George Rebane

RR does its best to avoid referencing the self-aggrandizing postings on Mr Pelline’s blog, nor do I respond to his incessant and ongoing vitriol extended to me personally.  Perhaps the time has come for a short response.

This morning I received an email from a reader who sent me the latest example of the journalism published on jeffpelline.com.  It involves another one of the gratuitous swipes that he often inserts into his copy.  To wit, his recent piece on election results includes  –

With a straight party-line vote, for example, candidates such as clerk-recorder Greg Diaz could have lost. In fact, a significant number of Republicans voted for Greg — throwing cold water on the “analysis” of “far right” bloggers George Rebane and Russ Steele that he was backed largely by “progressives.” Diaz received 13,632 votes, compared with 6,119 for Barry Pruett.

I neither made nor claimed authorship of any such ‘analysis’ of Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz’s voter support.  I did relay the report that his pre-election support came primarily from the left, as did Barry Pruett’s from the right.

Then there are his frequent descriptions of me as “far right” (in quotes) and even “ultra far right”.  I recall that Mr Pelline was the first to hang that appellation on me in an effort to marginalize my commentary, not for its content but the container from which it issues.  Perhaps, enthralled with that coup, he now continues to quote himself.  No matter how near or “far”, I am in good company.

Not a few people have also noticed that Pelline has a curious way of creating news with the use of quotation marks the protocol for which I am not familiar.  I was taught that full or double quotes are used only when delimiting words that were actually spoken or written by a certain source.  So quoted material can always be attributed.  Semi-quotes are used to emphasize words to indicate an extended contextual meaning, or to approximate the general thrust, direction, or intent of something which originally was said or written but for which the actual quote is not available.  I strive to follow this standard on RR.

I have little idea what all Mr Pelline writes on his blog, but from the copies forwarded to me, I have noticed that nearly everything he says about me, and about other targets of opportunity known to me, is a fabricated falsehood.

Most of our community knows that Mr Pelline constantly claims to be a paragon of journalism, and spends considerable effort publicly burnishing his bona fides.  However, I do believe that no school of journalism taught him any of the truth creating, fact mangling, and personal mis-approbations he practices.  Those he must have developed subsequently to serve his own purposes.

In view of the brand of journalism practiced by Jeff Pelline, and an alarmingly large cadre of others across the land, I am proud to reiterate that I am a commentator and not a journalist (first declared here).