Boerish
Context. Then some depraved quotations of wicked peoples’ proffered historical analogies, followed by one not so immoral but very spooky in its accuracy:
WHILE politicians debate whether more U.S. troops should be sent to Iraq, just as important is how those troops will be utilized. In the Boer War, a “surge” of soldiers helped. In the Vietnam War, it didn’t. The difference is that the British had a sounder strategy.
I realize that more troops do not necessarily guarantee more success (as Vietnam proved), but a sound counterinsurgency strategy is manpower-intensive. The Boer War and other successful counterinsurgencies have shown that victory is more likely if more troops are sent and employed intelligently.
My fear is that, even at this late date, all we’re willing to do is just enough to stave off defeat for the time being—not enough to win. I hope I’m wrong.
Many supporters of the wars in question are happy to see as few convictions as possible. They worry that prosecutions will poison public sentiment. This concern is overblown. What matters most to most folks back home is whether their “boys� are fighting for a just cause and whether they are winning. If the answer to both questions is yes, the public will forgive a great deal of misconduct. Thus, celebrated war-crimes cases did not prevent American victory in the Philippines or British victory in South Africa. Nor was the My Lai massacre a turning point in the Vietnam War. By the time it was exposed in late 1969, support for the war was already in freefall because victory did not appear to be in sight.
[…]
Victory diminishes the significance of war crimes; defeat magnifies them into defining events.
cf Kim DuToit, who is sandpaper to Boot’s silk on basically the same point.
It is certainly possible to conquer Afghanistan. We simply kill everyone we see (without being too fussy about how), except those who go in “protected zones” (sounds better than Concentration Camps) where we strip everyone of arms and kill anyone who looks like Taliban. Eventually, we turn the country over to the people we like. They won’t have any trouble holding it, since we will have killed most of the people who disagree with them. This is the Boer War with better sanitation and a worse climate, and this technique always works if you don’t mind being fairly murderous. It would be a massive undertaking, though I imagine the Russians would be more than happy to help. And certainly it’s within our abilities if we care enough. But, again, what exactly do we get out of this?
History never offers exact parallels, but it does have useful lessons. In assessing manning needs for Iraq, one would do well to look to prior conflicts of similar nature… one might look especially to the Boer War, in which a fractious, semi-fanatical culture was slowly ground into submission by an occupying force — several years after the seeming success of the initial invasion. If it sounds familiar, it should: and so the means of victory there offer an instructive thought experiment for Iraq today.
Make no mistake: those means were cruel. I have stated previously that I endorse cruel things in war — to eschew them is folly. The British achieved victory over the Boers by taking their women and children away to concentration camps, by laying waste to the countryside, and by dotting the veld with small garrisons in blockhouses at regular intervals. The men who remained were hindered in their movements by the wire stretching from blockhouse to blockhouse (a phenomenon that the Morice Line experience has shown would be massively more effective now); they could either surrender or die. Absent women and children, the rules of engagement were lax. From implementation to victory took under 18 months. To accomplish this required over one-quarter million soldiers.
But ..but! To use that quote as evidence of its creator’s psychopathy is unfair, says its author (a blatant mischaracterization, a smear, agrees its ‘brave’ author’s admirer — do read that one, it’s hilarious):
Update: […]The point of the excursion into the Boer War example is not to make a policy prescription, but to conduct a thought-experiment[…]
Umm, Sadly, no!:
The fundamental strategic flaw in the American war effort has always been one of under-manning coupled with a too-soft approach to the civilian population in which the insurgency thrives. This last may seem grotesque in light of the recent Lancet study alleging c.600,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since 2003 (which, unlike most of my conservative colleagues, I suspect is not wildly off the mark), but the point is not to urge killing or repression of civilians for its own sake. Rather, the point is to do what it takes to win. In this case, with a popular resistance to occupation and ethnic divisions at play, the applicable counterinsurgency models are Algeria and South Africa. In the former, the French military was able to seal Algerian borders to virtually end the influx of weapons and men to the FLN; and they put more Muslims under arms for France — the harkis — than fought for independence. (Algeria was lost due to French politics rather than military events, so we may still look to it for pragmatic lessons on the latter front.) In the latter, the Boer War period saw the Afrikaner nation virtually united in its opposition to British conquest. The exploits of the Boer guerrilla columns were models for insurgencies in the subsequent century, tying down nearly a quarter-million Imperial soldiers in pursuit of a few thousand horsemen. The British did what they had to do to win: they separated the women and children from the men, and caused the veld to be strewn with barbed wire and blockhouses. It was massive, it was expensive, it was heartbreaking, and it worked. A decade later, South African units went into battle for the King in the First World War.
