BLALKING.(The Talk of the Town)(journalists use the Internet to irritate each other, leading to allegations of stalking)

In San Diego last month, the Times columnist Paul Krugman dropped by the Revelle Forum lecture series and was greeted with rapturous applause. He delivered a half-hour speech, which amounted to an indictment of the entire economic strategy of the Bush Administration, and afterward stuck around to sign copies of his new book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century." The line inched forward, and, after a time, a member of the audience, carrying a camcorder to record the event for posterity, stepped up and asked Krugman to personalize his inscription.

"All right," Krugman said. "What's your name?"

"Don Luskin," the man replied. Krugman hesitated for a moment, then signed. "Now, you keep up the good work, Paul," Luskin said, grinning.

That night, Luskin returned to his hotel room (he'd flown down from Silicon Valley) and wrote a long entry on his blog, Poorandstupid.com. "I have looked evil in the face," he said. "I've been in the same room with it. I don't know how else to describe my feelings now except to say that I feel unclean, and I'm having to fight being afraid."

Luskin wasn't the only person to be unsettled by the encounter. Back in May, Krugman, who likes to refer to his most persistent internet critics as stalkers, had identified Luskin, in a Web posting, as his "stalker-in-chief." (In addition to Poorandstupid.com, which features a caricature of Krugman's head superimposed on the Ghostbusters logo, Luskin writes the "Krugman Truth Squad" column for National Review Online.) Now, having been surprised in real time by his virtual nemesis, Krugman had to wonder, if only for a second, whether the phrase was more accurate than he imagined. Krugman occasionally receives death threats, and in the past month he has started turning ominous e-mails over to the F.B.I. On the Fox News show "Hannity & Colmes," a week or so after the lecture, Krugman responded to an accusation--the source of it was Poorandstupid.com--by saying, "That's a guy who actually stalks me on the web, and once stalked me personally."

So began Stalkergate, a journalistic mud-wrestling match featuring allegations of dishonesty, libel, and all-around creepy conduct. Luskin counterattacked with a new "Truth Squad" installment, citing Krugman's "ultra-leftist conspiracy fantasies," demanding a retraction and an apology, and requesting an opportunity to set the record straight on "Hannity & Colmes." That opportunity was quickly granted. On the air, Sean Hannity asked Luskin, "Don, you gonna sue him?," to which Luskin responded, "Well, you know, my counsel told me to respond to a question like that by saying that I can't respond to a question like that."

Luskin's Krugman-baiting--though more or less a hobby, while he works as an investment consultant--is the latest incarnation of an old tradition, dating back to the days of that great Colonial pundit Thomas Paine, who was hounded relentlessly by William Cobbett, a.k.a. Peter Porcupine, ...