Mark Bennett, the Texas Tornado, has been the subject of attack lately, following his in-depth series about the disgraced Harris County, Texas, district attorney and the race to take his place.  Along the way, he framed this opposition the mean girls, but it’s now gone way past any gender issue.

As validation of the accuracy of Mark’s posts, a new  Harris County prosecution blog has come into existence to counter the negative image of the office, and provide a forum to bash Mark.  Naturally, the bashers all wear hoods to protect their identities.  Cowards have always hidden behind anonymity.

But the mean girls ventured over to Ken Lammer’s CrimLaw, where prosecutor Ken was enjoying the Harris County soap opera, to spew as well.  But Ken wasn’t having any of it on his blawg, and put a quick end to it.

From my perspective, this attack on Mark reflects the impact he’s having on the public awareness of the disgraceful internal problems within the Harris County District Attorneys office.  When you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger.  Mark has been caught in the dilemma of whether to defend himself or laugh at the stupidity of it all.

Unfortunately, the nature of the blawgosphere means that attacks can be viewed independent of their causes.  If one googles Mark’s name, one can see these absurd, shameless attacks on him by anonymous posters without realizing that they are pathetic reactions to his damning posts.

Many readers can’t appreciate that there are many perils to blawging, provided that your blawg takes positions rather than posts fluff.  Blawgers can become targets of irate readers who disagree and decide to go on the attack.  Blawgers become targets of crazy people who become obsessive and decide that they are going to be the troll of the blawg.  Blawgers end up in the cross-fire of strange folk who are obsessed with peripheral issues who try to hijack a post to push some tangential concern of their own.

There are a lot of strange and angry people out there.  These things happen with some frequency.  Sometimes we ignore it.  Other times, we just make the stuff posted by nutty people go away.  Having a blawg doesn’t mean you have to put up with loonies, even if they don’t get the idea that this isn’t their forum to express whatever insanity brews inside their heads, no matter how much they believe that they have a “right” to do so.

By putting his name to his posts, Mark stands behind his views, critiques and positions.  It doesn’t matter if you agree with him, entirely or in part.  Indeed, Mark and I have quibbled over nuanced positions on numerous occasions.  But he says what he believes, and he isn’t afraid to put his name to anything he posts.

At the Harris County prosecutor’s blog, the anonymous author responds to Robert Guest’s statement that he can’t take seriously any attack posted by someone without the guts to put a name to it, by writing, “Wow. Whatever happened to Freedom of Speech?”  Sure, even cowards have the freedom to post their anonymous attacks.  And the rest of us have the freedom to reject their attacks as the spewing of cowards.

Ed Note:  This post was originally titled Attack of the Mean Girls, but upon reflection, I decided that the title needed to be changed.