In a November 17 update to his October 31 ShadowParty.com posting, Richard Poe, co-author of The Shadow Party, criticized Media Matters' "tardy response" to Poe's “rebuttal” of Media Matters' critique of The Shadow Party. Poe's response to our response to his response to our response to his book may have been fast, but he didn't actually challenge anything we wrote. Just as he has yet to actually take issue with a single fact in our 2 1/2-year-old debunking of his May 2004 NewsMax article, though he insists it stands un-debunked.

From Poe's updated blog entry:

Media Matters has at last responded to my rebuttal of October 30. Curiously, while my rebuttal raised 82 specific challenges to Media Matters' attack on The Shadow Party, writer Simon Maloy responded only to five of them. He explains: “Since time, space, and frankly, waning interest are limiting factors here, we'll delve into just a few of Poe's attempts to take down Media Matters”.(3)

Given the modest goals which Mr. Maloy set for himself, I am puzzled as to why he took 18 days to achieve them. Media Matters usually cranks out these sorts of hatchet jobs within 24-48 hours.

If I were one of Media Matters' financial benefactors, Mr. Maloy's anemic and tardy response would cause me serious annoyance. This is not the sort of “rapid response” which Media Matters promises its donors.

Media Matters would also like to point out two more things:

1) Media Matters waited 18 days -- Poe took three months to respond to Media Matters' original critique of The Shadow Party.

2) We had other priorities.