Gentle Reader, if you’ve come directly to this post, it will make more sense if you click over to the Home page and scroll down to it there. Go ahead; I’ll wait for you.
OK. Now that we’re in synch, if you continue to scroll down from here, you’ll see that there’s been a sudden massive increase in the number of hits on the thumbs down buttons. I find that interesting. It’s as if the Cabin Boy’s friends have decided to form an Occupy Hogewash! group to make sure that I receive plenty of down twinkles now that Bill Schmalfeldt has been ordered to refrain from contacting me.
Keep coming back, guys! WordPress.com has plenty of bandwidth, and the more traffic Hogewash! has, the higher it’s ad earnings will be if I decide to start accepting advertising.
The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries …
—Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 8
I own a fairly good bit of intellectual property—trademarks, service marks, and copyrights. (My patent rights are assigned to a former employer.) OTOH, I’ve placed a good deal of material in the public domain or licensed work through Creative Commons. Why do I give some stuff away and retain control of other things?
Here’s the key word: control.
Some things have sufficient economic value to me that I want to keep control of them as sources of income. Some things have artistic or intellectual value that I want to protect.
Other things “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by being freely shared.
Still other things are worth giving away for the promotional value. For example, I someone were to post a copy this particular blog entry elsewhere and tell folks to go look at it, that would be free advertising for Hogewash!, something that a small-time blogger like me should be happy to have. Even if the person providing that free advertising were strongly critical of Hogewash!, I’d be disinclined to send a takedown notice so long as this blog entry was posted without alteration so that it could speak for itself.
But not every blogger is so confident of the integrity of his writings.
I listened to Bill Schmalfeldt’s Internet talk show today. (I do this sort of thing so that you don’t have to, and, no, I won’t link to it.) I make these comment from the point of view of a former broadcaster who managed to get decent ratings (#2 in afternoon drive time) in a major market (Nashville) and as someone who worked in the music business.
First, a technical observation. The program audio levels varied significantly as the show cut between live and recorded segments. It was as if no one was watching the signal levels. It makes me wonder if the Cabin Boy ever had to run his own board before.
Second, program content. The Gentle Reader will probably not be surprised to find that Schmalfeldt’s program isn’t my cup of tea. The quality of the musical bits was the sort of thing that usually elicits “Don’t give up your day job” as career advice. And, of course, the most charitable way of describing the program content would be factually challenged. For example, Schmalfeldt referred to @BillSchmalfeldt as his “one and only” Twitter account. Really? This was still up as of 2 pm ET this afternoon:
Another thing that Cabin Boy Bill continues to misrepresent is how the @mention function works on Twitter. He claims that using it causes his tweets to appear in the timelines of those who follow the person whose account he has @mention-ed. That’s not accurate. I follow Glenn Reynolds (@instapundit). I do not see all the hundred of tweets that are sent with @instapundit in them in my timeline. Prof. Reynolds follows me (Thank you, sir!), and he doesn’t see every tweets sent to me in his timeline just because they contain @wjjhoge. The Cabin Boy’s scheme only works for users who are following both the account he is sending from and the target account. Furthermore, Twitter’s Rules and Best Practices web page says:
You can direct a Tweet at a specific Twitter user using @replies and mentions. The @reply feature is intended to make communication between users easier, so please don’t abuse it by posting duplicated, unsolicited @replies to lots of users. This is considered spam behavior!
Third, listener participation. Throughout the program, the Cabin Boy kept giving out his phone number and Skype contact information. He took no calls. That leads to two possibilities. It could be that no one worth his air time called in. It could be that no one called in at all. I’m inclined to believe the second theory.
Stacy McCain did three posts (here, here, and here) over the weekend about the Hoge v. Scmalfeldt peace order ruling and Cabin Boy Bill’s subsequent meltdown. As of 12:01 this morning, my posts on the subject generated about 50 comments. Stacy’s posts generated 125 comments.
