Stan Kurtz is upset that the blogosphere’s response to his most recent column on sexual privacy has been largely mocking and scornful. Why oh why, he laments, can’t bloggers engage in serious debate without insults and jibes?

What he doesn’t notice is that, of course, they do. All the time. But they do so when faced with serious arguments. They don’t engage in detailed rebuttals of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and if they’re a little flip in replying to bigotry with a wispy fig-leaf of unargued sociological speculation draped over it, well, that shouldn’t be a big surprise either. What’s really bothering him, I think, is the realization that quite a few people don’t think he deserves to be taken nearly as seriously as he takes himself. Well, I imagine the blogosphere would be more than willing to strike a bargain: if he starts making real arguments, we’d be delighted to start crafting more deliberative responses.

Update: In the comments section, Alex Elliot thinks he’s found the source of Kurtz’s pique:

I imagine his feelings are hurt because he was convinced that his article was an amazing tour-de-force of unprecedented logic. In the Corner post where he first announced the article, he described it as “one of [his] most ambitious pieces” and said that it would bring the “ongoing debates over gay marriage to a new level”:

To have so many dismiss it as the frankly bizarre piece of sophistry that it was must have stung more than a little bit.

To coin a phrase, indeed.