[…]Conceptually, the Algerian-style sealing of Iraqi borders coupled with Boer War-style civilian control measures are workable and even just.[…]
And:
From British history, we have the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War, both of which were thoroughly disastrous in their opening phases — and both of which were won by a doggedly determined United Kingdom and its Empire.
And:
It used to be a commonplace that one supported one’s country at war, whether one believed the war to be just or not. There were exceptions, to be sure — the New Englanders of 1812, the Copperheads, and the tiny band of anti-imperialists c.1898 spring to mind — but the rule of thumb broadly held. (And it should be noted that history ill-regards the patriotism of two of those three examples.) This wasn’t purely an American phenomenon: even after the horrors of the concentration camps on the Transvaal soured much of Britain on the Boer War, the belief that it had to be won remained stalwart.
Somewhere in the 20th century, the idea of victory as an end in itself was lost.
And, conclusively, this (Instayokel-approved, naturally):
TNR’s Lawrence Kaplan put forth a wonderful piece, back in fall 2003, on the willingness of the American people to endure military casualties in the pursuit of victory. It is a commonplace that this willingness is shallow in the post-Second World War era: Americans simply do not wish to suffer, and do not have the senses of patriotism, pride, and honor that buffered such suffering for earlier generations. It is true, I think, that these qualities are less evident now than they were in the past. The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future, lest it lose the mere capacity to conquer, and be susceptible to humiliation by any small power with no advantage save mental fortitude. It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines for us, and South Africa for the British, from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq. Would that they were. But patriotism, pride, and honor are nonetheless still present in the American character. It is the American political class that lacks them in corresponding measure.
[My Emphasis; sociopathy in the hard original.]
And, finally, after that great wailing wall in electrons of fascistic British policies the evil liberal culture won’t let our brave wingnut pundits implement or our sojers emulate, we get this bit of WTFery:
‘[E]xterminate all the brutes’ is hardly an apt description of British strategy in the Boer War….
Right, obviously not with the ‘scorched earth’ and ‘concentration camps’ thing. What were we thinking?!
Anyway, shorter wingnut psychopaths: It’s really too bad that the politicians won’t go ‘Boer War’ on the Muslims, because that’s what the situation calls for.
Now it’s true that there are analogues to the Boer War. The following is AJP Taylor in 1949:
[…]The British, on their side, had expected the Boers to give way without a struggle; at worst, in Milner’s words, ‘an apology for a fight’ would be necessary. ‘A slap in the face’ would do the business.
Ahh, ‘a cakewalk’. Hubris. Yes, it rings a bell.
Though Boer hopes were disappointed, British hopes were disappointed also. The war dragged on for three years, and by the end the eclipse of Boer independence was of less importance than the deflation of British Imperialism. In fact, the Boer war had a more decisive effect on British politics than on Imperial history. It brought first the culmination and then the end of an arrogant, boastful epoch, in which British public opinion seemed to have abandoned principles for power[…]
Sorta like how the Iraq disaster has permanently destroyed the reputations of those who pushed the Project for the New American Century.
The Boer war caused a bitterness in British politics[…] This bitterness had many causes. Every dispute in which [Joseph] Chamberlain was involved was conducted in a savage, scurrilous way (on both sides); the Boer war gave the cheap press its first chance to display its quality; most of all, the war had the bitterness of a family quarrel — not merely a quarrel within the Empire but a quarrel in England between politicians of the same party origin. Imperialism and anti-Imperialism were both advocated by men of Liberal background.[…]
Yup, yup. Neocons, being former Liberals or even former socialists, versus the Left.
Old Toryism, with its roots in the countryside, had little sympathy with the aggressive and optimistic spirit of Imperialism.
Even the Paleocons, then — the Pat Buchanans and Lew Rockwells and Justin Raimondos — had a Boer war era equivalent.
In August 1899 Salisbury passed this verdict on the coming war: ‘We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us by Milner and his Jingo supporters. And therefore I see before us the necessity for considerable military effort — and all for people whom we despise and for territory which will bring no profit and no power to England.’
Lord Salisbury, then, was speaking as one of that era’s ‘Realists’; more candid than ours to be sure, but every bit as beleagured.