Bill Schmalfeldt has been posting on the same subject at his Patriot-Ombudsman blog (No, I won’t link to it.), and as of 12:01 this morning, he has had no comments. He can’t even get Texas Tim or Xenophon or Nemesis or Xcitizen10 or Breitbart Unmasked or Occupy Rebellion or Neal Rauhauser or any of the other “supporters” of Team Kimberlin to lend a word of support.
It may be that this explains why the Cabin Boy took to commenting on Stacy’s site. The Other McCain has tens of thousands of hits per day, probably over 100X the traffic at Patriot-Ombusman. During the short time that his comments were up at TOM, Schmalfeldt probably engaged more eyeballs that he will for the rest of the year on his own site.
While I was on a phone call with a friend on Saturday, the friend told me that Schmalfeldt was beginning to remind him of a 2000 political bumper sticker—Sore Loserman.
I’m asking about his loss in court on Friday, not his personality. He admits his manners leave something to be desired. In an attempt to post at this website on 28 May, he wrote, “I am a crude and vulgar person …” Just so.
Today, in a comment the Cabin Boy posted at The Other McCain, he wrote:
… I and most legal experts I’ve talked to … don’t think the judge’s decision will hold up to an appeal.
Perhaps he should open a fresh can of lawyers. I’ve talked to roughly a dozen lawyers whose practices deal with protective orders and peace orders, and not one of them agrees with the District Court judges’ interpretation of the law. Other than those judges, the only lawyer who has espoused that view was the one paid to defend Schmalfeldt and Kimberlin, and he was overheard warning his clients to stop the harassment or expect to go to jail.
Bill Schmalfeldt is welcome to file a petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the Maryland Court of Appeals. Unlike Brett Kimberlin’s appeal last year, his petition might not be denied. But that could backfire on him. Given that court’s previous decisions in harassment cases (Google Scholar is a handy tool.), I would expect that Judge Stansfield’s decision would be affirmed. Of course, by taking his losing case all the way to the top, he would perform a public service by securing a ruling that would apply the law uniformly throughout the state. And he does say that he’s big on altruism.
Meanwhile, the Final Peace Order is in effect. It contains a NOTICE TO RESPONDENT that reads,
Violation of the Peace Order may be a crime or contempt of court or both, and could result in imprisonment or fine or both.
Md. COURTS AND JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS Code Ann. § 3-1508 contains these words:
(b) Arrest. — A law enforcement officer shall arrest with or without a warrant and take into custody an individual who the officer has probable cause to believe is in violation of an interim peace order, temporary peace order, or final peace order in effect at the time of the violation.
If I believe the peace order has been violated, I will seek to have it enforced.
UPDATE—The Other McCain has now banned Schmalfeldt from posting.
Cabin Boy Bill seems miffed that his attempts at humor via sarcasm have been taken seriously.
Aspiring comics who are still refining their craft while working the Borscht Belt or Holiday Inn circuits often get the drummer from the house band to work with them. The drummer’s part of the act is to provide cues to the audience to laugh. The cue is a drum lick called a rimshot. Here’s an example.
Until recently, I had never received any pay or donation from any blogger that I had helped or promoted. On Friday, I received a small tip from a fellow blogger whose tip jar I have hit in the past. I wish to thank that blogger and acknowledge that I have now been “paid” by someone whose work I have promoted by linking to his blog.
Apparently, the Cabin Boy has me confused with a character from the Harry Potter novels. The Gentle Reader who has followed the long slog through the Saga of the Dread Pirate Kimberlin will remember that, before his Dread Piracy, Brett Kimberlin was referred to as Lord Voldemort for a while. That was a reference to the unconstitutional peace order Judge Vaughey issued against Aaron Worthing. When that peace order was stuck down on appeal, Kimberlin was demoted.
Cabin Boy Bill may not have joined Team Kimberlin in time to have been counted as one of the “Death Eater Wannabes.” Perhaps that is the source of his confusion.
