"So, your blog goes down right after being reported as a cesspool of [misogyny] and homophobia? Hmmmmm . . ."

Says LawGirl, over in the "weasel" post.

The anonymous professor who emailed lawprof Brian Leiter to attack my commentariat said "She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?" — which is quoted by Freeman Hunt, who laughs, calls it the "quote of the day," and paraphrases it: "Free speech is incompatible with academia!" Freeman adds: "Free speech areas are cesspools. Restricted speech areas are responsible academia." Yeah, but can you really expect law professors to drape their brains around that?

Maguro said: "The email is so prissy and self-important that Leiter almost certainly wrote it himself. Anonymous colleague, my ass." Well, let's be fair. Professor Anonymous does call the blog comments here a "festival of misogyny and homophobia." Palladian said: "I hope there's an open bar at your festival of misogyny and homophobia."

Roger J. said:

Professor A: unless I have completely misread you over the last five years, I am thinking you arent going down without a fight--(just dont ask me for money however, my principles arent THAT strong :) )

Hey, good idea. Please! Encourage me:

I need some love!

dbp said:

An interesting logical loop here: Brian Leiter's blog posts an anonymous comment, which presumably is in agreement with the blog's editor. The comment is actively put forward by that blog, unlike at Althouse where comments are all posted and hardly ever deleted.

Both blogs contain what could fairly be described as scurrilous comments. The difference is that Alhouse neither approves or disapproves of the comments while Leiter clearly takes an editorial ownership.

"She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?"

This had got to be the most lame use of a question mark in history. Oh, I make a big long ugly accusation then make it all right with a meaningless squiggle on top of the dot.

If the Leiter post led to the removal of the Althouse blog, then is there a case of slander here?

Good point. But it's not slander. If it's in writing, we lawyers say libel, not slander. But it's not libel. It's just opinion. Lame ass opinion from a lawprof who — in my opinion — envies my readership, which is bigger than his.

***

Now, maybe you're wondering just what the hell was in those terrible comments — that supposed "festival of misogyny and homophobia." You try the link at Leiter's, but it gets you nowhere, because Blogger removed my blog. But here's the cached version of the page the Leiter blog links to. Check out the comments and see if you can tell what's really upset the people who are on my case. There are only 32 comments. They are easy enough to read. I pick out a few.

Maguro said:

[The 3 candidates] seem notably lacking in victim-group credentials. Are any of them gay, trans or gender non-conforming?

This is a criticism based on one commenter's sense of what law schools do.

gutless said:

Is Margaret a lesbian? One imagines so in that her background doesn't seem competitive and yet, here she is. If so, she has the job. If not ,she is merely window dressing and the less offensive of the other two gets the nod.

That's obviously another criticism of law schools, reflecting an assumption that law schools make choices based on diversity factors. I'm sure the criticism hurts some people, but it doesn't say there's something wrong with being a lesbian or that the candidate is a lesbian. Maybe a nervous reader could take that the wrong way, in which case, I'd say: that festival of misogyny and homophobia is in your head. Good thing you hid your name!

Thorley Winston said:

I think it’s generally a bad idea to announce the “finalists” when conducting a job interview, particularly for the top position. IMO there shouldn’t be a public announcement until they’ve made their selection.

I agree, but the Law School chose to put the names and their credentials on its official website, obviously inviting public comment. I linked, opening it up to the comments. You know we are a public law school, and it's appropriate that people around the state receive information and have an opportunity to speak. And yet, feelings can be hurt. People in legal academia like to think that their feelings are righteous indignation having to do with women and minorities... but are they really? Think carefully!

Titus said:

If the woman candidate has big tits I say hire her. Otherwise, go with one of the men.

You can't go wrong with big tits.

tits...yum

All right, that's absurd and over-the-top, but our dear, treasured Titus — a gay man. He's been talking like that on this blog for years. The regulars know him. And they know I love him. If that's what Leiter and the Anonymous Professor feel such angst about... it's because they don't understand the community here. They're like Sean Hannity fretting about Common in White House.

"Wonder if this has anything to do with Ann’s objective (and thus, anti-administration) coverage of the Wisconsin protests?"

Asks Moe Lane at RedState:

Well, isn’t this interesting: apparently Blogger/Google has decided to remove Ann Althouse’s blog. They’re also being neither particularly helpful in either explaining why, nor sounding particularly sympathetic that it’s been taken down, either.

