Friday, August 17, 2007

The Latest Blog Feud - NLS and the ODBA

This time, Ben Tribbett (NLS/Not Larry Sabato) has really got himself in a bind, and got caught fabricating and putting a serious spin on information. Ben claims that the whole ODBA (the conservative Old Dominion Blog Alliance) is "coordinating personal attacks on other people", and that he got wind of this because someone in the ODBA is sending Ben their e-mails. To quote Ben...

This week the focus is Joe Stanley and some of the blogs are back to repeating one of the ugliest slurs of the 2006 campaign- that Joe is anti-semitic. Carl Kilo sent out an email to the ODBA list to announce Joe's company had done a website for Roscoe Reynolds. That caused this ridiculous post from Virginia Virtucon which claimed Roscoe was now desperate. Carl is of course the only comment, and agrees with the post he asked for. Then he links to it from his blog.

Ben goes on to accuse the ODBA of coordinating personal attacks and asking each other to attack Democrats. Now, Kilo has replied by posting the actual e-mail he sent out to the ODBA mailing list. Ben has even posted it in the comments section of his post, so this is the full e-mail. Here it is...

Roscoe has hired the Yellow Dog Group to run his media online.
http://roscoereynolds.com/20/index.php

That is the Joe Stanley bunch, The Macaca master! The Harris Miller anti semitic flyer, etc.
http://yellowdogstrategy.com/home/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Something to think about.
Carl

All I have to say is that Carl is simply passing along information to other ODBA members. He is not asking them to attack Roscoe Reynolds/Joe Stanley (although, it is true that Roscoe must be getting desperate if he has to hire one of the more well-known mudslingers and media manipulators to help him out). As Carl said, it is "something to think about."

Ben Tribbett is wrong (again) on this one. He knows he's wrong, because he's the one who put the spin on it. Joe Stanley's group DID send out the anti-semitic flyer on Harris Miller, they did coordinate the spread of the "Macaca" controversy, and now they are working for Roscoe Reynolds' campaign.

Lies, false attacks...I see none here. So much for Ben's self-proclaimed 99.8% accuracy rating. The ODBA is definitely in the clear, here. It's Ben Tribbett that has some explaining to do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with you. As a journalist, I have no problem with Ben using forwarded emails as a source of information. I've done exactly the same thing.

Now that the exact email text is out there, though, Ben obviously distorted it beyond recognition. That's the ethical problem.

Carl Kilo said...

You are right Phil.
I really have to say Ben put the spin on this in a big way.
Ben tried to make the simple sharing of information into something evil.
Dave is right about ethics. But as a long time blogger I have learned that Ethics only applies to the right.
I do believe Roscoe is desperate. The hiring of Joey Stanley and the reputation that comes with that is revealing as to the type of campaign he wants to run. Enter Ben. He defended the anti semitic handbill when it was released. The handbill was discussed at length in the media and most saw it as disgusting. The proof of that is Joey Stanley not showing it on his website with his other works. He should be proud of his work.