Bill Schmalfeldt has been whining about his loss in court last Friday, claiming that it’s the end of Twitter and online journalism. He has misrepresented both the law and the terms of the peace order in the process.
Saturday afternoon, Schmalfeldt spewed forth several tweets which appear to be an attempt to use the same failed tactic that Brett Kimberlin tried last year to silence some of his critics. Aaron Walker has posted this response. The members of Team Kimberlin and its enablers would be well advised to read Mr. Walker’s post and consider his analysis of the situation.
Let me state this one more time: I fully support Bill Schmalfeldt’s First Amendment right to write whatever he wishes about me so long as he stays within the law’s usual limits regarding threats and defamation. However, I do not wish for him to contact me, attempt to contact me, or harass me, and I will seek enforcement of the peace order if I believe that it has been violated.
UPDATE—The Cabin Boy tweets that he was only being sarcastic or satirical, that he was making an attempt at humor rather than making a threat.
Hmmmm.
Like a madman who throws
Firebrands, arrows and death,
So is the man who deceives his neighbor,
And says, “Was I not joking?”
Trying to get the truth out of any member of Team Kimberlin is like trying to nail Jello to a chain link fence. For example, Brett Kimberlin told Judge Stansfield that he was not present when the subpoena for documents in Hoge v. Kimberlin were served at his office in Cabin John, Maryland.
A significant number of page views here at Hogewash! come from outside links. I’d like to thank those sites that have sent viewers this way during the past week. In addition to hits from search engines, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, Hogewash! has had visitors linked from:
Earlier this week, Cabin Boy Bill Schmalfeldt was asked who was paying his lawyer. He tweeted this response.
Deep Brain Radio The answer to that question depends on what the judge decides when we ask for attorney fees.
8:13 PM – 12 Jun 13
Alas for the poor Cabin Boy, the judge ruled against him. I won’t be paying his lawyer, so the question remains: who will?
Bill Schmalfeldt talks about having to make do on a disability pension. He doesn’t appear to have any great pile of assets. When he tried to raise money to sue me via an Internet bleg, he didn’t raise a cent. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that someone else is paying Schmalfeldt’s lawyer. The working out of that puzzlement is left to the Gentle Reader’s imagination.
We do know that the Cabin Boy and BreitbartUnmask, his boss at his former editorial gig at the Breitbart Unmasked website, acted as if they were looking forward to suing me. BreitbartUnmask tweeted:
BreitbartUnmask @LiberalGrouch He is in for a rude awakening . Message to Hoge; Walker is a shitty excuse 4 your attorney. Now get ready to pay motherfucker .
8:19 PM Mar 21st from Tweetbot for iOS BreitbartUnmask @Xcitizen10 @Stranahan @wjjhoge @ AaronWorthing Hoge has things. Walker=garnishment Stranahan =default judgment he will skip out on.
9:40 PM Mar 21st from Tweetbot for iOS BreitbartUnmask @Xcitizen10 @Stranahan @wjjhoge @ AaronWorthing All pretty close
9:40 PM Mar 21st from Tweetbot for iOS BreitbartUnmask @Xcitizen10 @wjjhoge Could it be that Hoge is on mental disability? Either way he will soon be feeling a hot poker up his wallet.
9:42 PM Mar 21st from Tweetbot for iOS
“Hoge has things.” Yes, I do. For example, Mrs. Hoge and I own the house I have referred to on this blog as Hoge Manor. Cabin Boy Bill, in his Liberal Grouch persona, posted this picture of our house on the Breitbart Unmasked site:
It seems that Schmalfeldt was unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him in a civil suit against me, at least not on a fee-contingent basis. That certainly wouldn’t be because I have no assets. More likely, every lawyer who looked at Schmalfeldt’s “case” quickly determined that there was nothing there—and asked for his fee up front.
Last night, Bill Schmalfeldt was tweeting confidently of his vindication in court today. He already has a pitch next to his donations button on the Patriot-Ombudsman site asking for money to help overturn his loss today. It will be interesting to see if he can raise any significant sum or, if he fails at that, whether he will learn his lesson and abide by the court’s order.
