Cory Doctorow and MS employee exchange some jabs

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing (and books and…) fame is getting into something of a boxing match with an MS employee. Cory’s latest post, Cort Fritz’s (the MS employee) blog.

Read them all for the back-and-forth, I’m not feeling intellectually daring enough to chime in on the issues here. But read through Cort’s post, and you feel like you are reading something borrowed from the Republican pundit handbook, at least in terms of the phrases he selects:

“Cory Doctorow hates Microsoft” – classic term used in the inflammatory political punditry to incite, anger, and get noticed, e.g. “John Doe hates America” if John Doe does anything you happen to disagree with.

“IMHO he’s stuck in a stupid mode” – another far-right favorite for those who dislike the big media. Paraphrase of a comment by a hard-charging general in NOLA in reference to the media’s questions.

“Bring it on.” – yeah, we all recall that one, who said it, and how smart it was.

“The world would descend into chaos without dependency on the American empire.” – would it now? I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but this is a rather arrogant statement.

“The last sentence is more than anti-Microsoft, it is anti-Capitalistic (read: anti-freedom).” – Right up there with the “hates America”-type comment. You don’t agree with every stance on a business issue I take, then you are anti-freedom. So there.

“LPF [ed: level-laying field] is a big ol commie term.  Cory is a creative commie, so it’s appropriate.” – when all else fails, call ‘em a Commie. Are you kidding me?

Cort probably had some good points in there, and could have built up a spirited argument with Cory about his controversial opinions. Instead he channeled Anne Coulter. As a fellow employee, I don’t feel this was the right way to approach a disagreement. Open, yes. Respectful, no.