Howie Carr has been playing with the whole world by

prison rules for years now, and no-one in the local punditariat has ever called him out on it.
No, even the local liberal columnistas have for the most part either enabled Howie outright or else silently passed over his increasingly gruesome tirades on the radio and in the public prints.
So of course, when a pseudononymous critic of Carr pops up on the Blue Mass Group, the Globe's own Joanie Vennochi has a problem a with Ernie Boch III's lack of a proper name.
Normally I'd snark out at Joanie's latest humorless screed, but today just once I'll merely note that the internet is essentially built one oracular call-signs, mysterious handles and odd pseudonyms. There is a difference even if it is metaphorical between someone who is anonymous and someone who is using a pseudonym. I for example use one simply because I'd always thought it cool as a writing gimmick, Ben Franklin and Ian Fleming both favored pseudonyms in their columnist days, why should Humble Elias deny himself?
The dino-media doesn't get any of this, Joan Vennochi certainly doesn't get it, in part because the internet seems outside her experience and also because an attack on Howie is somehow also an attack on Joanie, she must protect her own in the end.
Of course, if the Scot LeHigh's and Joanie Vennochi's of this world had done their jobs vis a vis Howie's Neronian excesses there would be no need for Ernie Boch III or Humble Elias for that matter.
But they shuck and jive when it comes to Howie Carr and therefore into the breach charges the bloggers for better or worse.