In my first post, I speculated that Glenn Greenwald must be using an anonymizer, because I couldn't understand why his IP kept showing itself as part of the Latin America and Carribean network. I assumed he lived in NYC.

I was wrong.

He does in fact live in South America, as Dan Riehl mentions. And Greenwald "admits" this (not that there's anything to admit) on his blog.

But that's part of his attempt to disguise what he's being charged with. Rather than own up to the charge of his dishonest sock-puppetry, he instead replies to a whole series of "charges" levelled against him -- like that he's gay, and that he lives in Brazil.

Those aren't "charges." They're simply biographical facts.

In the midst of "rebutting" these "allegations," he quickly slips in, "Oh, and by the way, some people are accusing me of posting in other names, but it's not true, so that should settle the matter." Pretty much.

One funny thing about his thread-- not that you should go there, although it was nice to see spongeworthy making trouble. Anyway, it was annoying the HELL out of me that there were all these repetitive posts telling Greenwald he was the greatest blogger in the world, and that he was fighting the good fight, and that the rightwingers were just jealous, and that we all had his back. They just kept coming, over and over, with barely any variation between them, save a changed word here or a reordering of the sentences there.

And then I noticed the authors of these posts:

Wilson

Ellison

Thomas Ellers

Ryan

Hee, hee, hee.

But Seriously: Read this again. Does this sound like it was written by an American, or a non-American?

Greenwald only has a New York Times Best Selling Book on the Bush Administration and its abuses of power. And he has one of the most-read blogs on the Interent, after 9 months of blogging. And Senators read from his blog at Senate hearings and his posts lead to front-page news stories in major newspapers.
Why would anyone think what he has to say matters? It's not like anyone listens to him. It's not like he's Ace, or Jeff Goldstein, or Patterico, or Sister Toldjah or Glenn Reynolds, or someone who really matters.

Great advice, you super-important bloggers should only to each other and about each other. Don't bother with anyone in the Left because if you ignore them, they'll just go away.

Posted by: Ellison on July 13, 2006 08:14 AM

"Don't bother with anyone on the Left..."

That's not what a Brazillian says. A Brazillian says, "Don't bother with anything that challenges your neocon American assumptions..."

An American leftist says "Don't bother with anyone on the Left..." He doesn't have to specify "American Left," because he assumes the "American" part.

Who reads his blogs? "Senators?" Or "American Senators?" Again, the "American" part of it is assumed.

Because it was written by an American, not a Brazillian, nor, for that matter, a hyperintelligent ocicat named "Sox" (short for "Socrates").

Wilson's Greatest Hits: Wilson has a long career, apparently posting on Glenn's site quite a bit, usually to agree with him and call dissenters names.

Seems the "Protective Boyfriend" has been doing a lot of protecting for a very long time.

Kevin, who sends this, notes that this Wilson feller writes that Greenwald "explains his point quite convincingly" in the 5th link, and also writes, "Glenn - you were awesome on the radio. Wish you were on longer!!"

Wilson also writes:

"Ace's" participation here is starting to make sense. He's a moron who knows nothing about the eavesdropping scandal.

That's another Ace he's talking about, and yet I've never been angrier in my entire life.

Has Greenwald been using "Wilson" to stir controversy and deal more harshly with dissenting commenters than he had the balls do under his own name?

Say it ain't so, "Wilson." Of all of the sock-puppets, you were the one I most admired. The one I almost... well, it's silly, but in another life perhaps, we may have been... friends?

Oh, Wilson. Ohhhhhh Wilson.

You have crushed me.

Posted by: Ace at 06:44 PM | Comments (37)
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Honestly, I'm just looking for reasons to link a blog called "The Anal Philosopher."

What does an anal philosopher do, I wonder?

Thinks about shit, I suppose.

Posted by: Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (12)
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Now that's my kind of nuance!

Thanks to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 05:21 PM | Comments (16)
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First of all, let me dispose of the idiotic defenses offered, either out of rabid partisanship or a desire to be "different" than Patterico, Shawn, and myself, by some on the left and the right.

Wizbang, there's hardly any need to go speculating about the possibility that Greenwald toted his wireless hither and yon and at various points different people were assigned his IP.* This theory requires multiple rabid Glenn Greenwald fans, all living in Brazil, of all places, all frequenting the same conservative blogs Greenwald is known to, all defending Greenwald in much the same languange, and, furthermore, all doing so in perfect, unaccented, idiomatic English, and lastly, all having been just been coindentally assigned the same IP address as Glenn Greenwald during the times and dates he was known to be posting on conservative blogs, coincidentally being assigned the same IP's out of the many thousands of dynamic IP addresses available at any time.

Do you know how the cumulative probability of a series of events is calculated? The probability (a fraction of 1 or less) of one event is multiplied by the next and then by the next and so forth. Let us speculate about the number of people reading blogs in Brazil; let us multiply that fraction by the number of people specifically reading American blogs; let us diminish that further by multiplying by the tiny fraction of people who have heard of Glenn Greenwald at all; and that by the smaller fraction of people who are intense fans of Glenn Greenwald, and so on, and so on, until we finally get to multiplying this already-insignificant possibility by the odds that such persons would be assigned Greenwald's IP, a fraction that could not be more than 1 in 1000, and probably is quite a bit less.