Salisbury was dragged into the war by Chamberlain; and Chamberlain was dragged into the war by Milner. Certainly, Chamberlain wanted to establish British supremacy in South Africa; this he had hoped to do gradually, by persuasion and passge of time. But Chamberlain was fatally compromised by his association with the Jameson Raid, the greatest blunder in his career. The raid ruined the chance of the Boer moderates and made it certain that Milner would have to deal with Kruger and his associates, men as obstinate and violent as himself.
So far so bad: Salisbury is like our Colin Powell, dragged into war by Bush, Cheney and the rest of the neocons. The Iraq War ruined the chance of Muslim moderates within Iran, assuring that Bush will have to deal — meaning, now, backdown so crippled is the American military — with a nuke-armed Amadinejad from a position of parity.
[Milner] hated inefficiency and delay; most of all, he hated compromise. With German dogmatism he wrote on 16 August 1899: ‘They will collapse if we don’t weaken, or rather if we go on steadily turning the screw.’ Milner had a great vision of British South Africa, which would escape dependence on the goldmines by wise economic planning and by raising the standard of life of the native population: he destroyed this vision by his impatience with the Boers[…]
Milner was not just that era’s wingnut extraordinaire, he was its perfect neoconservative: the insistence that victory was only a matter of will, the (declared, at least) grand schemes for the good of the colonial subjects, his general and pervasive stubborness…
Milner made a mistake not uncommon among civilian politicians: he supposed that the soldiers would conduct the war as competently as he had brought it about. The early disasters could be repaired; what could never be repaired was the prestige of Imperialism, on which Milner and Chamberlain had staked their political existence. Even worse than the blow to prestige was the damage to England’s moral position [because of concentration camps, etc depravities] on the continent of Europe. No war has been so universally condemned by enlightened European opinion.
The ground conditions SNAFU and the politician schemers realized they hadn’t thought things through, hadn’t considered contingencies. Check. Policies and practices which scandalized world opinion. Check. Depraved policies and practices that make a mockery of one’s country’s ideals. Check and mate.
Yet it will not do for the later historian to react against this by idealizing the Boers […] Though the Boers fought to preserve their independence they were even more concerned to preserve other, and less admirable, things: their policy of racial exclusion; their share of the gold profits; and their tyranny over the natives.
Fifty years afterwards, it is clear that victory has gone to the worst elements on both sides. Milner got his war without achieving his vision; the Boers lost their independence without being won for progress and civilization […] The mining houses and the most narrow-minded Boers, Johannesburg and Pretoria, have joined hands to oppress and exploit the native peoples who are the overwhelming majority of the population[…]
[My emphasis]
This is analogous to the present and future of Iraq: the Bush crew will have got their fucking Imperial presence, their beloved permanent bases from which the precious, precious oil will be watched, hawklike; the rest of Iraq will be a permanent bloodbath; a formerly fairly-secular society will become even more radically fundamentalist, largely in reaction to our presence there.
Now many on the anti-War side then, unlike now, Perfessor Corncob, you smear-artist, did actively root for the opposition. Taylor calls them ‘pro-Boer’. Whatever; warts and all (as opposed to, let us say, the facial syphillis of the ‘pro-concentration camp’ side), they are our ancestors and they were vindicated:
The pro-Boers were wrong about the Boers; they were right about the war. The great underlying issue at stake was not whether the Boers stood for a moral cause but whether the British Empire stood for one.
So, actually, the pro-Boers were patriotic; the Jingos were not. Likewise the anti-war side is the patriotic one in this conflict, and for the same reasons; the 82nd Chairborne is not. Being ‘pro-Boer’ then or ‘anti-war’ now never was and is not treason because such stances confirm a fidelity to the principles of the dissenters’ country. Conversely, the pro-war side in both conflicts urged a course of depravity (concentration camps, torture, genocide) that actively subverts the country’s principles, sells its soul, has the effect of making it as bad or worse than the ‘enemy’. Pro-war is being about conquering another country; anti-war is about preserving our own.
Milner and Chamberlain had appealed from principles to power; the pro-Boers reasserted the claims of principle, and four years after the end of the war this despised minority recieved at the polls the greatest majority that any party had won since the Reform Act. Many men fought bravely in the Boer war, but none acted more bravely or served his country better than the politician who declared in the St. James’s Hall on 15 September 1899:
You may make thousands of women widows and thousands of children fatherless. It will be wrong. You may add a new province to your Empire. It will still be wrong. You may give greater buoyancy to the South African stock and market share. You may create South African booms. You may send the price of Mr. Rhodes’s Chartereds up to a point beyond the dreams of avarice. Yes, even then it will be wrong.
