Corresponding With Journalists
Sometimes I find it’s more productive to email MSM journalists directly rather than try and “gotcha” then on your blog. Below is an example of the constructive dialog that may result.
From: “Dana Milbank <DumbAleck@WashingtonPost.com>”
To: xrlq@xrlq.com
Subject: RE: Please help me settle an argument
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 06:43:12 -0700
Xrlq:
Happy to oblige. Just direct your fellow bloggers to today’s column. If that won’t do the trick, I tells ya nothing will.
Toodles,
Dana
P.S. You are a fine one to talk about crappy names. I mean, seriously, what the hell kind of name is “Xrlq?” Were your parents on crack, or what?
> —– Original Message —–
> From: Xrlq <xrlq @xrlq.com>
> To: dumbaleck@washingtonpost.com
> Subject: Please help me settle an argument
> Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 06:43:12 -0700
>
> Dear Mr. Milbank:
>
> Some of my fellow bloggers have given me grief over my “name-calling
> habit,” which consists of calling moron journalists like you … well, morons.
> Could you do me a favor, and write just ONE column that is so transparently
> stupid from top to bottom that I can easily prove, to the satisfaction of
> any remotely fair-minded person, that you are in fact a moron? I don’t
> want the usual, garden-variety moronicity of the typical Milbank piece we’ve
> come to know but not necessarily love. No, I need one, just one, mother-
> of-all-moronities piece to show to my friends. You know, the kind of article
> that’s so stupid bloggers try to fisk it but end up just saying “wow, just
> wow.” That’s the kind of article I need. Just one. Please?
>
> Love and kisses,
> Xrlq
>
> P.S. When your parents chose to give you a girl’s name, did they
> somehow know in advance that you’d turn out to be such a girly-man?
> Was it a coincidence, or perhaps an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
>
September 21st, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Yup. Rates up there with Socrates’s dialogue with Protagoras.
Seriously, I heard the audio of the exchange on Sean Hannity, yesterday, and it was not as Mr. Milbank’s article quotes. The whole exchange, to my non-Virginian-lifelong-Democrat-but-social-conservative mind made Ms. Fox look like an idiot and Senator Allen very reasonable in his response. It seems to me that Mr. Milbank is being a touch selective in his quoting.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:26 am
[...] No one does snark better than Xrlqy Wrlqy. Heh. [...]
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:38 am
I didn’t even think is was a man you were writing to till I read your part. I mean - “toodles”? Geez.
Oh, and I have a similar problem. Some folks wonder why my parents named me Rustmeister.
September 25th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Give the guy credit: onre reason he’s tolerable is that he at least has a sense of humor, even about himself.