Reputation is something other people give a person, deserved or not. Nobody has control over their reputation – all a person can do is to continually do their best.

Broadly speaking, based on a mere Google, I have greater exposure than do you, and by far. Most of what you would read about me that is posted by others is less than complimentary. However, there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. I will not recant the tale that I had to tell.

What you would not find on Google is what has disappeared about me, among which items would be an online legal periodical that had been available for a couple of years prior to me relating what had actually happened. The online periodical, I recall as being associated with a Washinton DC university, had a section titled ‘Student Cases in the News.’ [I actually have the periodical downloaded in a file somewhere.] This periodical had referenced my civil action in the same section following a report of a civil action by a student against a law school. The article reported that this other student had threatened to blow up the career counselor’s office or something along those lines. They may as well have labeled the section ‘Nuts in the News.’ Thankfully, the online legal periodical was taken down within a few months of my beginning to post my chronicle.

A coincidence about another ‘legal’ oriented site – JDJive I think it was. Somebody posted on JDJive, in reference to my story during the ‘discussion’ of it, ‘no wonder Hillary Clinton is so hot for this swamp rat.’ Soon after this somebody bought the site for I believe $25,000 and took it down. Another coincidence: a local judges’ son who was in the same law school as I at the same time had worked for the Clinton’s. This same young man now works for President Obama. If there weren’t houses in the way I could see their house from mine.

The point is, you can do something about an apparently negative online reputation – sometimes it may take a while to determine how to do it.

Cause and effect are funny things. A defendant’s attorney would have you believe that A never caused B. A prosecuting attorney would want you to believe that A *always* causes B (and therefore C *must* be guilty).

When you write, I have noticed that you often use very good examples. One should probably say that those examples merely *expedite* the learning process. However, one might also say that your writing would be far less persuasive without the examples. SEO can be used in much the same way I think. (if only to gain gravitas for your writings)

That being said, I slightly disagree with you that SEO does not directly advance your stated goals (which I believe I am in agreement with, but am still digesting). Let me offer an example:

Say you have a blog about, oh, criminal law in Texas. And say that your purpose with said blog is to foster discussion and learning about certain aspects of criminal law that are misunderstood or completely misconceived (i.e that the prosecutors speak for “the people”, that police officers never lie, and so forth). If I understand correctly, this blog should fit within your defined goals (if not, please help me understand).

Now, since discussion and dialectic are necessary to your purpose, you must attract some readers and commentators to your blog. Alas, your blog has finally appeared on Gaggle, that vaunted search engine, but it has made it’s initial appearance at number 567 out of 568 “hits”. You have determined based upon your search engine ranking that it is not likely that you will be attracting many visitors to your blog and your wonderful idea will fail as the result of a lack of participation.

So how do you improve your ranking? The same way that the other fella in the Houston, TX area did with his – through the use of SEO.

note: SEO includes things like “backlinks” or references in other blogs to your blog posts, keywords like “criminal” “Texas”, and so forth. Fact of the matter is that we all have used some SEO whether we intended to or not.

But, as you know, on twitter I am frequently confused.

Frankly, if I ever had a neo-con decoder ring on hold for me, they must have taken it away long ago for, among other things, being very anti-Iraq-war, very pro-gay-rights and pro-gay-marriage, and for voting for Clinton and Kerry (although I did vote for the execrable loser Bob Barr in the last election, since Obama was taking California and I’m fiscally conservative and socially libertarian).

While these tiny little thugs go on and on about how I’m “racist,” I actually get off my ass and do volunteer work to make things better for “at-risk” kids. I created a program called WIT: What It Takes, that I’d like to see administered across the country by Boys and Girls Clubs of America. At the moment, I speak once a month at an inner-city school to demystify “making it,” and, no, not in a pointy white hat and a sheet, just my street clothes.

And, finally, while some idiot on Sadly Juvenile recently claimed that my site was largely “Judeo-Christian,” or something along those lines, I’m actually a staunch atheist with a business card reading “Amy Alkon, godless harlot,” and I attend a lot of evolutionary psych conferences. And, no, I’m not standing outside holding up a cross and shouting — I’m in there hearing the latest research so I can put out evidence-based science in my column.

Since you seem a bit unclear on why they started going after me, I’ll post a bit of a comment I posted on my site and Patterico’s to clear it up:

Their hatred is mostly due to their continuing need for a new kickball, and loosely connected to the fact that I blogged my opinion that black activists like Jesse Jackson should work to stigmatize single motherhood in the black community. I blogged that after reading a news story about an Ohio woman named Tarika Wilson, who had six different children by five different drug dealers by the age of 24, and was living, along with her children, with one of those drug dealers. Mmm, wholesome!

Yes, I’m of the mind that children need daddies, and that you don’t bring more children into the world than you can afford to feed and care for. Crazy, I know.

Wilson, tragically (but not surprisingly) was killed in a SWAT raid on her home when police came for her drug dealer boyfriend. Live with a drug dealer, die in a SWAT raid…it’s not a surprising outcome. Wilson herself spent a year in prison. I wonder who took care of her children during that time.

And yes, I also believe white children need daddies, and I’m appalled that there’s a trend for rich white women to be “single mothers by choice,” but, apparently, in the minds of these “progressives,” if you criticize a black person, it automatically means you’re racist.

The Wilson story and Sadly Juvenile’s attacks on me are actually detailed in Chapter 9: Modems Without Manners, in the book the tiny little thugs are “reviewing” but haven’t read. Just so ugly, what they’re doing.

Thanks for listening, and thanks again for your post.