use “memory hole” as a verb, he should hyphenate it. That way those of us who dig language — as evidenced by our patronage of Jeff’s site — might be less inclined to dismiss what he writes as sophomoric. Well, then there’s his content.
What’s the end game here?
“That Dustin is a liar.” said Patterico to a sympathetic pal, Scott Jacobs. “How do you know?” Jacobs asked. “Dustin didn’t come home last night, and when I asked him where he’d been, he said he’d spent the night with daleyrocks.” “So?” the Jacobs replied. “So, Dustin’s a liar. I spent the night with daleyrocks!”
Its no use arguing with dillyrocks, the dude has no reading comprehension. Right now he’s just arguing with himself to prove himself right.
How Kafkaesque, your very own Trial.
What Goldstein needs is an automated response system. To cope with the, you know, automated accusations.
All I’m pointing out is that highly repetitive processes are conducive to automation.
Told ya, messin with ya.
Clearing my name. Which I shouldn’t have to do.
“If Frey is to be believed,”
He’s not. Simple as that.
Here’s an example of how Glenn Beck used to roll all the time, as he, Pat, and Stu mercilessly eviscerate the Alex Jones/Charlie Sheen interview.
This is the kind of thing that made Beck’s career before he got the TV show and someone in NYC explained to him how the sky was falling before it fell. This is the wicked funny stuff that made him a cult favorite back in the day. This is what you miss if you think Beck’s TV program is all there is to it.
Evidence that somebody has stolen Jeff’s ID? None, not even a second hand conversation. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
You may have a hard time proving a negative, but it’s always possible to rule something out. So rule it out, daleyrocks.
Furthermore, the use of “conspiracy theory” is specious, given that conspiracy theorists posit a near-omnipotent cadre of untraceable individuals who pull the invisible levers to make everything happen, and only the conspiracy theorist has the needed perspective to see the men behind the curtain.
All Jeff’s positing is that someone created an e-mail address using his name and then sent someone harassing messages, all while impersonating Jeff. Only about 95% of the world’s population could pull off something like that, and we’re already acquainted with one nutjob who has a track record of harassing people that are associated with Jeff.
So, yeah. That’s some weapons-grade implausibility Jeff’s trying to sell.
I figured it out.
The person Jeff’s accused of harassing was… Obama.
Think about it. Some Obama guy, pissed that Jeff said Frey was wrong about Obama being a “good man”, tells Frey that Jeff’s been saying some pretty mean things about Obama, so he sends an email to Frey, saying that Jeff’s pretty darn mean about him. So Frey bites, and says Jeff’s a moneygrubbing asshole, and proceeds to smear Jeff whenever he gets the chance.
Welcome to the Alinsky sideshow.
In a perfect world where there is no epistemic closure, Frey would come forward and admit he manufactured this entire episode; that this was meant as an off-the-cuff barb gone terribly wrong. He would hang his head and apologize profusely, and eventually he’d be forgiven with the caveat that he would never resort to such hurtful tactics. His ‘good man’ mirror would be broken for, oh, seven years at least.
But this isn’t a perfect world. Frey will weasel out of this; Instapundit and HotAir and Ace will keep linking him, because he’ll still be a BMOC. But deep in their dismissive clannish hearts they will wonder about Frey, whether or not he can ever truly be trusted. We will know Frey for the lying pipsqueak that he is, if that helps.
Molon’s question struck me more the other way. What’s the endgame for Frey, on this point? What’s the endgame for daleyrocks and/or Dustin?
It’s an easy answer as to Frey. He’s caught in a lie, but he knows what all halfway decent lawyers know: Never admit anything.
As for the other two, what’s with the willful ignorance, the utter refusal to accept the facts as they stand? Where does that go?
God, I hate sheep.
He could have done something else, if he had enough space in his head to fit some common sense in with that ego of his. It would have looked like this: “You know what? Upon further consideration, what I heard is little more than a rumor. I shouldn’t have mentioned it, and I apologize for doing so and retract it.”
We’d be all done here. And yet, we’re not.
I still think the lawyer who supposedly drafted and sent this C&D letter is… inexplicable.
Who would act like this?
Who would send a C&D letter to some “let’s hope so” address? Who would do so without the least possible certification of receipt? Who would bill for this? Who would mention their client’s involvement to a third party with Frey’s record?
Doesn’t make sense. Who would act like this?
Right. It’s utterly ridiculous. But why would Frey not understand this before offering such a nonsensical proposal? Well, he doesn’t bill. He doesn’t have to.
Can’t say that hasn’t occurred to me as well, Pablo.
… ’cause, yeah. It has.
Maybe someone like, say nk, said to Patterico that he was being harassed by Jeff and that he had a C+D sent. But he did not.
Or maybe Patterico made it up and can’t admit it now that he is so overly invested in the lie.
Maybe someone mislead Rénaud, or he mislead himself, hearing what he wanted to hear, or he made the whole damn thing up. Who can say? The point is, contra daleyrocks, all we have is a worthless second hand report.
Frankly, it’s a damn shame our culture is so decadent that defending one’s reputation on a field of honor is just too kinetic for what passes for polite society these days. That’s how you really get people to think about what they’re saying before they say it.
Jeff. He would like you permanently on the defensive. That is his game. There is no letter, just a threat of one.
There’s no valid threat of one, because there’s no actionable material coming from (or did ever come from) Jeff. More it’s a SHUT UP! sort of disembodied threat, that thankfully didn’t work out so well for ‘Legal Mind of the CENTURY!’ Patrick Frey.
Dude’s fuckin with the wrong outlaw.
Destroy my reputation by constantly repeating accusations that I’ve already addressed. That’s okay. There are always new sets of readers to hit, and eventually they’ll find me, provided I keep entertaining and largely hitting the mark on my analyses.
Plus, I don’t give a fuck if Media Matters or Think Progress calls me racist or sexist or homophobic. What those dishonest venues want to do is keep us all on the defensive. Very much like Frey, come to think on it — pulling shit out of context, pretending that the text can exist beyond intent, thus granting the reader’s intent to see what he wants, in conveniently different contexts (look, Goldstein called Frey antisemitic! Pay no attention the fact that Goldstein’s post was referencing Frey’s posts in which he denied calling RSM a racist! We’re textualists! The text exists by itself! The rest can be bracketed!), as dispositive of meaning.
Plus, I don’t give a fuck if Media Matters or Think Progress calls me racist or sexist or homophobic. What those dishonest venues want to do is keep us all on the defensive.
Word:
Jeff,
At least you’re in good company;)
Heh. Speaking of forms of life who attack from behind…
The
FreyParanoid Style in Liberal PoliticsJeff, your comment on Patterico’s site about his new contributor cracked me up. He might as well, given Patterico’s cavalier attitude about accusations.
Joe —
What comment? I haven’t left any comments at Frey’s place. Haven’t been there is ages, in fact.