Expletive Deleted

Blogosphere-watching is lots of fun. The latest drama started last Wednesday (Thursday local time) when libertarian blogger Ed Brayton noted the inaccuracies posted by StopTheACLU lead poster Gribbit (besides "Jay") in his blog (http://www.gribbitonline.com/). Ed gave Gribbit the benefit of the doubt and assumed that Grib was merely mistaken and not outright lying. First, a little background: Gribbit, following the StopTheACLU partyline, thinks that the ACLU is being inconsistent in their defense of civil liberties. Indeed, the ACLU is seen as thoroughly anti-Christian. In this case, Grib is criticizing the ACLU for going against their stated principles when it involves Christians:

The ACLU fought to gain equality for after school projects so that a gay tolerance group could meet on school grounds after the school day. The fight went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and they won. Shortly there after, the ACLU sent a letter to all Washington public high schools reminding them of this victory and demanded that they comply. However, when a bible study group in another state attempted to gain the same recognition, the ACLU then asked the Supreme Court to reverse itself. They cannot have it both ways.

Ed asked Grib to provide references for both his claims, that 1) there was a "gay tolerance" group case that reached the Supreme Court, and 2) the ACLU asked the SC not to allow bible groups to use public school facilities.

In true wingnut fashion, Gribbit's response was a weak admission of a minor error on the periphery of the issue, and Grib still makes more egregious mistakes. In the meantime, Beaming Visionary relates his/her prior encounters with the Gribbit (must read!). Meatbrain also starts a blog article documenting more of Gribbit's falsehoods.

And out of the woodwork comes another wingnut blogger named Kender who defends Gribbit while at the same time misunderstanding the ACLU's side. Ed rips him a new one. Unable to admit error (or outright lying), Grib resorted to deleting comments in his blog. While every blogger has the right to do as he pleases in his own territory, it's a mark of intellectual cowardice to delete non-abusive but critical comments. I myself only delete spam messages from my comment section. (Update: I forgot to mention a subsequent post by Ed Brayton about Kender's lack of concern for facts, and his breathtaking inability to tolerate criticism. It is from that post that I got the term Reality Aversion Disorder, an apt term for wingnuts like him.)

Gribbit follows up his wacky behavior with name-calling and more lies. And if that wasn't enough, Grib then closes his blog comments to stop the "leftist moonbats" from "spamming" his site (presumably with corrections for his prior mistakes). And there's still more! Feeling battered and under siege, Grib then created a poll on his site that asks Has Gribbit lied? As meatbrain noted, never ask a question you don't really want to have answered. Here's the poll results before Grib removed it (you know it's bound to happen):

Grbbit left a comment in Ed's blog saying that Ed's not really as civil as he claims to be, and that his view of the "truth" is convoluted. Of course, that's all just in poor Gribbit's mind, and Ed responds with another verbose smackdown.

And more lunacy gushes out of Gribbit's blog. He posts the webhosting info for meatbrain's blog. The entire blogosphere, except perhaps for the wingnut fringe who can relate with Gribbit, is baffled by this latest move.

Finally, with his inability to muzzle criticism of his errors and lies, Gribbit resorts to violent threats against his critics.

Thanks to this spat with Ed Brayton, Gribbit's visitor-deficient blog has had a major spike in traffic.

And that's it so far. With Gribbit's wingnuttery going into overdrive, it's just a matter of time before he makes a fool of himself yet again. Thank the nonexistent gods for weblogs!

Update: Gribbit's latest act of silliness: Gribbit Gets All Macho and Stuff