Remember him? Yeah, that guy. He started acting all tough and talking down to an American soldier who dared to ask him for identification at a checkpoint. When his posting was discovered, and he united the blogopshere in despising him, he removed his posting. He later reinstated it, with somewhat of an apology, that really wasn’t.

Anyway, Sacramento Bee editor Armando Acuna has decided to publicly the defend the jackass on Veterans’ Day. SacBee:

A day after his Oct. 23 blog posting, Calvan woke up at 5 a.m. in his Baghdad hotel room and signed onto his computer.

“My e-mail started going crazy,” he recounted in a phone call several days ago while on a reporting trip along the Kurdistan border. “That’s when I started receiving all this hate mail.”

His private blog was now whizzing around the very public blogosphere, put there by right-wing critics breathlessly passing it around like the discovery of a deep, dark secret, a digital Rosetta stone deciphering the media’s true heart.

Even the mainstream media got into the act. On Oct. 25 USA Today’s “On Deadline” Web site wrote about the controversy, including running an excerpt from Calvan’s blog.
It’s as if the armchair critics were pointing a big, fat finger and saying, “Aha, we caught you!”

Yeah, those armchair critics. Like, ya know, military bloggers. And troops currently serving. Unlike that brave Bobby Calvan who can bully a troop whose duty is to protect him.

The real shame, of course, is how this Internet conniption fit over something so minor overshadows the serious journalism from Iraq. There are legitimate reader questions about coverage and stories, their selection, tone, balance and accuracy.

By the way, I’m well aware today is Veterans Day. Today’s column has nothing to do with that, so please don’t go there. I’m proud of our men and women in uniform. I have family wearing that uniform now.

This isn’t about them. This is about politics and playing games.

“so minor”? He tried to degrade and bully a troop, then took an “aren’t I brave” attitude.

But here’s the thing: The blogosphere had stopped talking about it. Hell, I damn-near forgot about it. Acuna is the one bringing it back up, siding with a wimpy jackass.

As Michelle says:

Who’s playing games?