It is, I suppose, the preserve of professors of philosophy to tie one up in logical knots, but Professor Brian Leiter has outdone himself. In his latest "look how dumb someone is" rant, he bloviates:

In the conservative pity fest for Mr. Non-Volokh back in late June, this right-wing blogger . . . charges me with having displayed "ignorance of blogospheric custom and history."

Ignorance of blogospheric custom and history?

How old is someone who writes things like this, and apparently means it seriously?

I don't know, let us ask Professor Leiter: how old is someone who writes this kind of thing and means it seriously? He should be able to tell us.

Some time ago, after making various dark threats and suggestions that some unnamed Columbia professor was ashamed of my blogging, Leiter "thanked" me for respecting the confidentiality of the correspondence. I replied that I was unaware of any obligation to do so, upon which Prof. Leiter himself responded:

I'm sorry, I guess we'll have to end this correpsondence. [sic] I had understood confidentiality of e-mail exchanges to be one of the universally adhered to norms of the blogosphere.

In any event, I don't feel particularly bad now about publishing a part of that email of Leiter's, given his view on such statements.

But wait, there's more from the Professor in the same post:

Has anyone else noticed that the blogosphere is full of folks who don't seem to have real lives? . . . They don't appear to have real-world status, accomplishments, skills, knowledge, attachments. Blogs and their relationships with others who have blogs appear to be their lives. And if they're suitably reactionary, as this joker clearly is, then InstaIgnorance links to them and gives them a "life."

How full of yourself do you have to be to cast judgment on the whole of someone's life because you read what they write on a website, or to think you know what they "seem" to be like? A long time ago, when discussing why anonymity wasn't that useful, I wrote:

But [readers] won't get [an authentic idea of what law school is like through your blog:] at the very best, they're getting facets of your law school experience, filtered through your own particular opinions. Unless you're going to spend an inordinate amount of time blogging in a day, your readers will get disconnected vignettes, small glimpses of the highs and lows of your experience. They're not getting 'authenticity' anyway, they won't miss it because you decided not to slam some gunner you didn't happen to like.

There's a lot of topics that are dear to my heart that don't make it to here. There's some political issues I won't address, not because I don't have feelings on them, but because I do and I know they'll offend some people unnecessarily. Much as I'd love to tell you about my love life, my relationship with my family, or the juicy gossip of the law school, it's not getting published.

If I, or anyone, reads a weblog, they know some aspect of the author that they're willing to put online. I've been pleased--indeed, privileged--to meet many of my fellow law bloggers while TYoH has been running, and they're never entirely what I would expect from just reading the blog: they're fuller, more deep, more real than they ever could capture by putting fifteen minutes into a page every few days, or even every evening. Even Stay of Execution, which is more heart-on-your-sleeve than most of what I read, pales in comparison to the author herself.

If blogs and blogging appear to be the life revealed on a blog, well, that's the nature of the medium. And as for those who would stand in judgment while sitting in glass blogs. . . .