Ann Althouse attacked me! Where's the support group?

As I anticipated, Ann Althouse's all-seeing eye of Technorati found my re-introductory post and my "confession" to being a troll on her blog. She throws it right in my kisser in the comments to this post.

As I pointed out to her, she of all people was well aware of my comments, being on the receiving end of them. Especially because I used the term "troll" to refer to myself on her blog, using the broader definition of "commenter who regularly antagonizes the blogger" rather than the formal "commenter who is only there to disrupt the conversation."

Anyway, she called me "a little shit who hates me and intends destruction -- by his own admission." So I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.

The issue at hand, btw, was her attack on Glenn Greenwald for this post, in which Greenwald addresses "the media's obsession with the faux-masculinity of GOP candidates in general, and the tough-guy military persona of Fred Thompson in particular..."

Ann's summary was as follows:

"Greenwald begins with the subject of how sexy and manly Fred Thompson is..."

That's the kind of unflinching dishonesty that characterizes the Althouse oeuvre. But it's not only that.

The main issue for Althouse isn't what Greenwald has to say about Chris Matthews (although she defends the Thompson business too as the kind of freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness thinking that she approves of). It's that in the same post Greenwald goes after the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for bemoaning the state of American masculinity even though he "devotes his life to attending convention center conferences on space and playing around with new, cool gadgets in the fun room in his house, like a sheltered adolescent in his secret treehouse club..."

Of course she can't just come out and say: "Hey, that's my warm, supportive traffic generator you're talking about," so she argues that his accusation of hypocrisy is itself hypocritical (because it impugns Reynolds' masculinity). This isn't a good argument, but it's much better than her other main line of attack, which is that Greenwald uses too many words to make his points. This criticism is better founded but doesn't really discredit those points in the least.

Anyway, I just hope I can "leverage [her] popularity" as Jessica Valenti did (in Althouse's addled mind). I mean she got on Colbert fer cryin' out loud.