Daily Planet advertiser, Vladislav Davidzon, owner of Common Circle Education, wrote a scathing letter accusing an opponent of the Daily Planet of attempt to intimidate him into pulling his advertising.

However, with a little investigation, it turns out that Davidzon is an anti-Israel blogger, which immediately seems to taint the testimony.   We have learned that the person who visited Davidzon’s business was Dan Spitzer.  Spitzer claims that he merely tried to hand Davidzon a copy of the concise report that is located on our website’s home page, and  that Davidzon then went ballistic.  Since Davidzon is an ideological fellow traveler with O’Malley, it all seems to make sense.

Nevertheless, there were apparently no witnesses, so we were unable to determine whose story was correct at the time.  However, now we believe that we may have evidence that Spitzer really is innocent of the charge of intimidation.

On December 23, Dan Spitzer paid a visit to a new Daily Planet advertiser, Black Oak Books.  This bookstore had just reopened at a new location and under new ownership.  Spitzer says that he spoke with the owner, Gary Cornell, and handed him a copy of this website’s findings.  He claims to have been, as always, polite.  He further claims that, as always, he did not threaten the owner in any way. 

Turning to leave, Spitzer bumped into a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, Carolyn Jones, who just happened to be in the store to document the reopening.    Did Spitzer tell Jones that the Jews of Berkeley would bake matzahs with the blood of Cornell’s children, stolen from their beds in the middle of the night?  This was, at least, Spitzer’s golden opportunity to announce a Jewish boycott of Black Oak.  So when Jones asked Spitzer what he thought of the reopening, this is what Spitzer declared on behalf of Berkeley’s Elders of Zion:

“I'm ecstatic," said longtime customer Dan Spitzer, a Berkeley travel writer, as he browsed the tables of vegan cookbooks, science encyclopedias and hiking guides. "We really need our independent bookstores. This place has always had a wonderful potpourri of used books, small press books, rare books - just a great diversity of literature." (SF Chronicle, December 24, 2009)

Some threat!