The other day I twittered (tweeted? tweetered?) that "Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters." Althouse wants a correction and an apology. In any case, she's certainly entitled to an explanation. The twitter came after I was alerted to her thread on Journolist, which included such charming reactions as "looks like more of a White Jewish male liberal conspiracy to me," "Its an overwhelmingly Jewish male liberal cult in a nation that is no more than 1% Jewish and male," "White Jewish males have an unacceptably prominent role in the American media," and "I always wondered how the left wing loonie fringe managed to coordiante its talking points so quickly. I used to joke with my liberal acquaintances that their rabbis must run a phone tree. Turns out that wasn't a joke. Only it's Ezra Klein and not the head rabbi of some congregation in New York. But I was close." It also came in context of another thread from January, 2008, that a family member accidentally stumbled on. In this thread, a particularly deranged commenter began digging into my family history and linking to pictures of my parents to discern whether we were truly Jewish, or whether my father was, say, a Mexican immigrant who'd converted. Certainly the most stalkerish thread I've ever encountered. Althouse is right on one point: She does not have "a lot" anti-Semitic commenters. Rather, she has "a lot" of anti Semitic comments in threads about me. I had been looking at comments rather than attaching them to names. So for that misrepresentation, I apologize. And, in general, I don't think she needs to remove any of those comments or police threads. Comment sections are what they are. But one thing they often are is unnerving to their subjects.
