Fisking Fisk

The only nit I have to pick about the article quoted below is their definition of “Fisking” - it means the destruction of an idiotic column or post point-by-point - not a description of what Fisk’s columns are like…I like everything else about it ;) Go on and read it - it has a funny juxtaposition of Robert Fisk’s various proclamations and his dramatic turnabout on them every time they were proved wrong.

In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: “fisking”, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent, stationed these many years in Beirut.