Silverstein: Blogger Behaving Badly

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Feb 1, 2006

I know this topic is not popular with many of you, and has even bored the socks off some of you. If so, I suggest you don’t read past this point. Nothing to see here, move along.
 
I am asking myself the following question: How does one respond to a blogger who continues to lobby serious accusations of racism and impropriety against me, and the awards competition I am jointly running?
 
On one hand, I am very tempted to do what I have done in the past – link to the blogger’s accusations and respond accordingly. However, since it has become manifest that this blogger’s main objective is to gain traffic and attention, I do not want to play into his hands.
 
I am referring to blogger Richard Silverstein, who has repeatedly attacked me and the JIB Awards, without provocation. Not only that, but he has been fighting dirty. After making accusations, he has habitually deleted my comments on his blog – comments that rebut his assertions, correct his errors, and put him “on the spot.”
 
In short, Silverstein is using very dirty tactics in his quest to besmirch my name, the JIB Awards, and blogs participating in the JIBs which do not conform to his radical ideological beliefs. In employing these tactics, he has made it abundantly clear that he does not care about the consequences of his words.
 
Here are some examples of his dishonesty and dirty tactics:
 
  • I have corrected him on a number of occasions, pointing out errors in his posts. Instead of doing the honest thing and inserting/acknowledging the corrections via updates to his posts, he just makes the corrections. Furthermore, despite the fact that he habitually deletes comments of mine, he makes a point of leaving up the ones in which I pointed out his mistakes. The net result is to render my comments meaningless, since his posts do not contain the error to which I am referring.
  • An example of this comes from a post of his today. He proudly boasted that he is above me in the Google rankings for “JIBA.” I promptly wished him luck with his plans to be high on the Google rankings for “JIBA”, since he is the only person who refers to the JIBs in this way. So what does he do? He replaces “JIBA” with “Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards”, but leaves my comment on his site. The natural response of anyone visiting the site and reading my comment will be “WTF?”
  • Despite telling him that any private correspondence was not to be posted on his site, he went ahead and did it anyway (It is not that I have said anything in these emails that I regret, or want to retract, but rather the principle of the matter). Not only that, but he quoted me out of context, and purposely excluded the words and sentences that did not fit his agenda. Take this post from today, in which he posted part of a private email that I sent to him (after he sent me a rather nasty email):
    • Finally, I wonder what the Post makes of its partner and founder of the JIB Awards, Aussie Dave, when he calls critics like this one “d***head.‚Äù Well, actually he didn‚Äôt quite come out and say it but we’ll let him speak for himself below and you can be the judge. In a feeble attempt at mockery, he often calls me “Dick” or “Silverstein” to which I replied that those were not names of address I find acceptable. This was his ‚Äòcharming‚Äô response:
    “Dick and Silverstein are your names. I do not see the need to refer to you by your first name…So deal with it. Just be thankful I don’t give you the middle name “head.”
    Yep, be the judge. Problem is, he has omitted some pretty crucial sentences needed to judge my response fairly. Here is the full text including the parts Silverstein omitted:
    Dick and Silverstein are your names. I do not see the need to refer to you by your first name, since you have done nothing but try to undermine me, my blog, and the awards I have painstakingly set up. Unprovoked, might I add. So deal with it. Just be thankful I don’t give you the middle name “head.”
    Without these sentences, one might think I was being harsh. These sentences provide perspective on my comments, a perspective that Silverstein does not want anyone to have.
     
    You can read about other examples of his dishonesty here and here.
     
    If you want to let him know that you disapprove of his nastiness, feel free to email him at richards1052@comcast.net. I just ask that you don’t visit his site and give him traffic, which I realize is what he wanted all along.
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    David Lange

    A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media

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