San Jose Inside, a blog associated with Metro Newspapers and former mayor Tom McEnery, dropped a bomb on the local political blog scene with a post that claims to reveal the identity, or at least the team directing, combative political blogger “San Jose Revealed.”

Recently, the only somewhat Santa Clara-centric blog Mission City Lantern had been posting speculations about possible identities behind Revealed, but little conclusive evidence. In their latest post, Inside are effectively claiming that several of the people named by the Lantern are working together to direct Revealed’s blog, though admitting that a not-yet-identified third party may actually be writing Revealed’s words.

The people named by the Lantern and Inside are a fairly close group of advisers around former city councilmember Cindy Chavez, who ran for mayor in 2006. The Lantern specifically identified Revealed to be Philip Bump, formerly political director of the South Bay Labor Council, of which Chavez is currently CEO. In return, Revealed has posted a denial that the other blogs have him correctly identified.

I’ve always read Revealed as the kind of blogger who likes to poke a stick into a hornet’s nest, just to create some excitement. He has a certain group of local political figures who he regularly jabs at, and reading his stuff has been like watching over-the-top political rhetoric brought to the local stage. He strikes me as the “Rowdy” Roddy Piper of local politics. I always figured the people he took issue with were all grown-ups and could certainly stand up to Revealed’s somewhat clownish jeering.

On the other hand, I haven’t been reading Revealed long enough to see some of the more mean-spirited things Inside and the Lantern have pointed out, such as posting a map to the home of political aspirant (and gang prosecuting attorney) David Pandori’s. This, at least, clearly crosses the line from entertaining political bloviation to dangerous invasion of privacy.