Gentle Reader, here’s the second installment in my side of the story of my adventures with Team Kimberlin.
As those of you who have been following the Saga of The Dread Pirate Kimberlin and Team Kimberlin will remember, Cabin Boy Bill Schmalfeldt spent months harassing Lee Stranahan and his family with disgustingly crude filth, including incessant and impertinent questions regarding the death of a child during childbirth. On Monday, 11 February, Lee came to Maryland from Texas to file a harassment charge against Schmalfeldt. I picked Lee up at BWI airport, took him to dinner, took him to the District Court Commissioner’s Office, put him up for the night at my house, and dropped him back at the airport on Tuesday morning. BWI is just off of one of the routes I take to work.
On 14 February, I received 40 tweets in less than one hour from @BreitbartUnmask ranting about Lee Stanahan, Aaron Walker, and me. Just after midnight on 15 February, I posted a notice on this blog and on Twitter addressed to @OldUncleBastard, @BreitbartUnmask, and @OccupyRebellion demanding that they stop communicating directly with me. Note: The date/time stamps on the tweets in this post are in GMT; I’ll convert important ones to Eastern Time for clarity.
Later that day, Schmalfeldt sent a tweet via his @OldUncleBastard identity referencing my demand. He was clearly on notice.
OldUncleBastard @Xcitizen10 @BreitbartUnmask A commentator on @wjjhoge’s blog post
http://t.co/uZkIc4lA explains what the right wing mafia cabal wants.
6:37 PM Feb 15th from web
Click on that link yourself and see. The time stamp on the tweet converts to 1:37 pm Eastern Time.
He continued to send tweets to my @wjjhoge account. Between the tweet cited above and around 7:27 pm on 18 February, 2013, Schmalfeldt sent 11 more tweets to @wjjhoge. Because of this continued messaging following my demand to cease as well as other matters, I filed an Application for Statement of Charges on 18 February, 2013. Schmalfeldt was charged with both Harassment under §3-803 and Misuse of Electronic Communication under §3-805. Even though he was on notice and had had criminal harassment charges filed, Schmalfeldt kept sending me tweets and addressed a blog post to me—not a post about me, one addressed to me.
At midday on 18 February, 2013, during his Internet radio broadcast, Schmalfeldt made the following threat at around 1:02:40 into the program:
It’s all horseshit. It’s all absolute horseshit. And I and my family have been put through pain and suffering because Lee Stranahan has a grudge. Because somebody, in my opinion, is paying Lee Stranahan to file these charges against me, in the hopes that I will either break or die. I got some fucking news for you, Stranny [pause] Walker, Hoggy, Frey [pause] and Frey [pause] beware the Ides of March.
Here is an mp3 file of the threat.
If Schmalfeldt were not associated with Team Kimberlin, I would have taken that threat as empty bloviating. But, given his connection to Kimberlin, the persons threatened, and our upcoming schedules, we all took the threat seriously. You see, the Ides of March fell during the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, and three of the persons threatened planned to be at CPAC and to attend BlogBash. BlogBash is a blogger party/awards ceremony that is loosely associated with other events, one of which is the CPAC. As it turned out, there were additional threats made to BlogBash which caused the PG County Police to beef up security around the event. So I was not the only person to take such a threat seriously.
After he was charged on the 18th, he sent an additional 31 tweets. This the last of those tweets, time stamped at 8:17 am ET, Schmalfeldt sent out prior to being served with the peace order:
LiberalGrouch I wonder what @wjjhoge got by way of payment. Something to comb out the poop flakes from his beard? Hah. I kid. I’m a kidder. I kid that way.
