Today In Pointless Blogfeuds

Oh, man. Have we got an old-fashioned, knock-down-drag-out battle for you today. In one corner (on the left), Bernie O’Hare, Lehigh Valley blogger who lists Napoleon Dynamite as one of his favorite movies. And in the other corner, we have Tony Phyrillas, shameless self-promoter who doesn’t take anything from the government when he drives, which means he lays his own roads.

(Aside: In addition to being ranked as one of the top Greek-American bloggers, Phyrillas is a columnist for the Pottstown Mercury. While perusing Phyrillas’ blog, I came across this post about a guy who made an two-story outhouse with “politicians” up top and “taxpayers” at the bottom. Ho, ho! What an indictment of their policies! Anyway, Phyrillas says this outhouse “was the talk of the newsroom for days.” Now that sounds more fun than recounting to my coworkers my latest failed blind date.)

After the jump, the lowdown on the most pointless blog feud since… well, they’re all pointless, aren’t they?

On Monday, O’Hare, writing on his Lehigh Valley Ramblings blog, noted Phyrillas’ penchant for self-promotion, then chided him for posting a stupid email forward, unattributed, to his blog, as if he had written it himself. (He later edited it with a note saying he’s not sure where it originally came from.)

But was this just a random post from a man blogging abotu the Lehigh Valley? Oh, ho ho, of course not. You see, Tony Phyrillas cares a lot about some list called Pennsylvania’s Most Influential Political blogs, which is put together by some website you’ve never heard of. Also, Philebrity is the eighth-most influential political blog in the state.

Phyrillas noted on his blog — which, by the way, automatically reloads so he gets more traffic! whee! — later that Monday about he had climbed to the third-most influential blogger in the state. Since bloggers don’t actually have any influence in real politics, who knows, this may be true. But O’Hare’s light jab at Phyrillas could not be taken sitting down. No, it was guided by left-wing jealousy:

And I know I’ve arrived because one of those left-wing attack blogs has decided to target me today. (Could the fact that this very same blogger dropped from No. 8 to No. 12 on this week’s list have anything to do with it? ) Thanks for the plug anyway. I consider any attack from the far left as a badge of honor.

If you don’t find the above paragraph hilarious, clearly you don’t spend as much time as I do on the Internet. (You’re lucky you don’t.) Anyway, O’Hare responded a bit on his blog again, calling Phyrillas out for plagiarism from an email forward. I’m not quite sure where this feud can go next, but I fully expect it to involve Tony Phyrillas forwarding me an email saying Bill Gates will give me $1,000 if I just forward it to 10 more people.

Mainstream Columnist Tony Phyrillas Steals a Few Lines [LV Ramblings]
Tony Phyrillas: LV Ramblings a “Left Wing Attack Blog” [Lehigh Valley Ramblings]
Two-story Pennsylvania Outhouse [Tony Phyrillas]
Phyrillas climbs to No. 3 in ‘Influence’ ranking [Tony Phyrillas]
May 14: Mooching Liberal Fat Cats Riding Subsidized Trains