When a distinguished author, one-time Chief of Staff to Brian Mulroney, and Globe and Mail columnist finds himself in the midst of a flamewar with a lowly “potty mouth” blogger, what does he do?
Why he does what any trained journalist and former Ambassador to Israel would do! He draws on his formidable academic credentials and experience to rally his loyal supporters.
Screenshot of comments thread:
It’s just too bad that he didn’t enhance those impressive credentials in dead tree journalism with a few courses in web administration.
Screenshot of comment admin page:
I sure hope Warren Kinsella doesn’t hear about this…
(Out of respect for the owners of the Shotgun, I won’t link to the thread, though I have saved it for future reference, if required.)
The Globe isn’t known for having good,original columnists,and academic pedigree is no measure of intelligence.Funny how those who say they know so much about the ME, are the ones who fight hardest to preserve a failed status quo.
Hi Kate
I apologise in advance for the foolishness of my question, but sadly I’m thick as two short planks when it comes to all that computery goodness…
does this mean that NS is pretending to be MWW in posts to the Shotgun?
thanks
Monger, let me add a few more planks to the pile – I’m not getting this either.
Took me a sec to catch on too, but you’ll notice the IP address of the posts by MWW and Norman Spector ARE THE SAME! As I already noted in the comments of the Shotgun thread, Ol’ Norm is not so tech savvy.
Let’s see: the same IP address yet two different handles…
Oh it’s obvious: one was sitting on the other’s lap as they shared an extended Valentine’s weekend of surfing, ear nuzzling, slap and tickle, and extended dirty talk.
I’m sure that’s what’s going on here.
Not that the identical IPs is not conclusive enough, but a reverse IP lookup shows that the IP belongs to Shaw.ca, Norm’s service provider.
(e.g. http://members.shaw.ca./nspector4/)
Both MWW and Norm have static IP addresses. Over the span of months of commenting, the logs show them to be identical from day to day.
After I challenged him on the (now deleted) thread, he fessed up and covered by stating it was his idea, and that he had posted on MWW’s behalf. (MWW had been banned for declaring she was organizing to have hate crimes charges laid against me.)
Now, why he thought he should “ghost write” a comment for someone else – particularly someone so unstable – he did not elaborate.
(Though, I think the truth was probably closer to the lap theory…)
There’s that academic pedigree for ya! The poor slob has been reduced to trolling, when he isn’t masturbating in front of the computer.
I see that the thread entitled “Kate on Eason” is now gone … ‘cept of course the Google cache still has it.
LOL. Trolling your own web site. Now that’s just plain sad.
That said, I wish I had a troll 🙁
Mmmm… I wonder if Spector contracts out his trolling services.
Oooh my. I knew Spector was a techno-shmuck, but I hadn’t hoped for anything quite this good. This definitely tops the whole “Warren/Not Warren” episode over at All Things Canadian. Indeed, this is worth celebrating with a Star Trek quote:
“Khan, I’m laughing at the superior intellect.”
Well done, Jim. Er, I mean, well done Kate.
Okay, y’all knew I’d hear about this eventually.
Being a CBC-loving, black-helicopter-piloting, pro-feminist, secular humanist affirmative-actionista, I am of course profoundly stupid.
What does this all mean. Pray tell.
I’m going to explain this assuming you know absolutely nothing… don’t take it personally.
The two jpgs are “screen captures”. The appear just as they did on my browser. It’s a favoured method of archiving the content of a website in it’s original form, as it’s very easy for content to be altered through code rewrites, or to be deleted in its entirety.
The first is a screen capture of an exchange between Norm and MWW as it appeared on the blog.
The second is a screen capture of an administration page for the blog, in which all comments are recorded as they come in. Moving from left to right the information shown is : The first few words of the comment, the post name on which it was written, the date posted, the ip address of the computer that the comment originated from and finally, the name signed to the comment.
If you look at the ip addresses for the bottom three, they are identical – 24.69.66.88 – and belong to Norm Spector. MWW uses a different internet provider. It means that either she was sitting at Norm’s computer (unlikely) or he decided to write a comment under someone else’s name.
Considering the content of the comment in the first jpg (calling me a white bigot), that there was no disclosure that he was doing so on her behalf, that he actually changed the settings from his name to hers – it’s all pretty lame – the kind of stupid stunt a newbie makes when they get embroiled in a flamewar and want to call in “reinforcements”…. when they’re unaware of how ridiculously easy it is to bust them.
A word of advice – when you’re dealing with someone with even minimal tech skills, who may have access to a unix command line and raw data logfiles on their server, be very, very sure that you know more than they do, before you start messing with them…..
