Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Anonymous posters on the Internet can’t save America

Uh huh....

Yes, Doug, your complaint does indeed take us back to the days of our Founding Fathers. To the era in which ratification of the Constitution was being hotly debated up and down the eastern seaboard.

And the most famous of the publications in support of its ratification: The Federalst Papers.

Signed by Publius.

Shameful.

[FN: echoing Irked's prior comment]

After a series of investigative skirmishes with passionate realnombrenos over on the Other Side, I have determined that the real issue is nothing more than the common ego.

When logical expositions, illustrative scenarios, and examples of fine anonymity throughout history are met with nothing more than unsubstantiated declamations of principle and bullying tactics (including shutting off the microphone of opponents who are handing you your arse on a cedar plank... who does that? Oh, right), you know that the real problem is a psychological insecurity of some kind.

I was saving the following vignette as a final flourish, and I feel so sorry for those souls still trapped on the Other Side that they will not be bathed in it's delicious light.

My daughter had a pretty normal name given to her at birth, bestowed in the standard way. But at the age of six months she was given a Sioux Indian name by a grandson of Sitting Bull during a conversation at Ruby's Cafe in Missoula. Her Sioux name stuck as a nickname and after she turned 18 she legally changed to it. A few years later she got married and changed her last name.

I would like the Realnombrenos to apply their logic to her real-life case of name shifting. According to their logic, was she a coward, hiding behind a false name for 18 years? Was legally changing her name an acceptable way of coming out of hiding, and instantaneously transforming the babble of her bomb-throwing habit of speech into creditable and upstanding Truthsaying? Or did she do nothing more than cement her life of skulduggery beneath a false banner? (I don't feel I need to exposit about the adding of insult to injury when she changed the rest of her name).

Or was all the name changing simply a matter of her own private business?

Boom! I rest my case.
Logtroll, the Cowardly

Logtroll, you were suspended from posting to news articles because you attacked another poster. As for you being a smart ass, I'm used to that.

...and yet, a few of the FFs used pen names for the Federalist papers SEE: James Madison

Yesterday, on Bay Area talk radio, this very discussion was being debated. Yet, irony of all ironies, the name of the caller is anonymous (you can say you're Joe Schmoe) and no one would know.

So sorry if I appeared to be attacking a poster, I thought I was merely pricking puffery. My mistake.

Logtroll, the Penitent

Thank you. Your posting privileges have been restored. You can attack me all you want but others are off limits. I prefer to see issues debated and when the comments denigrate into attacks, I have to step in, which is something I don't like to do.

I'll overlook the slightly snide reference to "puffery" because it was a poor use of the word by me and the comment that used it was modified. My apologies for the hyperbole. My bad.

Folks, let's clear the air a bit here. Some people who commented here and on the column itself on the news side were upset by my use of the word "coward" to refer to those who post anonymously.

In retrospect, my use of that word was going too far. While I often wander what those who use "handles" have to hide, it was presumptuous to conclude that any and all who did were cowards. I modified both the headline and the content of the column to remove the word.

Hell, I make mistakes and I freely admit doing so. Obviously, based on the comments, this was a topic that stirred passions in people. I did have to step in and take action against some who used the opportunity to attack others, including one poster who does use his name. The only person on this web site that readers are free to attack is me. Sometimes I deserve the attacks but it's my name on the home page and I own the place, although more often I think it owns me.

I appreciate the comments and feedback. As I said in a comment posted below the story Friday, I have no plans to change the current policy.

--Doug

I believe you are comparing apples and oranges here. The point in the column was that the signers of the Declaration of Independence used their names when they signed that document, nothing more, nothing less.

As I wrote earlier above, I had this total whack job from Olive Branch Mississippi (go figure!) suss-out who I was in real life and post my entire Myspace.com account. Good thing that account is old and was never updated to current information.

She did so because, at the time I had that account I was single, and she thought it would embarrass me if she posted publicly that I was looking to meet a nice guy to spend the rest of my life with.

Being from Mississippi, she hadn't quite figured out that you can't embarrass an out gay man in San Francisco. She obviously wasn't too bright.

Filing a complaint for stalking with her IP provider took care of that issue and her. I've never seen her since.

There are a few nutters out there, and I seem to have found the nutter-pit. They seem to congregate at certain political-persuasion sites.

I truly don't have anything to hide, but I really don't want to deal with nutter whackjobs, either. Clearly, a nutjob can find out who you are even with a moniker - it just takes them longer. Plus it gives them something to do.