Kissane-Lataan blogwar endplay

The following is old ‘news’ now. I began this post a few weeks back, then ran out of ... um ... raison d’etre. But now it can be told...

For several years now, bloggers Dylan Kissane and Damian Lataan have been feisty combatants across a number of forums in the blogosphere. Each has given as good (or bad) as the other, but now finally one of them has hoisted the white flag.

From what I can gather, the crunch came with anonymous comments allegedly posted by Kissane on Lataan’s site, an apparent lapse of good faith to which Kissane has now admitted.

Kissane has since posted on his blog that

In recent weeks it has got to the point where debate has been forgotten and name calling has become the norm. It’s silly and childish on my part – embarrassing, even.

In the last few days Damian has threatened to attack my reputation – a threat I have no doubt he will carry out.

The latter is a reference to Lataan’s statement that “Kissane can rest assured that I shall ensure that academia is informed of his dishonesty.” That kind of thing is not unknown; for instance, a commenter at Harry Heidelberg’s club chaos once hinted at a similar threat towards Lataan.

Kissane continues:

So here’s what I intend to do about it: I’m finished with it.

This blog is wound up.

I enjoyed it – as I did before – but it is the second time that a blog has caused some problems for me so I am not going to continue with it. I will find another outlet to get my fingers moving in the mornings and to wind down in the afternoon. It’s been fun but a ‘war’ between bloggers is not fun and so I am admitting defeat. Damian: you win.

This post will stay up here for a week or so and then I will pull it down. Thanks to the people who have been so kind to me and emailed with their comments over the past few months: it was and is appreciated.

That post has indeed now been pulled down, as has the entire blog.

While Kissane’s behaviour shouldn’t be excused, this blogger also recalls his gallant defence of Lataan, when the latter was accused of contributing to a white supremacists’ site.

I guess Lataan is entitled to his triumphalist rhetoric, but Kissane, to me, will always be one of those rare gentlemen of the blogosphere. One hopes he’ll rise above his apparent lapse to re-emerge on the scene, perhaps a little wiser.

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Tim Blair undone by word-count obsession

Tim Blair’s spooky obsession with counting words on other people’s blogs has now led him into committing a demonstrable falsehood.

Blair says that Tim Dunlop “wrote 1263 words in reply” to an editorial in The Australian.

Dunlop’s post does indeed run to 1,263 words; however, 371 of them are copied’n’pasted from the Oz editorial and other sources. Thus, only 891 words (59%) of the post in question are Dunlop’s own.

You have to ask: What does Blair get out of propagating deliberate falsehoods? And what do his readers get out of the collaborative two-step on his blog?

And what is this nutty obsession of Blair’s with counting words at Dunlop’s site?

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