An outraged reader of this blog has appeared and rather than invite me into his office at the university where he teaches, Matthew Gallman has haunted the comments sections of other blogs and demanded respectable people stop linking to my posts. This entry of mine has irritated him especially.
From this post, I see he has been working on my expulsion for some time. His points can be summarized in his own words as
Some clown sitting in his basement can write disgusting, ignorant, lies about a serious historian, and your students and my students who google that name will find those lies. So, yeah, it would be nice if bloggers would stand up for decency.Brooks Simpson has a fairly complete read on the situation on his blog (scroll down).
I am a critic of ACW non-fiction literature. Occasionally, my behavior is clownish. I accept correction where wrong on a matter of fact or context. I try to be truthful and right.
People come here for an entirely different perspective not available elsewhere. Where my posts are especially obnoxious, these reflect a high level of my own frustration with this or that matter. Regular readers discount my excesses or skip the ugly parts and look for what interests them.
Here be criticism. ACW history lacks critics. This blog fills a gap.
I said a few days ago (right here), that this blog should not come up at the top of a search on the name of this or that author. However, the paucity of ACW reviews and commentary on the web give me disproportionate rankings. This was the first ACW blog and Google began indexing it on day two. Google and I have been close friends for 10 years. The removal of a few links will be utterly futile. The 3,902 posts from this blog will continue to rank in search results.
(BTW, by attacking me, Matthew Gallman is establishing a search engine footprint for himself that his students should not see. This post will be indexed. So will others where he has posted comments. Avoid that tar baby, Mr. Gallman.)
If Mr. Gallman would like to reduce my Googlish influence, he need only start generating solid, searchable copy online praising the authors he loves. It would be a labor of love. It could be fun. His students rate him highly. Let him learn to use the web constructively and stop acting like a crank.
I am sorry that Simpson and Levin have been personally bothered by an outraged reader of this blog. Apologies!
Meanwhile, the blogosphere rolls on.
(p.s. If Matthew Gallman would like to write measured, substantive criticism of the piece that irritates him so, let him post it. It will become part of the Internet record and I would happily to link to it.)
Update 6/1; Revised to render Gallman (spelling) correctly.