The possibility quickly moves from the "Trivial" the "Negligible" to the "Wildly improbable" until ultimately settling somewhere in the neighborhood of the "Absurdly implausible," edging on the "mathematically impossible."

Perhaps you think you're being fair. I hope you take no offense when I say that I think you are merely being idiotic.

Furthermore, not even Glenn Greenwald himself postulates such a fantastical defense; Greenwald's defense is precisely as I knew it would be: he claims that "friends" or "houseguests" or, who knows, hyperintelligent ocicats typed the messages from his home.

If Glenn Greenwald admits the messages originated from his home and his computer, I don't think it's necessary for "technical wizards" like Wizbang to construct statistically impossible series of coincidences that strain common sense, if not the limits of the human imagination itself.

And for all the rabid left-wing partisans suggesting that Patterico and I "forged" the records: If this is a viable possibility, why does Glenn Greenwald not offer it himself?

Perhaps because he knows something you do not-- like, for example, that he knows the records are quite accurate, and that he knows the posts in question originated from inside his home?

Which, again, is precisely what he claims. How Greenwald's defenders imagine it's proper to suggest more bizarre defenses than Greenwald himself can manage with a straight face, frankly, escapes me.

So: Greenwald admits the "sock puppet" messages originated from within his home. Let us take his admission on that, eh?

Greenwald will not say whom this mysterious defender might be. The obvious candidate is his boyfriend. I do not wish to make anything of that; it's not exactly a secret that Greenwald is gay. Nor is that reason for tittering or derision.

But he would have us believe the following:

1) This boyfriend chases around all references to Glenn Greenwald on the right side of the blogosphere obsessively, just as Glenn Greenwald himself does. This sort of blog-obsession is not common; right now there are dozens of left wing bloggers reviling me, and yet I have no interest in responding to them. I just don't care. Some people do-- Glenn Greenwald, for example. And, if Glenn Greenwald's explanation is to be believed, so does Glenn Greenwald's boyfriend.

I have dated women who cared for me, and I assure you they were not constantly on patrol for other bloggers' attacks on me, nor were they posting impassioned defenses on my behalf.

And yet Mr. Greenwald would have us believe he is dating a man who not only shares his passion for tracking down every snide remark made against Glenn Greenwald, but furthermore, going so far as to construct false identities and distancing scenarios ("I just emailed Glenn about this...") to conceal his connection to Greenwald.

2) This boyfriend further visits the precise same conservative sites that Glenn Greenwald is known to read, despite the fact that that there are, alas, many conservative sites he might defend his boyfriend's honor on. The boyfriend focuses like a laser on precisely those blogs Greenwald reads.

3) This boyfriend writes in perfectly-unaccented, native-speaker, fully-fluent, utterly-idiomatic, northeastern-educated prose, very similar to Glenn Greenwald's, despite the fact that Mr. Greenwald's boyfriend seems to be Brazillian.

4) This boyfriend, if he is who I believe he is, does in fact blog, but seems chiefly concerned with soccer. If he has a passion for politics -- particularly American politics, rather than the much-different Latin American politics which would seem more likely -- he manages to conceal such interest on his blog, apart from a few links without much comment on blogs that have attacked Glenn Greenwald. (Ace of Spades not among them.)

And yet he apparently has a keen interest in, and understanding of, such intrinsically-American issues as the NSA wiretapping controversy.

So my questions, Mr. Greenwald, are as follows:

Will you allow your boyfriend, the culprit you insinuate is behind these messages defending you, to answer questions on the telephone so that I can determine his precise level of fluency in English?

Oh, he speaks English, I know. And rather well -- for a non-native speaker. But I think we both know he cannot pass for a native speaker, don't we?

As your boyfriend seems such a bear on American politics, surely he has commented frequently on blogs (not in defense of you) offering his own opinions, with his own non-sock-puppet handle. Can you point out some of these postings by your politically-obsessive boyfriend so we can evauate word use, grammar, sentence structure, etc., to determine if they at all resemble the posts by "Ellison," "Wilson," "Thomas Ellers," and "Ryan"? (Odd name choices, by the way, for a Brazillian. They seem strangely... American, yes-yes?)

And, more importantly:

Will you simply admit what you have done now before are embarrassed any further?

I will put you on notice that every posting by "Ellison," "Thomas Ellers," "Ryan," and "Wilson" is as we speak being time-checked.

When it turns out, as I suspect it will, that a "Glenn Greenwald" comment is made at one time and a "Ryan" comment is made within three minutes of the Glenn Greenwald post, followed quickly by another "Glenn Greenwald" post, it's going to be more difficult to maintain that your boyfriend just scooted on to the computer for those three minutes to make a quick post in your defense before relinquishing it back to you... won't it?

You have dug a deep enough hole. You have embarrassed yourself with your childish antics and preening vanity and inability simply let things go.

But these are venal sins.

Lying, premeditatedly and unapologetically, to your readers and all the world and maintaining that deceit in the face of overwhelming evidence is a mortal sin for a writer, and one you are not likely to recover from.

