Martin’s first rule of blogging

Nothing good can come from a post that starts like this:

Andrew Sullivan links to a Ross Douthat-Julian Sanchez exchange (that started as a Douthat-Saletan exchange, and concerning which Karl Smith and Noah Millman get words in edgewise, if you care to follow up the links.)

In a related question, a) who still reads Sullivan and b) what have you done in a previous life that you’d voluntarily read Douthat or Sanchez? Also, why take any of them seriously enough to blog about them? They’re all hacks who I wouldn’t trust me to tell the sky is blue if I weren’t in a position to check it. Why give people who basically act like polite trolls the intellectual credit by responding to their latest inane “discussions”?

So, Martin’s first rule of blogging: don’t take proven trolls seriously, never respond to hacks.