UPDATE MCMLXVIII
The plot has thickened in Boylangate, where Greenwald at last check is up to UPDATE VII and in an advanced tizzy. As well he should be. Because it would appear the sockpuppet, a bestselling author in addition to being a highly accomplished and widely respected constitutional lawyer,* has been administered a wedgie by a military flack.**
In the post’s UPDATE III, the sockpuppet has asked Boylan to confirm it’s his email. Boylan declines to confirm. Here’s the exchange:
UPDATE III: The following email exchange has now ensued with Col. Boylan:
GG to Col. Boylan:
Col. Boylan - Could you just confirm that this email [email forwarded] is authentic, written by and sent from you?Thanks -
Glenn Greenwald
Col. Boylan to GG:
Glenn,Interesting email and no. Why do you ask?
Steven
GG to Col. Boylan:
Only because it comes from your email address, is written in your name, and bears all of the same distinguishing features as the last emails you sent to me:steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil
Did you really not notice that?
Col. Boylan to GG:
Well, since they were on the web, not surprising. If you do a search on the web, you will also see that I have been a victim of identity theft of late in Vermont and at least two other places trying to rent property and that person identified themselves as me and thankfully the State Police were able to get in touch with me about it while I am sitting here in Baghdad.
GG to Col. Boylan:
Well isn’t it of great concern to you that someone is able to send out emails using your military email address? Do you plan to look into that?And you labelled the email I recieved “interesting.” What does that mean? Do you agree with its content, have any comments about it?
(Personal to GG: it’s “i before e except after c.”)
The sockpuppet is indignant over what he perceives to be a denial. This exchange prompts UPDATES IV and V, in which the sockpuppet, having taken a crash course in the latest Internet sleuthing techniques … much like those that were used to determine that a pseudonymous Greenwald fan had been using Greenwald’s keyboard in furtherance of Greenwaldism … endeavors to establish whether the email was in fact generated by Boylan’s email and IP address in Iraq. The sockpuppet states that it was.
So we now are presented with the delightful spectacle of a sockpuppet administered a wedgie by someone denying that he is in fact himself. There must be some clever blogospheric slang to describe a person who does that, and who has that done to him. Or maybe there are suitable words in Yiddish, something along the lines of the schlemiel/schlemozzel relationship (he who goofs ridiculously and he who has the misfortune to be in the path of the ridiculous goof). If there isn’t, I suspect there will be before this business is over.
Just one problem. The constitutional lawyer, in his advanced state of agitation, failed to notice in UPDATE III that Col. Boylan didn’t actually deny sending the email. He just declined to confirm and then made a vague reference to identity theft.
… Acclaimed, accomplished constitutional lawyer and bestselling author pantsed by double-reverse non-sockpuppet!** Somewhere, an NYU law professor is rolling his eyes.
By UPDATE VI, the constitutional lawyer’s readers have noticed, prompting the sockpuppet to fire off another email to Boylan demanding clarification. Silence ensues. In UPDATE VII, the sockpuppet cites purported Internet authorities he’s enlisted, who establish that the email in question either was written by Boylan or it wasn’t. That prompts the sockpuppet to complain about professionalism. Which is precious.
Good Lord! The Dread Pundit Bluto espies a Greenwaldian lack of context!
Why they call it Protein Wisdom: “If it weren’t so absurd, it would be positively absurdist.”
Prior mockery: Lacking Even the Ethics of a Journalist!
Greenwald, in a brief deviation from his favorite subject,*** reports:
If there is a place with more abject stupidity swirling around than the right-wing blogosphere, I’d like to know where it is.
I dunno. Anyone want to help him with that?
UPDATE MCMLXIX: Someone claiming to be Greg Mitchell at a website purporting to be that of Editor & Publisher asserts that he exchanged emails with someone he believes to be Col. Boylan or possibly someone who has hacked into Boylan’s email. The person presenting himself as Mitchell claims that Boylan definitively stated he did not send the offending email to the person who has been claiming to be Glenn Greenwald. Which means that (a) Boylan is lying or (b) someone else is using his keyboard or (c) Greenwald composed and emailed the offending statement to himself, or (d) a previously unknown personality co-habiting within the entity we refer to as Greenwald. Or as the entity that for practical purposes we’ll refer to as “Greenwald” claimed in the Greenwaldian puppetry matter (e) maybe someone in his household did it. I don’t know. In any case, it remains funny that whoever did that mocked Greenwald by saying he lacks the ethics of a journalist.
Standard footnotes, disclosure for any Greenwald-related post:
* For exhaustive information on Greenwald’s education, career highlights, assorted begats, check the embarrassingly detailed bio at his site. Also, enjoy the drawing of Greenwald, which does a remarkable job of capturing his inner wienie.