1:17 PM Feb 17th from web
Aside from the juvenile attempt at potty humor, this tweet implies that I have been lying about being paid to blog or making money off donations or that I’ve been helping my friends Lee Stranahan and Aaron Walker from any motivation other than friendship. Let me state this very clearly: Until I recently set up a tip jar after my retirement from working full-time, I had never been paid to write anything on this or any other blog. Even today, I have never received any donation or benefit from any of the bloggers or organizations I have promoted on this or any other blog. This blog is a hobby and an expensive one. I have personally borne all of the expense associated with it, including legal costs. I’ve been able to do this because, until the end of May, I have had an above average income working in a very senior engineering position. I’m getting old and have now retired from full-time work. I’ve put up a PayPal tip jar and and Amazon Associate’s link. In the first two weeks, I’ve earned almost as much money as I net from 0.2 hour of part-time work at my current billing rate. If I’m lucky, I may earn enough to keep up with the web hosting expenses for this site.
On 19 February, 2013, the Breitbart Unmasked website published a post with Schmalfeldt’s Liberal Grouch byline. This was not a post about me. It was a post addressed to me. The about versus to is an important distinction. Bill Schmalfeldt, or anyone else for that matter, has a First Amendment right to write and speak about me (assuming he can stay with in the bounds of defamation or illegal threats), but he has no right to speak to me. I have a right to be left alone. The headline addressed the post to me by name:
Stranahan. McCain. Akbar. Worthing. Hoge. Frey. THIS IS ON YOU!
The post contains the following:
Will it make you feel more like a man instead of some crawling thing, Hoge?
and
Hoge. You are filth. You add nothing to the world. You are a stain. You know it. I know it. And that is why I must be killed.
Neither I nor, so far as I know, any of the others addressed in that post have ever threatened Bill Schmalfeldt.
Because these annoying and alarming communications directed to me continued after I had demanded that they stop, continued after the demand was tacitly acknowledged, and even continued after I had filed a harassment charge, I filed for a peace order on 21 February, 2013, and a temporary order was granted by Judge Rasinsky. According to the report from the Howard County Sheriff’s Office (as reported to me by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office), Schmalfeldt was served at approximately 9:15 am on 22 February, 2013. At or around 9:17 am on that date, he sent the following tweet:
LiberalGrouch A person who I will refer to by the pseudonym “Hoggy” has served me with a Peace Order. Two very nice Sheriff’s deputies just dropped by.
During the hearing for the permanent peace order on 28 February, 2013, Schmalfeldt authenticated all of the tweets, blog post material, and audio presented to the Court. However, Judge Rasinsky did not understand that Schmalfeldt had sent a tweet that acknowledged the notice to cease and desist, and Schmalfeldt lied, saying that he had received no notice. Lacking notice, Judge Rasinsky did not issue the permanent order, but he put Schmalfeldt on notice to stop:
The warning I want to give you is very specific, and it’s not an unusual warning for me to give. The battle line is drawn. He doesn’t want to hear from you, and that means no specific things addressed to him. If I was convinced that you had been put on notice and there were a course of conduct specifically addressed to him, I believe that that is something in the ordinary context of events that this statute would cover. Ah, I didn’t write the statute, but it’s constitutional up to this point, and it can circumscribe various freedoms that you might, in fact, have. Plus, it can also subject you ultimately, as it already has, to a criminal case where you may or may not win, I don’t know, [inaudible] look at the criminal case. I have it here. [inaudible] You’ve got to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?” You may conclude that it is. Some people, ah, are willing to go to jail for their beliefs, but I see that as a risk in this, ah, ongoing exploration of Internet First Amendment rights. Just a thought to share with you. I’m not going to grant the Peace Order for the reason I stated, but you are on notice, and hopefully, ah, you’ll abide by the conditions that Mr. Hoge has imposed in terms of your contact with him, and, ah, continue your debate in a peaceful, civil, and legal manner.
While I was exiting the courtroom after the hearing, I overheard a very loud conversation between Tae Kim (Schmalfeldt’s counsel), Bill Schmalfeldt, and Brett Kimberlim informing them that they had been lucky that day but could expect to go to jail if they kept up the harassment. This conversation was also overheard by two other witness.
