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The last time I wrote about Henry Allen he was throwing punches in the newsroom and telling a writer that she'd produced "the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years.” Allen -- "intense, mercurial, bald, bearded" -- retired as Washington Post Style assignment editor shortly after that. He resurfaced today when his former colleagues asked about Dan Zak's Monday piece on the Guardian Angels -- a story that one Twitter user says Allen would have nipped in the bud. Wrong, says Allen.

Has anyone pointed out that Dan has taken the rules of Twitter and created an aesthetic? He has taken its leveling strictures and brevities and turned them into an art form to be used for better or worse. Tiny paragraphs, each one a sort of Tweet in itself, add up to a work, un oeuvre, of some yet-to-be-named kind.

As for the…claim that Henry Allen would have put a stop to this piece, I will state that the only thing Henry Allen would like to put a stop to is people saying that Henry Allen would put stops to things.

Henry Allen doesn’t even try to put a stop to the bullying bores of the social media. He simply ignores them, and advises others to do the same. However small an amount of dignity you possess, they are beneath it.