Questions For Mr. Greenwald

First of all, let me dispose of the idiotic defenses offered, either out of rabid partisanship or a desire to be "different" than Patterico, Shawn, and myself, by some on the left and the right.

Wizbang, there's hardly any need to go speculating about the possibility that Greenwald toted his wireless hither and yon and at various points different people were assigned his IP. This theory requires multiple rabid Glenn Greenwald fans, all living in Brazil, of all places, all frequenting the same conservative blogs Greenwald is known to, all defending Greenwald in much the same languange, and, furthermore, all doing so in perfect, unaccented, idiomatic English, and lastly, all having been just been coindentally assigned the same IP address as Glenn Greenwald during the times and dates he was known to be posting on conservative blogs, coincidentally being assigned the same IP's out of the many thousands of dynamic IP addresses available at any time.

Perhaps you think you're being fair. I hope you take no offense when I say that I think you are merely being idiotic.

Furthermore, not even Glenn Greenwald himself postulates such a fantastical defense; Greenwald's defense is precisely as I knew it would be: he claims that "friends" or "houseguests" or, who knows, hyperintelligent ocicats typed the messages from his home.

If Glenn Greenwald admits the messages originated from his home and his computer, I don't think it's necessary for "technical wizards" like Wizbang to construct statistically impossible series of coincidences that strain common sense, if not the imagination itself.

So: Greenwald admits the "sock puppet" messages originated from within his home. Let us take his admission on that, eh?

Greenwald will not say whom this mysterious defender might be. The obvious candidate is his boyfriend. I do not wish to make anything of that; it's not exactly a secret that Greenwald is gay.

But he would have us believe the following:

1) This boyfriend chases around all references to Glenn Greenwald on the right side of the blogosphere obsessively, just as Glenn Greenwald himself does.

2) This boyfriend further visits the precise same conservative sites that Glenn Greenwald is known to read, despite the fact that that there are, alas, many conservative sites he might defend his boyfriend's honor on.

3) This boyfriend writes in perfectly-unaccented, native-speaker, fully-fluent, utterly-idiomatic, northeastern-educated prose, very similar to Glenn Greenwald's, despite the fact that Mr. Greenwald's boyfriend seems to be Brazillian.

4) This boyfriend, if he is who I believe he is, does in fact blog, but has not a single political link, and is, rather, wholly interested in soccer. If he has a passion for politics -- particularly American politics, rather than the much-different Latin American politics which would seem more likely -- he manages to conceal such interest on his blog.

And yet he apparently has a keen interest in, and understanding of, such intrinsically-American issues as the NSA wiretapping controversy.

So my question, Mr. Greenwald, are as follows:

Will you allow your boyfriend, the culprit you insinuate is behind these messages defending you, to answer questions on the telephone so that I can determine his precise level of fluency in English?

Oh, he speaks English, I know. And rather well -- for a non-native speaker. But I think we both know he cannot pass for a native speaker, don't we?

And, more importantly:

Will you simply admit what you have done now before are embarrassed any further?

I will put you on notice that every posting by "Ellison," "Thomas Ellers," "Ryan," and "Wilson" is as we speak being time-checked. When it turns out, as I suspect it will, that a "Glenn Greenwald" comment is made at one time and a "Ryan" comment is made within three minutes of the Glenn Greenwald post, followed quickly by another "Glenn Greenwald" post, it's going to be more difficult to maintain that your boyfriend just scooted on to the computer for those three minutes to make a quick post in your defense before relinquishing it back to you... won't it?

You have dug a deep enough hole. You have embarrassed yourself with your childish antics and preening vanity and inability simply let things go.

But these are venal sins.

Lying, premeditatedly, to your readers and all the world and maintaining that deceit in the face of overwhelming evidence is a mortal sin for a writer, and one you are not likely to recover from.

And so I ask you again, for your own sake:

Is there anything you -- or "Ellison," or "Ryan," or any of your other dedicated defenders -- would like to say at this point?

While it is not yet too late?