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that there's some behind-the-scenes campaign to report my blog as abusive. People who hate/fear the Althouse blog could make a loud noise to Google.

Back in 2004, 98% of Google employees gave money to Democrats. [ADDED: That should say, 98% of the Google employees who made political donations, donated to Democrats. Presumably, not all employees made donations.]

ADDED: This is getting a lot of links, with silly and uninformed attacks on me, so I've got to add links to the rest of the discussion, which is back on my regular blog (where I'm still waiting to get my archive restored).

First, a lot of people, including Paul Krugman, don't understand the facts. My problem coincided with the larger Blogger problem, which I always knew about and acknowledged, but it was also different in some ways. My blog didn't display at all. My blog's URL called up a page that said the blog had been removed, which is normally what happens to a blog that has been displayed as spam.

This occurred at exactly the same time that I was being attacked for exposing the dean candidates at my law school to some misunderstood but troublesome comments. Blogger has a reporting system that could be used to try to bring down its blogs by people who felt inclined to flag it. So there is a mechanism by which the attack could occur. There is a vulnerability there that people need to be aware of.

My effort to use Google's system for getting a blog restored got me abuse from a forum participant who controls access to help from Google in a way that people found quite bizarre. This access-controller assumed from the start that my blog had been deleted as spam, even though my question to the forum expressed my assumption that my problem was part of the larger outage.

"I’d prefer not to say this for attribution...only because I’m..."

... only because I'm a weasel.

Save Ann Althouse's Blog.

The Facebook page.

"[T]he canny performer whose utilitarian decisions and whimsical tastes became the totems and scripture of a tribe."

= how they write in The New Yorker about... well, try to guess before clicking. Here's some more high-tone verbiage:

She has been the regulator of weight; the titrator of substances; the veteran of a love triangle; the female artist who escaped the long shadow of a male collaborator; the commercial artist who passed through wildly different stations of commerce... She survived both the corrosive lift of cocaine and the lead apron of Klonopin.

Come on. Klonopin is the giveaway. If you're in the know. In the klono...

ADDED: Oh, that reminds me. We were just watching this.

"I was delighted when I first saw one in my yard, but when you have a flock of 300, it’s a different matter."

"They eat all the berries. They ate all the food from my feeder in one day; it was ludicrous. I had to stop putting it out because it got too expensive."

Parakeets are ruining London!

Today's bin Laden news: Soufflé & Porn.

Everyone's talking about:

1. George Bush was eating soufflé when he got the phone call saying that bin Laden was dead.

2. They found porn in bin Laden's Abbottabad abode.

Jean Shrimpton today.

"I’m not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I’m damaged goods."

Blogger Buzz explains...

... to some extent:

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts.

I guess I'm in the small subset. I'm sure my blog is unusually large. There are well over 20,000 posts.

With Kohl out, who wants to be the junior senator from Wisconsin?

There's:

Reps. Ron Kind, Tammy Baldwin and Steve Kagen as well as former Sen. Russ Feingold and former Rep. Tom Barrett, who ran [for Governor and] lost to Walker last November, are mentioned....

For Republicans, the obvious name is Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of House Republicans’ controversial budget plan. It’s not clear whether Ryan wants to leave his perch as chairman of the House Budget Commtitee to make a statewide run, however.

Other GOP names being mentioned include state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, wealthy businessman Tim Michels and former Rep. Mark Neumann.

Interesting!

ADDED: WaPo's Greg Sargent opines:

But the key is that a lot has happened in Wisconsin since Feingold’s loss. The months long war in the state over Scott Walker’s effort to strip public employees of their bargaining rights has galvanized the Democratic Party in Wisconsin in a major way and — if polls showing the unpopularity of Walker’s proposals are any guide — has tilted independents and moderates in the state against GOP rule. It’s true that this battle has galvanized the grassroots on both sides, but the emerging shape of the recall elections suggest the left has more momentum and energy.

A lot has happened... including the big Prosser-Kloppenburg race, which Sargent doesn't seem to have heard of.

Suddenly, I can post on this alternate blog!

Sorry the main blog is looking nonexistent at the moment. I am working on getting it restored.

I guess I'll blog here for now and then move the posts over to the main blog when it's back.