Quote of the Day

"I did hear another story, not from Greenwald himself, about the Guardian writer's life in Brazil. The Out profile of him mentioned the pack of stray dogs that Greenwald had adopted. But it skipped over the boys — mainly friends of his partner David Michael Miranda — who sleep over and play videogames at the house. That would have given too much ammunition to Greenwald's conservative critics."

-- Gawker Publisher Nick Denton on Glenn Greenwald

I'm really not sure what the hell to make of this. There's a story in today's New York Daily News that digs pretty deeply into Greenwald's life and finds that he used to be involved in the business side of a gay porn company and that he continues to have all kinds of problems with the IRS, including tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding debt, but I honestly don't care about that. As Greenwald essentially says, everybody's got their trouble. It is entertaining to get further confirmation that he's a pissy, demanding little pain-in-the-ass who lives for unnecessary melodrama and who thinks his shit doesn't stink -- also that he considers ancient history to be about ten years ago -- but for the most part the Daily News revelations are meaningless.

Now Denton's insinuation, on the other hand, seems pretty nasty. But the above quote is really all he says about it aside from saying that he met Greenwald in Rio 18 months ago, which means, I assume, that he's claiming to know about Greenwald and videogame-paying boys from some kind of personal experience, either with Greenwald himself or someone close to him. Denton threw the link to Gawker's story on the Greenwald report up on Twitter just a little while ago with this headline: "Finally, an excuse to share my Glenn Greenwald gossip."

It's a pretty damning charge to make, even as subtle innuendo. I hope Denton's got something to back this kind of thing up seeing as how vindictively sue-happy Greenwald has proven himself to be over the years.

This is one of those cases, though, where whoever loses, we win.