"At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry."

"I'm informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: 'It's more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov.' I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition."

That's Roger Ebert talking about a blog post of his called "Video games can never be art."

The reason I'm noticing this brouhaha is that, checking my Site Meter, I saw I was getting a ton of traffic from Bing on a search for "roger ebert apologizes." I wanted to know what was stirring people up today, and kind of sorry they were dropping by my blog only to be disappointed to find something I wrote back in October 2008 called "Roger Ebert apologizes for reviewing the first 8 minutes of a movie."

Funnily, Ebert's new post begins:

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen.

I think my old post does have some relevance: It calls that second sentence into question. I can see a lawyerly way to defend it, but it's pretty weasely.

AND: "I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread" insults the 3 novels doesn't it?