At this point, I can only assume this country’s least thoughtful pundit on race relations, “journalism” or anything more challenging than his own public masturbation would’ve taken too many shots to the face. But much like Chuck Wepner (only without the fortitude to reveal his I.D.), he’s back for more, more more. I mean, it’s tempting to call him an idiot savant, but I’d only be half right.

Our fave fantasist claims to have been in correspondence with “a major daily editor,” an allegedly real person who shared that “it drove him nuts to see other people take content, add ten words, provide a quick link and move along to the next post.” It seems this is considered to be (by a major daily editor, mind you) “a way of avoiding original thought.”

Naturally, CSTB is served up as the sole example of this sort of offense.

Indeed, there’s a fuckload of cutting & pasting that happens around here. But never without attribution, and when and if Mr. Daily Editor is willing to to let me know they’d prefer not to have their material quoted in this space, I would surely respect his or her wishes. Though in all honesty, I never really considered The Springfield Shopper to be a major daily.

Given the number of blogs (and legit newspapers) that have linked back to CSTB over the years, and/or acknowledged the odd quote or two actually helped them reach a few more readers, I tend to think this is a minority opinion. Certainly an opinion others are free to express (even if, as in this case, they don’t really exist), but one that oughta come with just a smidgeon of full disclosure. The CSTB practice of quoting other sources somehow wasn’t considered nearly as egregious when the most delusional correspondent this side of John Mark Karr was barraging this space with his own pithy brand of “original thought” — ten words or less comment spam designed to drive traffic to his own craptacular site.

His current Crusade For Blogging Ethics only began after he was called on the carpet for being an imbecile (and links to his own blog were removed). Not for the first time, he refers to a cryptic “core of other blogs” who are “disgusted” at CSTB’s practices. It’s one thing to enter a battle of wits unarmed — he seems to do that every day — but another entirely to summon the resources of an imaginary army. To steal a Michael Pavlak line, I’m gonna turn into John Hiatt waiting for his gang to materialize.

If you’re amongst those who find CSTB to be devoid of an original point of view, by all means, take your eyeballs elsewhere. I don’t think it should be necessary to spell out for anyone what that actual p.o.v. is, but I thank you just the same for checking out all the ace material that was stolen from other places.

In the meantime, I do hope you will continue to support the vast numbers of legitimate newspapers and professional sports sites, that generate 101% of their own copy and have never in million years used another source (electronic or print), paraphrased someone else without credit or stuck to only the most narrow points of orgin.

And likewise, I wish nothing but continued success to the new breed of ‘net gadflies whose original thoughts so often consist of echoing the same sentiments and bashing the same targets as the 2 or 3 well read blogs they’re so desperate to emulate.