just wanted to acknowledge the accuracy in point four of your rebuttal.

looks like shelton has been cutting and pasting his rebuttals from former flame sessions. always the same criticisms, same defensive posture. the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So let me put in my two copper abraham lincoln coins that should no longer be in circulation:

I really have no idea why Marmot keeps this blog or why in fact, any bloggers pay cash out of their own pocket and maintain this when they could be like me and leech off of other people’s hard work when deluging cyber space with their own brand of absurd views. But I’d imagine that the webmaster, like all of us here, have life to lead, places to go, new boshingtang places to try out, etc etc. We all know it’s very time consuming to do this. This is purely out of conjecture, but it seems that he wanted to acquire some guest bloggers as a way to keep the blog going. And I have to commend the webmaster for choosing guest bloggers in a way to cover the diverse political tastes of the readership here. The diversity of political views here is more like Washington Post rather than say Fox News or Village Voice. I guess it’s more accurate to say the worst of Fox and Village Voice put together… haha

People’s “beef” with Mr. Bumgarner, I find goes into two camps. People who despise his political views. People who despise his style.

Demanding Marmot’s Hole stay true to “Marmotness” is like asking Marmot to just stay home all day and update his blog all the time. I mean if, people demand Flying Yangban post more and Shelton post less, then we might as well just go to Flying Yangban blog when Marmot isn’t updating.

I find people who object to Shelton’s political views somewhat irrelevant, since this causes even more readership to post “i-hate-u” reepuls. Hell, half the readership at Baghdadburning are probably her most vicious enemies.

As for his style… I do think that there are certain constructive criticisms that people are making. Personally, I think Sperwer’s political views are several degrees(if x is where i am, sperwer’s is x+50degrees) on the right side of my own, but I do think that he makes a good point—that his criticism is not jaundiced. I applaud Mr.Bumgarner’s mature response. I hope he doesn’t take things to seriously and retains his willingness to learn from people, even those who may hold irrational distate for him.

That being said, I will now be a hypocritical lurker so I can pounce on an-jil-gguh-ya-shaku-shaku when he types his insanities on cyberspace, thereby reaching self-actualization in become the Voltron to Shaku’s Zarkaness.

The Marmot doesn’t write every entry like a newspaper article, but there is an underlying intelligence combined with wit, and humor that doesn’t have to be explained to his audience.

The problem is that Shelton lacks these essential skills, in addition to his sloppy spelling and frequent updates to correct other errors in his entries.

The Ahssa Hole! I still love it. Great one Kush.

Oddly enough, I find this the typical characteristic of most of the “white guy in Korea” blogs.

5. This leads me to the last point ?? I will lay off such behavior in the future. I will be self-conscious about straying too far off The Official Journalistic Path when I am writing here. Some of what you may object to is simply my writing style when it comes to blog writing. That, I??m afraid, I??m neither willing nor able to change. (emphasis added)

Wait a moment - when you began blogging here, didn’t you say that you would adjust your writing style to the point that no one would be able to distinguish it from The Marmot’s? But now, ‘neither willing nor able to change’?

Personally, I just skip over the stuff I don’t like, so I’m not usually bothered by it all. However, I agree with Spewer’s comment that you’ve written in controversy where none existed. That’s fact, not opinion.

Just keeping it real…

No, that’s not it at all. I had decided to just let his annoyances slide unless they were particularly bad. But when he starts defending his sloppy writing by saying in effect that, “I am a journalist and this is how we do it,” then he needs to be called on that. And then when cites very unjournalistic models that exemplify his idea of journalism (as he seemed to be doing), then I just have to say something.

I am back to my original opinion on the matter: Shelton’s writing is fine for his Migukin blog, but it generally is not up to par for Marmot’s, which may again be in danger of turning into the Ahssa Hole.

It’s true people can skip on down past his posts, and some will do that (many do, it seems), but at the same time some will just simply be turned away from the Marmot’s, and the community here may deteriorate.

I don’t own Marmot’s, I don’t pay for Marmot’s, I don’t guest-blog for Marmot’s, but in the same way that I have an interest in Apple Computer turning out more and greater products, I have an interest in Marmot’s maintaining its integrity.

It is not a rejection of change. The Yangban’s posts are not the same as Marmot’s, but there have been virtually zero complaints or criticisms of his writing. Instead it is a rejection of change toward something that is subpar.

There has been no shortage of criticism of Shelton’s work here, but he just doesn’t get the importance of some of the suggestions. Instead he tells us he’s a journalist and this is the way his brand of journalism works.

And the result is a stinking Ahssa Hole. And that’s why everybody dumps on Shelton).

Your list makes much more sense than mine (i.e., it has more internal consistency!).

“The cartoon” (one of 6 evils) must be ????? (comic strip) not animation. In Korean, comic strip and animation use the same word ????. Children animation was highly encouraged to brainwash children.

Shelton, you are nothing compared to what I went through for the past few days. You never know what ??? is like. 80% of the comments I’ve got the other day were ??? (none-sensical crap). I got rewarded though; thanks to the enormous # of comments (almost 900), I got bonus!