Libel

Though I check my email obsessively, I do not often receive letters of note. More often than not, I merely receive unsolicited offers to supply me with dubious medication that I have absolutely no need of.

However, as I checked my email recently I was stunned -- stunned -- to see a familiar name in my inbox: Neal Emerson. As you know, that is the name of my sniveling alter ego. The mail contained (no subject) and read thusly:

hello imposter

As you can imagine I was filled with violent rage -- and quiet bemusement. After all, no one could be foolish enough to truly believe that such a simple message would cause me fear or trepidation. There is no doubt that I am the one true Doctor Polaris. Any fool could see that from a cursory evaluation of this email. Let us examine it, shall we?

To begin, the author is either uneducated or far too enamored with current Internet "standards" of discourse. I see that his statement (which can barely be classified as such) lacks both capitalization and punctuation. As you well know, I have several degrees from top universities. I would not make the mistake of forgetting capitals and periods!

Additionally, the author of this scandalous letter has spelled impostor "imposter." This in and of itself proves him to be an impostor. For you see, the spelling of the word employed by this impostor is not standard American spelling. Rather, it is a variant mildly preferred in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and certain parts of Canada.

As you well know, I am from California -- one of our glorious United States of America. We do not spell impostor with an "E." We're simply better than that.

Finally, let this be known: this impostor's letter features only two poorly chosen words. I am renowned as many things, but succinct is not one of them. Were I to angrily denounce a doppelganger I would do so with a great many correctly punctuated words.

With this, I believe that we can lay to rest the question of who is the true Doctor Polaris. Though I know that you, my loyal readers, never for a moment questioned it. I invite any and all of you to email this fool -- "docpolaris at gmail dot com" -- and demand that he apologize to the one true Doctor Polaris!