A Spectacle of Stupidity
So what does a former Chief of Staff in the Mulroney government do once the electorate sent that bunch of losers to their deserved oblivion?
Thanks…it’s like my brother says: “In the internet, there are no secrets. Everything is traceable.”
Amazing.
Kate
You have misrepresented what I said on the Shotgun site. I did not “ghost write” the entry. The entry was written by MWW. I posted it on her behalf. It was my idea. I posted it to try to ascertain why you were not banned and she was, after you used the f word.
As to your new friend, Mr Kinsella, you will note the happy denouement to the exchange that’s posted on his website today.
I have done no such thing, Norman. That’s the purpose of the screenshot. It shows precisely what you posted.
Once again, your dispresect and ignorance for blogosphere ethics has come back to bite you. If you, as a blog author, decide to post a comment on behalf of someone else – especially someone who was banned from the site – the ethics of blogosphere ettiquete demand you disclose this information up front.
In this case, you dishonestly posed as someone else, to post a comment that referred to me as a “white bigot”. I can only deduce by your actions that you endorsed the content.
No one even knew Meaghan was banned until you brought it up. I certainly spoke to no one. You chose to circumvent that decision on the part of the Shotgun owners, without permission or authority to do so.
If you wanted to know why she was banned, you might have asked someone like Ezra or Kevin. She was banned because in addition to a slew of personal insults, she threatened to escalate an to bring charges of “hate speech” against me.
But once again, your motives are as transparent as a bucket of diluted piss. You didn’t care about the reason she was banned. You have no more respect for Meaghan Walker-Williams than you have for any other stupid, convenient tool.
You were getting hammered by the readers who were demanding your removal from the Shotgun. You needed a “friend” to converse with – even if meant stooping so low as to play both roles.
Kate
You posted misinformation that I had “ghost written” the posting. Warren Kinsella referred to it in his blog this morning.
When I brought the correct information to his attention, he deleted that reference from his blog.
You certainly do worry a lot about what Warren Kinsella thinks. Here… hold on a second and let me ask the guys here in the body shop about this.
“Hey, does anyone here know who Warren Kinsella is?”
….
“Ever heard of Norman Spector?”
…. ???
See, Norm? You poli-media types are all the same. You are so invested in your own incestuous little fishbowl that it never occurs to you that 95% of the real world out there hasn’t heard of you, much less give a rats ass about your silly little private email spats.
Though, like a hair pulling contest between teenage girls, it’s perversely entertaining to watch.
“I did not “ghost write” the entry. The entry was written by MWW. I posted it on her behalf. It was my idea.”
And it never occurred to you to volunteer this information at the time of posting? Didn’t this strike you as a teensy bit, y’know, unethical?
You are the same person who said this, after all:
“While most unethical in intellectual debate, Kathy’s tactic is quite common in politics–packing phone-in shows with callers, writing form letters to the editor etc. When caught in such a deception, resignations swiftly follow–as just happened in the case of an aide to Premier Campbell. Kathy having already resigned from this site, I think an apology from her to all Shotgunners is the least we can expect.”
Link:
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2005/01/normans_spectat_25.html
One imagines that in light of your previous comments at The Shotgun, you would be anxious to avoid the appearance of impropriety by fully disclosing that you were posting on behalf of MWW. The fact that you didn’t (until well after you were caught in the act) appears less than honest.
From where I’m standing, it looks like you have engaged in the same sort of behavior that you criticized Kathy Shaidle for.
Nice.
One of the disappointing things about Norman is that he reinforces the stereotype that those who have held political power are unscrupulous, lack integrity, can be ruthless and dishonest, and believe the ends justify the means.
In my military days, we all felt that one could think the commanding officer was a moron, but one would still “respect the rank” (provided things didn’t become too egregious).
All the goodwill that has been needlessly squandered by Norman is unfortunate.
Incidentally, no one will be surprised when I explain that back during the Shotgun dust-up, I had to google his name to find out who he was.
What a contemptible excuse for a man you are, Norman. Did you seriously think you could just lie your way out of this?
Greg – I couldn’t agree more. One problem conservatives have in Canada is that the last time we had a “Conservative” government they really were exactly the type of creeps you succintly described. While they brought in a free trade agreement and they were a tad less anti-American and anti-Israel, they were otherwise indistiguishable from the current Liberals.
So it’s a real uphill struggle to convince anyone that the new Conservative party will actually be a refreshing change from the sordid characters currently in charge.
On the one hand I’m a little surprised that former senior government figure and Globe columnist would turn out to be an intellectually dishonest and generally vile little troll. Surprised, but on reflection not really surprised, if you know what I mean.