The Noobs Are Cute

Remarking on the Ed Whelan/"Publius" dust-up, Dan Rhiel says:

"Jules is a journalist and a friend who came to blogging, not late, but not early, either. Certain conventions have held sway out here for a very long time. Respect for desired anonymity through a pseudonym happens to be one of them. If that's changed somehow, perhaps some of the critics of the apology - also see RedState, Ed Driscoll and Powerline, for example - will link to the decree, assuming it's been posted on the web. I must have missed it, somehow."

To anyone who paid attention, and if we're going to talk about a "very long time", those "certain conventions" were under attack in Usenet. There was a period when I published a half-dozen times a day the name, address and telephone number of one Gary Roselles in Rapid City, South Dakota, because the commie rat-bastard was using my name as his Usenet userid and I was the only person in the world who could and would do anything about it.

You're wrong, Rhiel. There was never a "convention" that allowed anonymity irresponsibility.

Later -- I've left the mangling of Dan Riehl's name in that post because it's history right there in front of everyone and his correction addresses it admirably. (Yes: it is a big deal. That's what I say.)

Onward:

"If what was going on with Beck was going on, he was entitled to out the guy in my view. I'm not saying the rule is etched in stone, never to be ignored. And if Publius were impersonating Whelan, he'd be right to out him, as well. That wasn't the case."

I know that, and I didn't say it was.

And all that I'm going to say about this is something that I wrote a couple of days ago in another context: "The unprincipled mind clings to particulates with dogged faith." I stated the principle and that's all there is to it. It's correct, and that's sufficient.