While I'm not exactly sure what the correct definition of "wingnut" or wingnuttery is, the phrase is almost always intended as an insult; the clear implication being that the "wingnut" is both an extremist as well as not mentally stable. Nat Hentoff is someone I greatly respect (regardless of whether I might agree with him on every issue), and when I saw him accused of "wingnuttery," I was more than a little bothered.

Not that I really needed to defend him. Nat Hentoff is a big boy who can certainly take care of himself without my help. But then I saw what the same accuser said about Kim du Toit:

I remember once having a long conversation with an idiot student over Du Toit's awful "pussification" essay. A quick perusal of his "blog" confirms that he fulfills all of the requirements of the selection committee: His blogging is both "rank" and "incompetent". When I can find more cogently argued, logical, and reasonable arguments six beers into an evening from 6 of 7 patrons at my dad's favorite sports bar in Nebraska, it means that you're not making much of a contribution. At the bar, at least I can get drunk.

Congratulations, Mr. Du Toit. You've won a lifetime subscription to Lawyers, Guns and Money, as soon as we start charging. To his multitude of readers, I can only ask the following: Who is more pathetic? The sap, or the saps who read him? A decent blogger actually introduces new ideas; he does not simply confirm what you already believed but were too ashamed to verbalize.

Now I see the same blogger claiming that in my defense of Hentoff and du Toit, I "attacked" their attacker.

Did I?

After quoting from the piece that earned Nat Hentoff the "wingnut" label, I said this :

There's more, and while I know everyone's tired of reading about the Schiavo case, seeing Nat Hentoff accused of "wingnuttery" -- by the same people who've just honored Kim du Toit with this breathtakingly ingenious exercise in academic wit -- made me feel obliged.

But is a sarcastic characterization of a vicious attack really an attack? I meant it as a defense of Kim du Toit, who was called "rank," "incompetent," and "pathetic" by a teacher who simultaneously called his student an "idiot." It's name-calling, and I don't like it.

I objected to it then, and I object to it now. If objecting to the use of insults is an attack, then I guess this objection to the objection has to also be called an attack.

If it is, further discussion is about as productive as calling each other names.