The title is a great Anglicism meaning they were blasted by their own firework, or ‘it all backfired’.

For readers who have missed this fascinating soap opera, The Tablet is a left wing English ‘Catholic’ weekly that’s been around a long time and thinks it is an important voice of English Catholicism. Last week one of their writers called Elena Curti wrote a petty little piece needlessly attacking traditionalist priest and popular blogger, Fr. Finigan.
The piece was savaged by blogger Damian Thompson and then Fr. Z picked up the story. Fr.Z pointed out that The Tablet has a circulation of 22,000. (I know from seven years of visiting Catholic Churches across England that a huge number of these remain unsold at the back of the church each week) Anyway, Fr.Z pointed out that he has 25,000 hits to his blog daily!
Fr.Finigan posted a line by line reply to the article and then was slapped down by The Tablet’s feminist editor and her lawyers for infringement of copyright. So he re-published a ‘legal’ version of his reply here.
Fr Finigan now posts these statistics to show that his own blog (thanks to the publicity) has had 25,000 hits this week. In the meantime a collection is being taken for Fr.Finigan to buy new traddy vestments (Curti criticized him for spending parish money on vestments) I reckon the Tabletistas are kicking themselves. All Elena Curti has done is raised Fr. Finigan’s popularity, made him a minor media martyr and made even more people annoyed and fed up with The Tablet.
When are the old fashioned print media people going to realize that a revolution is going on and that nobody of the younger generation reads their weary old newsprint?
I predict that The Tablet’s days are numbered, and unless they go over to an online edition which is free (as Crisis magazine has done) they’ll soon go under–and not a day too soon in my opinion, because along with their demise will also be the death of one more branch of the liberal media’s stranglehold on the modern propaganda machine.
Long live blogging!