Today must be humor day. First the Washington Post tries to bury Norman Hsu in "unknown reasons" and then I read that Andrew Keen called Glenn Reynolds an "idiotic crazy libertarian ex-law professor."

Keen must think Glenn's academic career was a very short one. Because last year, he didn't think he was a law professor at all. I complained about this omission, which stood out glaringly in Keen's review of An Army Of Davids. Among other things, he called Glenn "a radical technophile and a voice of the ordinary people" and "the biggest little David of them all, Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds," who is an "uber-blogger and amateur musician," a believer in "techno-anarchist utopia" who "TRASHED half a millennium of post-Guttenberg cultural achievement."

Somehow, I missed Glenn's 500 years of Luddism, but never mind. The point is that these pronouncements, while extreme hyperbole, had to come from somewhere. And the fact that he called Glenn a musician makes me strongly suspect that Keen must have (at least in part) actually read the book he was reviewing. Because, in the book, Glenn admits to having been a musician in college, confesses to an ongoing interest in sound engineering, and describes how he helped his brother's band. It's all detailed in pages 47-51, so I think it's a fair guess that Keen at least flipped through the book and saw it. Why else would he bother to call Glenn a musician?

What I cannot understand is how someone who got that far into the book (let's face it, Keen did review it) could possibly have missed the cover. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but isn't it normal that most people who pick up a book that they're about to read would at least glance at the cover? The reason I ask is because right there it says this:

Glenn Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee, is the blogger extraordinaire responsible for one of the Internet's premier blogs, Instapundit.com.

In his post today, Glenn points Keen to his bio at another review and says that "maybe he didn't read that far." I think Glenn is being far too charitable. Keen didn't need to read another book review; all he had to do was merely glance at the cover of the book he was reviewing.

Now, I don't like to be judgmental (or "judgemental" in the Keen's English), but the overwhelming totality of evidence makes me suspect that Andrew Keen knew then -- and knows now -- that Glenn is a law professor. The recent "ex-law professor" remark reveals not ignorance on Keen's part, but deliberation.

What does it suggest about Keen that he would go out of his way to ignore what's on the cover of a book he's reviewing, only to call Glenn an "ex" law professor a year later? And let's look at the quote in context:

Andrew Keen: Are you comparing the Instapundit, the idiotic crazy libertarian ex-law professor, to Polly Toynbee and Robert Fisk? They are my heroes!

Adriana Lukas: No, I am not comparing Instapundit to Polly Toynbee or Robert Fisk. That would be unfair to Instapundit.

But has Robert Fisk suddenly become a conservative hero? Or has Keen now become an ex-conservative? Actually, posing such questions is an exercise in silliness, because facts and consistency don't seem to matter to Andrew Keen. The most likely explanation is that he says these things not because he believes them, but in order to get attention.

If I used Keen's logic, I'd have to call him an "ex-troll."

But that wouldn't be fair.

(In fairness, though, I think it's understandable that Keen would consider Robert Fisk his hero.)