And so I ask you again, for your own sake:

Is there anything you -- or "Ellison," or "Ryan," or any of your other dedicated defenders -- would like to say at this point?

While it is not yet too late?

If, implausible as it seems, your boyfriend or houseguest or, who knows, Great Aunt Mathilda put these posts up from you computer, why do you not let this person admit his culpability on your blog and field questions from curious readers as well as skeptics?

PS: I'm also not sure why it's "fair" to blame the boyfriend, rather than Glenn Greenwald, for the dishonest behavior. Aren't you still blaming someone? Aren't you just arbitrarily blaiming the less likely, less personally interested party, for dishonest behavior, and then patting yourself on the back for your "fairness"?

Eh. I guess the Brazilian boyfriend doesn't count. He's just a "civilian."

How To Admit Sock-Puppetry With Dignity and Honor: At the end of this point, I sadly informed all of my readers and commenters that I had made them all up to boost my traffic.

* Correction: Wizbang did not suggest the improbable theory I suggested. Other people have, but not Wizbang. I misunderstood a digest of it from a poster, and it sounded like the "conspiracy of random IP assignment" theory popular at Greenwald's asylum. I should have known Wizbang wouldn't propose such an outlandish theory.

Still, I find his credulousness regarding Greenwald's ever-protective, virtual-doppleganger boyfriend somewhat... dopey.

Posted by: Ace at 04:29 PM | Comments (91)
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It's all the woman's fault.

A man's brainpower, scientists say, can be damaged by sharing a bed. When they spend the night with a partner, their sleep patterns are disturbed, whether they make love or not.

This leads to poorer mental agility the next day.

Women do not suffer from the same problem. They have disturbed sleep if they share a bed, but tend to get better quality rest when they do drop off and their brain power remains undiminished.

That one where he asks me to 'look for something' under the bedcovers?
A timeless classic, forged in the white-hot dutch oven of matrimonial love.

The findings suggest if a man has an important day ahead he would be best to head off to the spare room rather than share the marital bed.

Look, I know he'd rather be working on new ideas to improve the particle-accelerator-thingie, but I really need him to scrape and paint the garage door this weekend.

UPDATE: Magical Pat postulates:

The part about not sleeping well affecting your day makes sense. The last thing you want is a woman named margaret who tosses and turns in your bed all night. Nothing worse than Restless Peg Syndrome.

Posted by: LauraW. at 04:26 PM | Comments (32)
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His IP's put him somewhere on the Atlantic coast of America.

Wow! There's someone out there defending Glenn Greenwald who isn't Glenn Greenwald himself! (Or, as Glenn Greenwald claims, someone shacking up with him in Rio.)

Thanks to Dan for helping solve that minor mystery.

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (4)
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ELLISON: You the man!

THOMAS ELLERS: No, you the man!

WILSON: The two of you are both the man!

RYAN: Allow me to interject that the three of you, taken together, are, in fact, da man!

GLENN GREENWALD: May I suggest -- that all of us, all living here together like the Beatles in Help!, are, collectively, the man?

MURMURING OF ASSENT.

ELLISON: I can live with that.

THOMAS ELLERS: Okay, who gets the first five minute shift on our single computer?

RYAN: Dibs!

WILSON: Shotgun!

GLEN GREENWALD: You incorrigible rapscallions. I love you guys.

Update: Check the comments in Patterico's post.

A cat named "Ellison" actually turns up on Greenwald's own threads to, get this, defend Greenwald, and instruct dissenters that "Glen has already addressed that."

Heh.

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (37)
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Thanks to Jessica's Well.

Sock-Puppets in Love

Thanks to Confederate Yankee.

Thanks to, I think, the Bumperstickerist for that. If my h/t is wrong, forgive me. I was ready to pass out at 11 last night but couldn't fall asleep and then this hit at 2 and then I was up until 7:30 -- yes, seven-thirty -- fixing stuff and editing and deleting the last two digits of the IP. Sounds simple to most of you, but I honestly have no technical skills at all.

I am a zombie.

More Photo Phunnies: Good, good stuff.

Compelling. And rich.

And Still More... Jennifer "Ellison" Garner stars in Alias.

Ooooohhh... stings the nostrils.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (30)
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Below the fold, as it's of questionable interest, and contains some potty-mouth. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (29)
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Yet he seems strangely unconcerned about this purloining blackguard "Ellison" burglarizing his home to compose complimentary messages about himself.

A new accusation is that I've been engaging in so-called "sock puppetry" by leaving comments in response to posts that attack me under other names., i.e., that I use multiple names to comment and the same comment was left at several blogs by the same IP address under different names.

Not frequently, I leave comments at blogs which criticize or respond to something I have written. I always, in every single instance, use my own name when doing so. I have never left a single comment at any other blog using any name other than my own, at least not since I began blogging. IP addresses signify the Internet account one uses, not any one individual. Those in the same household have the same IP address. In response to the personal attacks that have been oozing forth these last couple of weeks, others have left comments responding to them and correcting the factual inaccuracies, as have I. In each case when I did, I have used my own name.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (50)
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