When Really, Really Stupid Bloggers Attack: The Lindsay Stewart Story

Sometimes, they just make it too easy

In a recent post over at the blog of he who stiffs kids (with cancer!), Lindsay Stewart has just managed to blow a gasket.

It's a fairly hilarious little temper tantrum, so one hardly knows where to start.

Apparently, Stewart wants to take issue with two things: first off, that my writing, in the past, has reached audiences in excess of 30,000 readers, and that this blog has recently featured exclusive content featuring Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff and Lt General Romeo Dallaire.

We'll get to that in time, but first let's deal with some of the preamble to Stewart's faux-outrage, because this is where some of the best hilarity lies.

"Ross has taken great delight in throwing names around. He is part of the blogger outing stalkerazi, so I am not shocked to see my real name waved about when he gets up on his pudgy hind legs to bleat. My name isn't a secret, I'm not anonymous, I just prefer to use a nom de blog. He has also made much of having discovered Red's name. Also not a tightly held secret. The implication in his useage is that he thinks he's shamed us, as though we have anything to be ashamed of in our writings. Whatever."

And yet Stewart threw such remarkable tantrums when her identity was revealed. Yep, Lindsay Stewart didn't care about that at all.

Then, of course, there's good old Marty Rayner who recently deleted "version 1.0" of his blog. He insists that it was done in order to "turn the page and start a new chapter", or some other hogwash. But most people don't turn the page by slashing and burning every previous page -- unless, of course, they don't want people to read those particular pages for some reason. Such as, perhaps they're embarrassed (and for good reason, too).

And in fact, Stewart herself was very, very upset about the revelation of her identity, as were her sycophants who swooped on by the Nexus to bawl about it every time it was mentioned.

Take note of this -- we just caught Lindsay Stewart lying.

"Ross' audience of "30,000+" is claimed because Patrick writes for his school paper. Holy meritocracy chilluns. How much does that gig pay, I wonder."

Is this coming from the same person who insisted that the value of their work was found entirely in the satisfaction she herself derived from it? But let's press on.

Stewart picked this is some how evidentiary that I'm a liar -- that my claims of having reached such a modestly impressive readership were somehow false, then fails to follow that particular idea through to conclusion, instead deciding to quote from a Godzilla-themed point/counter-point (located in the Arts & Entertainment section of the newspaper by the way -- you know, the section where she typically reads the bad reviews of her awful, awful performances).

Then again, there is a certain advantage to writing for a paper that audits its circulation. If Lindsay wants to accuse the Gateway of exaggerating its readership numbers, she may feel free to make that accusation. It would be fun to see her try and prove it, but then again, Stewart and her sycophants have never been worried about things like "proof".

Take note of this one, too: we just caught Lindsay Stewart dissembling.

"Well Ross wrote the fourth article but it is hardly an exclusive, an opinion piece and one of middling quality. But perhaps the vagaries of the University's web archiving have eluded me. Perhaps Ross has been awarded these cherished exclusives for his highly regarded web log the Nexus of Assholery! So I performed a little search and land sakes alive lookie what came up!

Dallaire to Canadian Youth wherein Patrick EXCLUSIVELY, reproduces the text of Dallaire's speech to the student body. Yes, he adds a few extra comments to bookend the piece but hardly what one of integrity would call an exclusive.

Well maybe I'll have better luck with the fabulous, one on one exclusive interview with Michael Ignatieff. Hey there's two of them, My Meeting With Michael, So To Speak which, again, provides the text of a speech delivered by the gentleman in question. Then there's Part 2 which is the EXCLUSIVE transcript of a question and answer session that followed the speech.

Seems that in all of his huffing and bloated claims of his own magnificence, Patrick left out an important detail, the truth. He doesn't have an exclusive interview with either Dallaire or Ignatieff either."

Ah, yes. But Stewart is missing the point: that being, that I never said they were exclusive interviews.

What Stewart seems to be ignoring (or openly trying to conceal) is that there are two kinds of exclusives: granted exclusives, in which an individual agrees to sit down with a reporter and grant an interview on an exclusive basis, and earned exclusives, in which a reporter takes advantage of an opportunity that their competitors don't.

No one else, in the blogosphere or otherwise, has published this particular content -- at least in its entirety. Thus, it is exclusive to the Nexus of Assholery.

But perhaps Stewart is really so offended by these exclusives because it directly contradicts an idea she once put forth.

The "idea", as previously asserted by Stewart: that I'm just another evil, arch-conservative blogger. Now, if this were really the case, then why am I posting so many delicious left-wing goodies on my site?

Better not to ask people who have constantly demonstrated themselves to be intellectual cowards such difficult questions.

At the end of the day, one must ask themselves, what is it that people like Lindsay Stewart really take issue with? Is it the ideas the Nexus promotes -- often ideas that they themselves claim to support (but will discard just as often)?

Or is it because I stand among those who were able to find the courage and moral wherewithall to stand up to Stewart and her blog mate, and never back down?

It's uncertain why Lindsay Stewart hates the Nexus so much. But the truth is, I could really care less. We just caught Lindsay Stewart lying once, dissembling once, and being just plain retarded on a third count.

She can hate me now. But I won't stop now.

It's only just begun.