Yes, he's back! Over at his website Fumento has posted Hate Mail, Volume 32, which contains his creatively edited version of our exchange. According to Fumento, it went like this:
- Fumento:
- And no, the Lancet column I wrote didn't just appear in the four papers you mentioned. It appears in places you don't even know about because, unlike your blog, it isn't confined to the web but also appears in print. Yesterday it was in the Washington Times print edition. But if only the web interests you, you should know it was picked up by the entire McClatchy News Service. That means that in addition to automatically going onto the website of the Sacramento Bee (not the Sacremento Bee) it goes to about a dozen other newspaper websites as well.
- Lambert
- Instead of discussing the Lancet article, he boasted how his column had been published in the Lake Wylie Pilot, which is a free weekly newspaper serving a town of 3,000 people.
- Fumento:
- You are so obsessed you are now lying about what I wrote to you. I didn't say I appeared in the Lake Wylie Pilot, I said my column is picked up by the McClatchey News Service which posts it automatically to the sites of over a dozen papers. You chose the smallest, ignoring such as the Sacramento Bee and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.
Dear me, how naughty of me to say that he was boasting about the Lake Wylie Pilot when he hadn't mentioned it. Trouble is, if you check what he actually said you find that it was this (my emphasis):
That means that in addition to automatically going onto the website of the Sacramento Bee (not the Sacremento Bee) it goes to: Carolina Newspapers Clover Herald (SC) Fort Mill Times (SC) Lake Wylie Pilot The Bakersfield Californian The Modesto Bee The News & Observer The News Tribune (WA)
So he had mentioned the Lake Wylie Pilot. He just edited it out of the version he posted in an attempt to make me look bad. And of course Fumento does not link, making sure that any readers cannot check his version against the original sources.
Why is it that everytime I read about Fumento I am reminded of the Swiss' love for precision clock making?
A good test of a blogger's integrity is whether he or she makes edits evident (e.g. with underlining and strikeouts), and whether links are provided for confirmation.
Deltoid 2, Fumento zip.
Perhaps someone could post the original text, or a link to it, in a comment at Fumento's site. See if he edits that.
By the way, the edited version leaves Tim as the first one to mention the Lake Wylie Pilot, as if he made up the reference to this obscure little paper from whole cloth. Whether that is remotely believable is a test of a blog-reader's credulity, but I suppose Fumento knows his audience.
jre, Fumento does not have comments at his site. Of course, you could send him an email, but he's likely to edit your email and post that on his hate mail page.
Tim, Fumento is rather like a troll with a column. His fight with blogger Rich Hailey generated a lot of traffic for him and I expect he's up to the same thing here.
A good read on it can be found here:
http://silflayhraka.com/archives/002591.html
Fumento Follies V?
This is getting as bad as "Rocky" or "Police Academy". Sequels are really awful :-)