Andy Borowitz, as mentioned in a note below, wrote in to complain about Tim’s post on him. He went so far as to deploy the legally fraught term defamatory, which is the musteline way of subtly raising the specter of a legal threat. Here is his note and our response.
Tim Graham’s latest post about me is defamatory since it claims that I’ve concealed my support of Barack Obama. To the contrary: in the video clip posted on the home page of my site, I clearly identify myself as an Obama supporter. Graham needs to do research before he defames people, and National Review needs to post a correction today.
Andy Borowitz
And we wrote:
Dear Mr. Borowitz:
That which is true is not defamatory. Tim wrote: “Left out of the humorist’s bio: Borowitz has donated more than $4,000 to Obama.” Your bio on Huffington reads: “Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.” I suppose it is possible that “work appears in The New Yorker” is in fact code for “I gave four grand to Obama,” in which case I beg your indulgence for not having foreseen that interpretation.
Tim believes this is insufficient disclosure. You may believe otherwise and, happily, you enjoy a forum in which to advertise that belief. This is not defamation, or even the shadow of defamation.
Yours,
Kevin Williamson
Deputy managing editor
National Review
But give the clown credit for making maximum use of a typo in the next round:
Dear Kevin,
Thanks for your funny letter. You might want to take a closer look at the last line of Tim’s posting:
Apparently, ethical notion of a conflict of interest don’t apply to jesters.
If you’re not going to issue a correction, at least correct the poor guy’s grammar. As it stands,, [sic] the casual reader might wonder why my article about Obama’s penchant for subject-verb agreement upset Tim so.
Cheers,Andy
For the record, I’m pretty sure I introduced that typo while editing Tim’s post, so I’ll wear the dunce cap, just as soon as Mr. Borowitz is done with it.