Your decision to hide behind your anonymity and disable the ability to have others comment, likely in opposition, against your opinion, reeks of cowardice.

Your decision to hide speaks volumes.

(I tried using my OpenID to no avail)

I think as bloggers we wear so many hats as writers – now we’re academic, now we’re a clown, now we’re a journalist, now we’re a diary – that we bypass some of the rules for each genre.

1) Had this happened during almost any other timeframe, and not right after Christmas and on the long weekend (for some; I’m a Realtor – I work all the time) – this might have turned out differently.

2) I concede that calling or emailing him would have been the journalistic thing to do. I’ll sincerely try not to make that mistake again.

3) Nothing against Danilo or Tony, but had their Broker not a) backed them and b) granted permission to publicize the emails, I probably would have waited and not published as quickly as I did on Bloodhound.

4) His words speak for themselves. He used his position as a County employee to demand (without specificity) that words be taken down.

5) His denigration of blogs, and their blog in particular, “Your blog is set up as a promotional tool for the services that you provide as a Realtor. I do not condone or advocate your positions nor your personal approach at generating real estate related business for yourself. Therefore a response to your blog postings is not warranted.” demonstrated his disregard of the medium.

6) Blogs are a legitimate form of communication, news and frequently journalism.

7) All he had to do was comment on the post in question – and contribute to the conversation. It wasn’t adversarial until he made it so.

Russell’s right – he owes them an apology. Now that would make news.

That would be the journalistic way to do things wouldn’t it?

That is something I’ve been thinking about, but think that he’d be mighty unreceptive to a call or email from one of the bloggers who has written about him.

It won’t matter what the outcome is, he’ll be labelled a tool bag in the house of google forever.