Thursday, December 11, 2008

From the smoldering ashes of one dead blog rises another on the Gulf Coast plain



We wrote about a run-in between an Angleton-based blogger and the company that calls itself TaxMasters back in July.

TaxMasters was pissed about the writings of Don Callaway on the blog known as Enormous Incongruities and threatened legal action.

At the time it was difficult for us to grasp what all the fuss was about, but we attempted to do so in this post, which explained it began with Callaway critiquing TaxMasters' TV commercials, which can be seen on an annoyingly regular basis, particularly during daytime viewing.

We continued:

...pretty soon Callaway started hearing, via e-mail, from all sorts of people who are mad as hell at TaxMasters for the way the Houston-based company handled their tax problems.

The complaints and various responses from the company continued and were dutifully posted by Callaway on Enormous Incongruities.

Before long, if you Googled "TaxMasters" the Enormous Incongruties coverage of the company appeared at the top of the Google search list, which apparently didn't sit well with the company, which just the other day demanded that Callaway remove all his posts regarding TaxMasters or face consequences of the "judicial" and "non-judicial" variety.

Callaway didn't take kindly to the letter.

He responded on his blog:
"...you fucktards over at TaxMasters can rest assured that I take your threats seriously; however, I will not be removing any content from my personal web log. I advise caution while determining what action is “appropriate” as there might well be none.

I am not sure what “non-judicial” actions there are available to TaxMasters. Is that where they send someone over to kick my ass? I hope so."


The two parties ended up in a Harris County courtroom. We don't know what exactly went on there, but made an e-mail inquiry to Callaway, thinking it could be an interesting story (David vs. Goliath, free speech, etc., etc.)

We didn't get a response -- an apparent sign that Callaway was indeed knee-deep in lawyers wearing dark suits.

Then, just this week, we noticed Callaway's blog had vanished from Bloggerville. Uh-oh.

And tonight we received an e-mail from Callaway, who told us his blog "is a casualty of our litigious society.But everything turned out okay for me in the end."

Callaway now has turned his attention to a new online venture called Gulf Coast Texas Outdoor Magazine.

We encourage everyone to patronize Don's new Web site, which we assume will say nary a discouraging word about TaxMasters.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

TaxMasters? Never heard of 'em.

-D

Anonymous said...

Those assholes at TaxMasters are indeed a bunch of fucktards!!!

Anonymous said...

Most reporters are wimps. dan appears to be just another one. If his blog died, then it died for a reason. No one said a blog was anything special.

Banjo Jones said...

And you, sir, are a loser.

Anonymous said...

so we will continue to see the obese Patrick Cox, his ill-fitting suits, and that nasty red beard on CNN every 10 minutes forever?

Anonymous said...

I am also a casualty of the infamous Tax Masters. They made off with $7500 to "help us with our taxes". I'd love to find a way to make sure other innocent customers are not caught up in the promises they will not produce in any way, shape or form.