Judge Rasinsky explicitly rejected Schmalfeldt’s contention that as a journalist he has a right to continue to “ask questions” of someone after being told to cease and desist. However, in another peace order hearing in Howard County (Walker v. Schmalfeldt), Judge Zwaig ruled, in what seem to be an odd extension of New York Times v. Sullivan, that Aaron Walker was enough of a public figure that he had to put up with Schmalfeldt’s harassment. In both cases, Schmalfeldt’s lawyer argued that he was a journalist entitled to some sort of special protection.
During early March, Schmalfeldt had continued communicating with me in spite of Judge Rasinsky’s warning. I filed for a second Peace Order. At the final hearing on 25 March, 2013, Judge Ellinghaus-Jones ruled that because the communications were electronic, she could not issue a peace order. After beating that peace order, Schmalfeldt, believing that he could do whatever he pleases, kept up tweeting. During that hearing, Mr. Kim argued the neither his client nor I were journalist but that we were a couple of old cranks having a shouting match on the Internet.
So as of the end of March, Bill Schmalfeldt was able to brag that he had beaten three peace orders. Once by lying and twice by alternately claim that he was or wasn’t a journalist. In mid April, the Carroll County States Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute any of the charges filed against Scmalfeldt that were related to the peace orders, their reason being that if I couldn’t convince a District Court judge to a clear and convincing standard, they wouldn’t convince the same judge beyond reasonable doubt. The State’s Attorney’s Office did tell me that the charges could be refiled if I were to win a peace order on appeal.
Because I believed that I had air-tight documentation to refute the lie about not being on notice, I appealed the first peace order to the Circuit Court. During the District Court hearings, I had represented myself. I hired a lawyer (Zoa Barnes) to handle the appeal. As part of that appeal, she subpoenaed documents that might be shed light on Schmalfeldt’s motivation to harass me. His lawyer filed a Motion to Quash the subpoenas. The Gentle Reader who has been following this saga may remember that Schmalfeldt was subpoenaed for documents and as a witness for the Hoge v. Kimberlin peace order appeal in May and that he didn’t bother to provide the documents or show up to the hearing. Mr. Kim also filed a Motion to Dismiss based on the same electronic-harassment-isn’t-covered argument that worked in the District Court.
It didn’t work with Judge Stansfield today, and he quickly threw out the Motion to Dismiss. Rather than argue the Motion to Quash, my lawyer asked if Schmalfeldt had brought the subpoenaed document. He hadn’t, so the judge ruled the motion moot, and the hearing began.
After opening statements by the lawyers, I took the stand and outlined for the judge (with greater detail) the facts you’ve just read. On cross examination, Mr. Kim tried to make the case about my “wanting to get” Brett Kimberlin. I replied that the case was based on Bill Schmalfeldt’s behavior toward me. And the petitioner rested.
Bill Schmalfeldt took the stand on his own behalf. He misrepresented Twitter’s Rules and Best Practices about the use of @Replies, but my lawyer had already introduced Twitter’s actual rule into evidence, so the judge was not misled.
During his closing argument, Kim brought up a federal case, U. S. v. Cassidy, that he tried to use a precedent for a First Amendment defense of Schmalfeldt. As Ms. Barnes pointed out, that case was not gemane; it deals with whether Internet harassment is covered under the Violence Against Women Act.
Judge Stansfield ruled in my favor. He found that Bill Schmalfeldt engaged in a continuing pattern of conduct to harass or annoy me, that he continued to do so after being told to stop, and that he did so without any lawful purpose. He also found that Bill Schmalfeldt was likely to continue that behavior and, on that basis, he issued a peace order.
What does that mean?
First, Bill Schmalfeldt has been adjudicated as a harasser.
Second, if he doesn’t leave me alone for the next six months, he can be charged with a crime.
What does it not mean?
