Fellow travellers, if you peruse the rancid right-wing reaches of the blogosphere as I do from time to time, then surely you will have heard about a blogger called Alene Composta. Now, there is a meme going round that she is some kind of cyber-sock puppet created by a hateful conservative with the explicit intention of shaming the ABC.

As regular readers of this blog know, similarly vile and false rumours have been spread about myself. I have even been named by an appalling AmerKKKan commenter on a blog post as having something to do with Ms Composta's "fabrication". So I am now an interested party and have a few things to say on the matter.

Firstly, after reading Ms Composta's blog, I have absolutely no doubt about its veracity. Her sassy identification of the misogynous motivations behind the use of "Moose" certainly has the ring of truth. It's just the kind of sexist (and speciesist) slur you'd expect from a member of the Liberal Party. These peenie-wavers simply can't open their mouths without saying something nasty about women or fauna, or both!

Given that Ms Composta is a real person, I have great sympathy for the turmoil she must be going through now. It's a horrible thing to be vilified in comments as she has been. (Right-wingers are surely the nastiest trolls imaginable. We on the left could never be as cruel as they are on comment threads, Twitter and Facebook!) But worse still, to have it said that you don't actually exist. That is the most distressing thing of all, fellow travellers.

And I know that feeling well. I was accused of being a satirical construction recently. The thing that made it even more hurtful was that the smear came from the left. I apologize to women readers for paraphrasing a dead white male but the words "Et tu, Crikey?" come to mind here.

As a result of this vile claim I actually fell into a deep depression, and even had to receive counseling. Now, as one who usually has such a joyous, life affirming attitude - and who is a qualified and highly respected past life regression therapist himself - this was extremely hard to take.

This is why I am deeply concerned about Alene. Look at that last post. It has a terrible aura of finality. Quite frankly I think she may well be contemplating committing suicide, or could even have already done so.

I dearly hope this is not the case, and that Alene manages to pull the shattered pieces of her life together and keep speaking truth to power. Surely, the blogosphere needs her. But if she doesn't and - Gaia forbid! - some pallid female corpse is found in the bath of a terrace house in Seddon ... Well, then, right-wingers, let it be on your heads!

UPDATE: Here are more of my searing insights on this subject.

UPDATE: Just as I thought, Composta was murdered. It was a killing that was made to look like a suicide. In this post I name one of the eeevil perpetrators.