Errata Sheet:

"Hugh Fitzgerald is combative, bombastic, verbose, undeniably prolific, and thoroughly, THOROUGHLY entertaining." --a reader

Well, I'd strike "bombastic" and "verbose" as not being the right words, not expressing what I know you are attempting to express. But that's okay.

The main point is that to assume that two clearly distinct individuals must be one, just because one of those two does not put up a photograph of himself, for someone's delectation, is absurd. When was the last time you saw a photograph of Ibn Warraq? Or of another dozen people who write about Islam in ways not likely to please Al-Qaradawi? Does one have some kind of obligation to do so? Why?

Robert Spencer and I clearly have different interetss (he's interested in Islam, and I'm bored silly by Islam), in books, in music, in art, in all kinds of things. He believes in God. I don't. What more do you want by way of distinguishing features. And surely only someone with a tin ear could conceivably mistake the prose of one for the prose of the other.

Nope, no multiple personalities or would-be Pessoas round here.

Of course, Robert does get all the groupies, while I sit at home by the telephone, waiting. But that's another story.