** If in fact, Boylan was ever part of this exchange. And given the sockpuppet’s history, we can’t be sure. We only have the sockpuppet’s word that there ever was in fact an email sent by anyone, and we must also consider the disturbing possibility that the sockpuppet considered it an advantageous self-promotional device to depict himself as the target of a military cyberassault by assuming someone else’s identity.
*** extolling the virtues and accomplishments of Greenwald.
Disclosure: I try to make a point of not reading as much Greenwald as possible. Unfortunately, in preparation of this post, I was required to lower my usually high standards in this regard. I’d also like to apologize to my readers for engaging in excessive, almost greenwaldian deconstruction of Greenwald’s deconstruction. It’s insidious.
Topics: Iraq, military, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:47 am on Monday, October 29, 2007
16 Responses to “UPDATE MCMLXVIII”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I saw glEEn once on tape.
I never looked back.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Jules, I think that, this one time, us wingnuts should consider adopting the leftie mantra of “Fake But Accurate”.
Really. This super wedgie administered to GG is too precious to dismiss even if Boylan’s e-mail was spoofed.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
[...] Oh what a tangled web and all that. [...]
October 29th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Commenter Michelle at Weasel Zippers explains that it’s actually Mona who’s sockpuppeting Greenwald.
Which raises the possibility that Greenwald(s) is both of them.
http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2007/10/spokesman-for-g.html#comments
October 29th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Glenn Greenwald, The Hack, Once Again Misleads His
The whole reason Greenwald did that was because he didn’t like being called out on what he is (a liar that misrepresents facts) and what he isn’t (a journalist or a person that has any ethics).
October 29th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Not only is it “i before e except after c” (Moqtada noticed that with no little degree of the schadenfreude also) but nowhere in the 400+ comments where his readers savage the email purportedly from Col. Boylan for not being up to The Greenwaldian standard of literary whateverness do they contemplate The Greenwald’s disturbing unfamiliarity with basic subject-verb agreement:
As in:
GREENWALD: The *leaks* by someone in Col. Boylan’s Army of [ed note: non-secret, non-classified] highly sensitive documents to Matt Drudge *is* an extremely serious matter.
but…
The illegal leak of a *secret, classified report * on al Anbar in August 2006 written about by Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post was NOT considered by Glenn Greenwald to be an “extremely serious matter”.
One, you see, is a “bad” leaks. [sic]
The other was a “good” leak.
Get it?
The
October 29th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
The headers, as posted by Gleen (usual caveats):
Return-Path:
Received: from 02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil
(02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil [214.13.200.111]) by rich.salon.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id l9SBFSff004148 for ;
Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:15:36 -0700
Received: from INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.11]) by 02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:15:05 +0300
Received: from INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.16]) by INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:15:05 +0300
From: “Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO”
To: (ggreenwald@salon.com)
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Oct 2007 11:15:05.0804 (UTC) FILETIME=[CAF430C0:01C81953]
These look fairly legit, ie: the ip address 214.13.200.111 resolves to “02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil” , so no obvious over-the-net hanky-panky with the sender. So far, then, we’ve established that whoever sent the mail, they were able to send it from a legit centcom.mil mailserver. Any mail admin on the system, or any competent techie working on the system could have sent it. But then, so could the Colonel.
I love this quote, though:
“The IP address — 10.70.20.11 — does not appear to be recognizable from various IP locator programs.”
Uh, maybe because it’s in an non-routable internal-only private IP block? Ya think?
Moron.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
This mouse is being played by one cool cat.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Thanks, Mookie….a good point about the double standards of GiGi.
Oh, and it’s nice to see you’re switching sides. At least for now.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Shipmates,
All I know is GiGi hasn’t a clue about how much technical goodness our young men and women posses. He’s been pwned by one (or maybe more) of them, and I suspect there might be more to come, especially driven towards many of the more leftist, idiotarian types in the press and blogosphere.
Eventually, the good folks in the military get tired of being political hocky pucks played by the left (and occasionally the right, sadly) and respond in devilishly clever ways.
It’s likely to get quite interesting in the near future. :)
Respects,
October 29th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
[...] The Jawa Report, Little Green Footballs, Wizbang, Classical Values Jules Crittenden [...]
October 29th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I love it when Crit pokes things with a stick. All kinds of things flitter and scuttle away.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
[...] See all the latest developments at Jules Crittenden’s. Posted in: Scott Thomas Beauchamp, Iraq Send to a Friend Printer Friendly comments [...]
October 29th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I’ve torn Greenwald apart in my own posts. I don’t trust a word the guy writes.
Lefties love his stuff of, of course - all the more reason to blast him out of the water.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
[...] at the Gun Nutt on the U.N.’s Gun Control Agenda Jules Crittenden has a lot of fun with a sock puppet named Glenn Greenwald Dread Pundit Bluto has fun with Glenn too. Michelle Malkin with some praise for Tom Tancredo and an [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden: UPDATE MCMLXVIII [...]