Over at Buzz Machine today Jeff Jarvis reflects on a blog attack that left him feeling a bit wounded – it even caused his parents to ask why someone was having a go at him.

It’s the ‘perils of publicness’ he writes. The original piece by Ron Rosenbaum at Slate.com criticised Jarvis, among other things, for his high profile conference circuit and questioned his reporting credentials.

Jarvis first responded here, with a blog post entitled ‘There, there Ron.’ Rosenbaum then left a comment calling him a … ‘meta-bloviator’. Plenty of comments to get through on that one.

And with the latest post, on it goes…

Calling himself an ‘obnoxious optimist’ Jarvis writes:

“Maybe that’s what happens: We all get attacked once and become wiser for it. Or we all get attacked and become nastier for it; that’s the fear. There were always be trolls, fools, idiots, and assholes; there are in life and so they will be here on the internet. That doesn’t ruin the internet any more than it ruins New York. The question is whether and how we can see and protect the value of the internet. Optimist that I am, I believe we will.”