An unpleasant duty

As moderator of the Old Dominion Blog Alliance group on Yahoo, it is my duty to post an account of this recent sordid affair concerning "Alex Davis"/"John Maxfield"/"General Grievous' Dog" (or at least one of his incarnations).

It came to our attention about two days ago, December 28th, that one of the ODBA's newest members, currently under a firestorm of criticism from both ("all"?) sides, was not as he had represented himself to be.

I e-mailed Alex on Thursday off-list and requested that he give me and/or the list some sort of accounting for his reasoning for this deception, and got a flip reply. A similar request, posted on the list, was treated in a like manner. Yesterday morning, at about 8:30, I sent another private request and simultaneously posted it to the list. I gave him until noon to present some sort of defense for this subterfuge, and received no reply until about 11:20am.

At that time, Alex e-mailed me a contact to call, and added no commentary of his own. I did a basic check of this person's credentials to satisfy myself, and then called to see if we could settle the matter.

I did NOT get a defense of Alex. Alex got called a "pawn."

I DID get a discussion about the "strategy" behind much of the brouhaha, much of which *I* thought was spurious and not pertinent to the topic of Alex's guile.

Nevertheless, I posted an update to the list, asking again for any input in Alex's favor. I got none.

The ODBA has been embarrassed by this blogger's falsehoods and misrepresentation of himself. We have egg on our faces by pointing out hypocracy in others, when it was in our own ranks.

And therefore, lacking any offered defense or rationale for this deception, Alex, who was admitted to the ODBA as "John Maxfield" and blogs at "Journal of the Common Man," and at "General Grievous' Dog," has been banned from the group and taken off the blogroll.

Lest any should crow that this validates Waldo's reasoning behind taking General Grievous' Dog off his aggregator - I beg to differ. In this instance they are two completely different issues, and Waldo is well aware that I, for one, still disagree with him in his logic.

I am sorry this happened, and offer my personal apologies to the members of the ODBA who had to witness and participate - however peripherally - in this uproar.

The subject - like the comments - is now closed.