Obnoxious Jerk
Brian Conley runs the Metro Pulse a weekly paper in Knoxville, Tennessee. The only reason people outside of Knoxville know of his existence is that local bloggers like South Knox Bubba talk about the newspaper. The paper occasionally references the blog, but doesn’t have a permanent link to it as the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the local daily, does.
In addition to his own blog which features some great bird photography, and fabulous pictures of a recent trip to the West Coast, Bubba hosts a forum, and is the “godfather” of the Rocky Top Brigade, a loose knit community of Tennessee bloggers.
For personal reasons Bubba has been blogging anonymously. He is a liberal in a conservative area and a small business owner, so there’s a perceived need not mix blogtopia¹ and the real world.
People on Bubba’s forum didn’t like an article in the Metro Pulse. Let’s be clear, it wasn’t Bubba, it was commentators who didn’t like the article. For whatever reason Conley went ballistic and threatened to reveal Bubba’s identity in a front page article in the newspaper with references to Bubba’s police record and credit history.
As far as Bubba is aware he doesn’t have a criminal record and obtaining and revealing his credit history will at least violate Conley’s terms of use with the credit bureau and may be illegal.
Having had to deal with this issue himself, Atrios jumped on it and awarded Wanker of the Day to Brian Conley.
Steve Gilliard joined in with Bully in action.
SKB outed himself, so if you care he writes niche market software for banks. That’s why the talk about criminal records and credit reports are blatant threats and would qualify Conley’s conduct worthy of arrest in the state of New York, and probably most states under extortion laws.
Bubba has written nothing that would be altered in any way by knowing the name on his driver’s license or the occupation on his tax return.
Conley has shown himself to be contemptible. He has certainly not helped his business by attacking Bubba, and if there is justice to be found in the Knoxville business community, he has done himself great injury.
1. yes, skippy coined that term
