Shots Across The Bow

Enough is Enough!

Checking out SayUncle, I found that Fumento is still commenting about our little dust up. Bigwig has this to say:

If you're going to denigrate the size of a man's equipment in public, no matter how much of an ass he may have been, fair play demands that you be willing to expose your own to the gaze of the same crowd.

Was I an ass? I don't think so. Far from defending the Atkins Plan, I simply pointed out errors in Fumento's argument, errors of logic and errors of fact that nobody who'd actually read the book could have made, unless they were attempting to distort the truth. I pointed this out to Mr. Fumento, and challenged him to correct the record. I also pointed out that his misrepresentations and distortions were very similar to those he accused Gary Taubes of committing. What I got back was a blast of venom and personal attack, which, while not answering any of my criticisms did succeed in changing the terms of the debate from his erroneous reporting to his boorish behavior, and from there to an argument about readership. When you're losing a debate, it's always a good tactical move to change the focus of the debate, and that's what he did, both in his email to me, and in entries on his site. Both site traffic and his insults were irrelevant to the discussion we were having, but that's all anybody will remember.

My view on this is simple, and documented; the guy is fundamentally dishonest. Just a few examples from Advise section:

First, he introduces errors into a quote from my page, then attributes those errors to me.

Second, he copies a picture, changing the aspect ratio to make it look worse than it is. When called on this by Glenn Reynolds, he fixes the aspect ratio, yet later claims to another reader that he didn't doctor the image.

Third, he uses another picture from an Atkins site to "prove" that all Atkins supporters are fat. He changes the filename, and provides no link to the picture, making it difficult to verify his claim. I took the time, and found the following:

The picture (Scroll down to Betzi) is indeed an "After" shot from Betzi, who claims to have lost 102 lbs, down from 435 to 333 lbs over about a year. She's lost a quarter of her body weight, and this pompous ass has the gall to use her picture to claim that all Atkins followers are fat!

"Sick vicious bastard" springs to mind.

And that's my final word on Mr. Michael Fumento.

Posted by Rich at August 25, 2003 5:12 PM | TrackBack