It doesn’t mean that the First Amendment is trouble, at least not because of this ruling. Bill Schmalfeldt is still free to write about me so long as he steers clear of threats or defamation. He simply needs to stop addressing me directly.
It does not mean that any Twitter user is in any jeopardy as long has he abides by Twitter’s Rules and Best Practices if he has been told to stop bothering someone else.
As I’m finishing this post, the Cabin Boy is frothing at the keyboard about how his loss in court may shutdown Twitter and end online journalism.
My final word is this—
Bullshit!
UPDATE—One more thing … Bill Schmalfeldt has written in the past of how the District Court judges dealt with me. I wish to state that much of what he wrote is categorically untrue. At all times while I was in their courtrooms, Judges Effinghaus-Jones and Green acted professionally and treated me with respect. Indeed, I was particularly impressed with Judge Green’s demeanor and the kindness he showed to everyone who appeared before him.
I was away from the site for a few minutes this morning, and when I came back, I noticed that Mr. Down Twinkles had been hitting the thumbs down buttons again while I was having breakfast. Assuming that his voting expressed his real preferences and beliefs, here’s what we can learn about him:
He doesn’t like the fact that this site has more traffic that some others.
A significant number of page views here at Hogewash! come from outside links. I’d like to thank those sites that have sent viewers this way during the past week. In addition to hits from search engines, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, Hogewash! has had visitors linked from:
One of the bits of fallout from the recent Hoge v. Kimberlin peace order appeal hearing (No, the judge hasn’t ruled yet.) was Bill Schmalfeldt’s departure from Breitbart Unmasked. Since then, he has put his efforts into several Internet ventures, and they seem to have become consolidated in his Internet talk show (which now apparently goes under the name of Radio Slappy) and a reincarnation of his old Patriot-Ombudsman site. (No, I won’t link to either of ‘em.)
Now, I admit that Hogewash! is a bush league website. But it’s not so badly off as Cabin Boy Pip Bill tweeting in his @hamiltonpigg persona imagines.
The table on the left shows the actual page views here at Hogewash! for May, 2012, and May, 2013. May’s the last month that with compete data. While last month was a little bit below the average since January, the growth year-to-year isn’t too bad. The data to which I have access leads me to believe that the traffic at Hogewash! is roughly an order of magnitude greater than at Patriot-Ombudsman.
Of course, I don’t have access to similar internal page view data for the Patriot-Ombudsman site, but various online services monitor traffic. Here’s the data that I found for the P-O site.
There’s some interesting stuff here.
First, even though the site was dormant until mid May, the traffic volume is lower now than it was February. Second, it appears to have fallen even faster since the site became active again! Indeed, the site’s current stats reflect it only having 4 visitors per 100,000,000 Internet users—fewer than 100 worldwide.
The traffic is probably better than the stats show, but it is still so low that a reliable projection can’t be made.
If I’m in the bush leagues, Mr. Schmalfeldt is still playing tee ball. And he proves that a-swing-and-a-miss is possible in that game.
UPDATE—Well, well, well … After tweeting that “I want NOTHING TO DO with @wjjhoge,” the Cabin Boy is still following this blog, and he tweets that he thinks I’m bragging about … Oh, never mind. He has me confused with Anthony Weiner.
A friend sent me a link to a video Cabin Boy Pip Bill posted on YouTube in December, 2011, during which he whines about being harassed on Facebook and having his copyrighted material used without permission.
Image Credit: bschmalfeldt via YouTube (Fair Use for criticism)
The poor guy pouts because someone repurposed an image he had used on one of his now defunct websites. (Parody, by the way, is one of the fair use exceptions to copyright protection.) Oh, and when Facebook didn’t take down the offending material, Schmalfeldt issued [dramatic chord] a press release—which had almost as much effect as one of Brett Kimberlin’s petitions.
The Cabin Boy can’t take it, but he feels free to dish it out.
