Michael Fumento

There are lots of reasons people blog. One may be that nobody else would ever publish their material. Some of these people nevertheless fill a valuable niche that just doesn't appeal to outside publications; others are simply inept. The latter describes Tim Lambert and his Deltoid blogsite. An anti-American Aussie, he regularly displays his ignorance on a wide variety of issues, perhaps in the belief that quantity makes up for quality.

To the extent Lambert is recognized for anything, it's probably for his embarrassing defense of the pre-election surprise paper in The Lancet that desperately tried to show that Americans had killed 100,000 civilians in Iraq. (At the time Human Rights Watch was using a figure of about 15,000 as was bin Laden himself!) Ever since I first chided him for thinking his blog had the least ability to support his Jihadist friends, he's made it one of his missions in life to try to hurt me personally. He has a separate motive in that when I've posted responses on his website his traffic shoots up. Once I recognized that I bit my tongue and posted no more responses, though he has taunted me frequently in a vain effort to get me to do so.

So instead he merely claims I have posted on his website, using a false name. In blogging terminology, that's using a "sockpuppet." He claims he's compared my IP address to that of the alleged sockpuppet's and they're the same. Problem is, the only proof is is his word and this is the word of not just anybody but of Tim Lambert. Conversely, when John Lott used his "Mary Rosh" sockpuppet, numerous people were able to confirm that Roush's and Lott's IP address were the same. [I wrote this in error: Turns out when Lott's IP address was correlated with Roush's, he immediately admitted he and Roush were the same. This puts him far above Lambert, who when caught red-handed admitted to nothing.]

At the same time, Lambert has accused me of rewriting my own Wikipedia entry. Actually he rewrote it; I attempted to strike it. (I couldn't, for the wonderful reason that Lambert was there first.) Why did I try to strike it? I don't feel encyclopedia entries are the places for vendettas. It's not appropriate in the Encyclopedia Britannica nor is it in Wikipedia.

Ah, but the plot thickens. Among Lambert's few friends is John Fleck, whose blog is inkstain. (Another type of stain comes to mind, but whatever.) Fleck wrote of my "latest blubbering discussion with Tim Lambert." But as I've said, Lambert's pathetic efforts to lure me into "discussion" have failed. No discussion; ergo no "blubbering" discussion. But if Lambert had said that on his site it would have left his few readers scratching their heads, so Fleck posted it instead. Fleck, therefore, is a human sockpuppet. Not the sort of career to which most of us would aspire. In his Dec. 5 posting, Fleck also admitted that which Lambert would not: "There's this strange sort of schoolyard bully pleasure in taunting Michael Fumento." That Fleck says this with blood cascading from his broken nostrils is besides the point.

But it gets better yet. In a discussion group of self-described Aussie lefties to which Lambert belongs, our hero is charged with using at least two different false names to post comments on his own Deltoid website, "Kevin Donahue" and "Robert Johnson." Directly and repeatedly confronted with this Lambert repeatedly refused to respond, though he did respond to other aspects of the discussion. After Lambert ignored the accuser one time too many the other writer blasted him. "Sure, you are allowed to post anything you like on your site," he said. "But please spare us the pious talk that you support the truth. When you go around hitting others across the head for using aliases and then get found out doing that yourself--you come out looking like a cheap creep."

Right. Tim Lambert, thy name is Mary Roush.

Lambert is a pathetic individual whose actions do not represent what the blogosphere is supposed to be about. And while yes, in a real sense writing in general and blogging specifically can be considered "therapeutic," a keyboard is no substitute for professional therapy and psychotropic medicine.