ABA Blawg contestestants going negative
In the closing days of ABA Journal's Blawg contest, we're seeing some dirty politicing.
Ted Frank at Overlawyered has called Quizlaw, down in the vote, on Quizlaw's low blow of today:
And here’s the God’s honest: Walter Olsen [sic] and Ted Frank, the purveyors of legal smut over on Overlawyered, are robots. Yes. You heard me right. Built by the IBM Corp. sometime in the late 90s and given fake, prestigious resumes (like a University of Chicago graduate would actually blog! ha!), Walter and Ted were programmed to spit out thoughtful, sometimes amusing legal analysis (and relevant links) about cases that actually matter in the world of law, which as we all know defies every tenet of the blogosphere.
Ted took the high road in his response:
We plead guilty to violating blogospheric tradition by knowing what we're talking about, but we do deny that we're robots, much less ones built by IBM. Of course, if we were robots, we'd probably be programmed to deny that we were, so such a denial only gets you so far.
Unlike the Iowa caucuses where negative campaigning doesn't work, QuizLaw's alleged 'scurrilous lobbying' has pulled it to within two votes of Overlawyered in the ABA poll.
Kevin:
You better let the Presidential candidates know the negative campaiging won't work here in Iowa. Let's just say the mud slinging has stepped up a few notches in the last few weeks. And it is anticipated to get worse right after Christmas. If you a political junkie Iowa is the place to be.
But negative campaigning for the Blawg 100? That is incredible.