Bill Schmalfeldt seems to have no qualms about taking someone else’s copyrighted work and using it for parody. Indeed, he appears to feel free to simply use another person’s work. See, for example, the thumbnail at left. He has used a large version of that image (reproduced here in miniature for reference, another form of fair use) in a recent post without attribution. However, there are no special rules for Mr. Schmalfeldt.
I, of course, haven’t threatened to go after him for copyright violations because, regardless of how puerile his humor, parody is a legitimate form of fair use. I can’t speak for other folks whose intellectual property rights he may have violated. Nor can I speak for persons who only signed away limited use rights on a model release.
Bill Schmalfeldt has written, “I am a crude and vulgar person whose pursuit of truth sometimes lands me in trouble. … I am crude, vulgar—but honest.”
Does an honest man routinely use other peoples’ work without attribution?
… would disagree with these sentiments expressed in a post earlier today?
… I mean the sense of entitlement that the political class and the bureaucracy that underpins it have come to feel as they imagine themselves as our overlords. … We are not serf or vassals. The bureaucrats work for us, and the days of tolerating civil servants who are neither need to come to an end.
One likely candidate might be a bitter retired bureaucrat who, in grips of his inflated ego and delusions of adequacy, cannot find a way to generate a following in the blogosphere without resorting to cyberthuggery and who becomes all hurt and self-righteous when called to account by his victims—someone who, when his lame ventures at making his own case are easily demolished, resorts to a puerile attempt at defacing another’s blog by multiple hits on the thumbs down buttons for posts.
Mr. Down Twinkles apparently doesn’t realize that the principal result of his button pushing is to help drive the hit counter ever higher here at Hogewash! Every little bit of increase in the traffic helps.
He also doesn’t realize how much forensic information he has left behind.
Now that I finally have the time for it, this web surfing stuff turns out to be as interesting and fun and addictive as you’ve all been telling me. Zipping from link to link, chasing an idea across the noosphere, sucking up information like a killer whale—way cool.
Cabin Boy Bill continues to struggle to find an audience. I was surprised to find this pingback showing up at Hogewash! from the Slappy McWingnut site. (No, I won’t link to it.) Click here for a link to my original post.
Now, if Bill Schmalfeldt has any sense (allow that for the sake of the argument), he shouldn’t be linking back to this site to promote his work. I suspect that he’s got the Related Articles plug-in running on automatic pilot on that blog, and my original post is the only thing the plug-in could find remotely related to Slappy McWingnut. It couldn’t find any positive buzz. I’ll bet that Schmalfeldt won’t find out about that pingback until Mr. Down Twinkles reads this.
When I received notice of the pingback, I went over to check the McWingnut blog around midday yesterday. Here’s something else I noticed. Between 16 May and midday 1 June, the McWingnut blog had attracted 3 comments. To put that in perspective, this bush league blog had 27 comments posted during the past week alone, and Bill Schmalfeldt, even though he knows that he’s banned, attempted to post 16 comments to Hogewash! during the same 16 May to 1 June period.
I wrote the bit above on Saturday afternoon to be posted on Sunday. Later that evening, Schmalfeldt put up another post at the McWingnut site, and the Related Articles plug-in apparently could only find one other post on the same topic, viz.:
Scmalfeldt now seems to be fantasizing along a Moby Dick theme with me as Captain Ahab. Apparently, Brett Kimberlin is supposed to be the white whale. So wouldn’t Bill’s role be Pip, the cabin boy? Say, doesn’t Pip go mad after being abandoned in the sea when he goes overboard?
UPDATE 2—Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …
Yet more ping backs … these from Patriot-Ombudsman, where he’s apparently running the Related Articles plug-in also.And I wonder … given all his huffing and puffing about the use of his copyrighted material, do you suppose the Cabin Boy obtained permission to use the Moby Dick illustration that he has incorporated into his blog?
A significant number of page views here at Hogewash! come from outside links. I’d like to thank those sites that have sent viewers this way during the past week. In addition to hits from search engines, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, Hogewash! has had visitors linked from:
