You may have sipped from this ladle of thin gruel. Yes, I did indeed Fall Silent last week, because – ready? – I was on vacation. And I still posted four updates – one of which was specifically about the issues of the day - and wrote a national column about the response of some Senators to the prison scandal AND did a radio interview about current affairs. So she’s mistaken. And by “mistaken” I mean “too lazy to check her assertions against the facts.” This woman seems to think I am a member of the Necon Blogging Pantheon, even though A) this is not a blog, and B) it has always been a mix of many topics, some of which concern the war. I usually write about the war once a week. The rest of the time it’s parenthood, movies, music, culture, architecture, nostalgia, and so forth. My life isn’t devoted to one single thing and I don’t intend for my site to descend into howling monomania, unless something bad really happens. I mean, look at the main page and tell me that this is a NEOCON WARBLOGGER SITE. That’s the thing that so peeved the hack who wrote the hit piece for City Pages – why, it’s the perils of toddlerdom one day, the need to extirpate Islamic fascism the next. Sometimes it’s the same day! As though this has to be one thing or the other. As though I’m Rush Fackin’ Limbaugh, obliged to pound the table for three hours a day about a specific set of topics. Does this woman even understand the medium she so confidently dismisses? Nope.

Note to Antonia.

Because you get hate mail doesn’t mean you’re good.

Or right.

And taking a single inert sentence and setting it apart as a paragraph for dramatic effect just looks like you’re padding the column to make the length.

Unless an editor did it.

Which is possible.

I suppose.