You may recall that on Friday afternoon, I posted a bit of a rant about how a certain liberal blogger named Matt Stoller had disparagingly and contemptuously referred to Presidential Candidate John McCain as a “crazy, cancer-ridden dishonest madman.” It turns out that Mr. Stoller was displeased by my much-justified rebuke. His response is an example of the most studiously, intentionally obtuse avoidance of answering what my real criticism was, including an elaborately constructed straw man, some quote mining, and one really dumb additional statement that reveals Mr. Stoller to be far more concerned with scoring political points than with scientific accuracy or even decency.

Truth be told, I knew about Mr. Stoller’s response on Saturday afternoon and debated over whether it was worth bothering to craft a response then. I ultimately decided that mowing my lawn was more important. Later on Saturday night, I thought about crafting a response again, but decided that, with my wife gone to visit her folks for the night, downing a couple of tasty brews, kicking back and watching some entertainingly over-the-top horror movies, including Grindhouse (just the trailers and the first part, Planet Terror, not the second part, Death Proof, which, let’s face it, was not very good) and Beyond Reanimator was preferable. At least that way torturing my brain with illogic would be entertaining. (In retrospect, though, maybe I should have used the time I wasted watching Beyond Reanimator to do something productive.)

However, sitting around Sunday afternoon, I got to thinking. First, I was still annoyed at his despicable language, and his response, if anything, had annoyed me more because it made it quite clear that he just didn’t get it. On the other hand, if Mr. Stoller was so nice as to respond to me, surely he deserved at least one more reaction from me. I certainly don’t want to change this into a prolonged exchange, à la Steve Novella and Michael Egnor, but one more rejoinder struck me as being worthwhile Maybe I could even show Mr. Stoller why his response was so inadequate, although I doubt I could show him why his response shows him to be so full of crap that he burps farts.

Or maybe not, but trying will probably be more fun than watching Beyond Reanimator was. Even if it’s on the same level as that movie, at the very least it will give me one more chance to try to explain why his dragging cancer into his anti-McCain rhetoric was uncalled for.

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