The outbreak of the Boer war were better passed over in silence, were it not for the occasion it gives for reprinting Morley’s words.
Sadly, I don’t think we have an analogue to John Morley — which might be a blessing considering the original article’s later treatment of the Indians. Still, it would be nice to hear that sort of oratory from a politician. I suppose there’s Dennis Kucinich. Anyway, if the Boer war analogy holds true we do have one thing to look forward to: The thorough and much-deserved electoral annihilation of the pro-war side. Can’t happen soon enough.
Update 3-16-07 This post on VDH’s ‘boerishness’ and this fantastic post at 3Bulls on the Boer War itself are great reads.
PS to Tacky: If I find I’m outted anonymously, I’m assuming (since I caught you and Pasty both doing some google cache work within several minutes of each other, and you know exactly what I’m talking about, and when) that it’s one or the both of you, and will respond accordingly. Comprendo?
Shout it from the rooftops.
Kudos for your insight. Pity that every word is true.
lol, that’s some funny sh…
eh, I mean that’s a standard piece of historical analysis. This is what the wingnuts have done to you, they’ve won, they’ve out crazied your funny.
Bring back the Swankster.
Y’know, it used to be they just wanted to drag us back to some cockamamie dream of 1950s America.
But it’s gotten worse, hasn’t it. The 1950s isn’t far back enough. Now we have to go to the Boer War for the Right Utopian Dream. Or maybe further! Medieval feudal society is whattheirfaces’ dream over at Blogs for Bush, isn’t it?
But the point is we can’t even go back to the 20th century anymore to fix what’s wrong with the universe for these people.
These people are swine.
But dude, the RedState link is so funny I thought its inclusion made up for all the seriousness of the rest of the post! No? 🙁
You know, I get the feeling that most people have no idea how many civilians the U.S. and its puppet client government died in South Vietnam while the U.S. attempted to exterminate guerrilla forces. Estimates (no one cared or wished to count — hey, imagine that) hold that perhaps 4 or 5 times as many civilians died in ‘our’ South than the North.
And, yes, that includes forcing people into concentra…, er “Strategic Hamlets” etc. Another brilliant attempt to copy British colonial policies.
But there is certainly a clear logic: if the U.S. and its puppet had been able and willing simply to kill every living human, there may very well have been fewer guerrillas. Unfortunately, I guess for certain types, both the actual goals of the U.S. and, you know, a few real world concerns that actual genocide in Vietnam might escalate directly to wars with Russia, or China, or both. Hearts & minds, you know.
In this sense, you have rightwingers who argue that ‘Iraq’ is NOT like ‘Vietnam’ urging that it *should* be. And then you have others arguing that it should be more like Guatemala, which was a genocide against an entire ethnic group, and it was done by our proxies, the Guatemalan army, and all ‘we’ had to do was tell them where and who to kill when we had a particular interest, and give them money and guns and diplomatic protection — but, hey, it worked good enough from Ronnie Reagan’s and the neo-cons’ view. See, THAT’s what I believe they mean when they talk about the “El Salvador” option; they’re just too timid to call it the “Guatemala” option.
Where was that bridge someone was building to the 21st century? Anyone bring a map?
Britain, in spite of its horrible tactics during the Boer War, still was a civilized country with seemingly misguided yet civil proto-neocons. Nowhere in your article is a reference to rabid accusations of treason. Nor do I sense that John Morley was alone either in his beliefs or his eloquence.
Britain evolved as a result of the Boer War, yet it is currently used by the rabid as an example of a successful campaign. Certain of our citizens, and potentially the government, are devolving. Back to the Boer War.
Ole Perf:
It is certainly possible to conquer Afghanistan. We simply kill everyone we see (without being too fussy about how), except those who go in “protected zones� (sounds better than Concentration Camps) where we strip everyone of arms and kill anyone who looks like Taliban.
That’s some mighty fine “protecting,” Perfesser. “Anyone who looks like Taliban”–wouldn’t that be, oh, pretty much any Afghan male?
Eventually, we turn the country over to the people we like. They won’t have any trouble holding it, since we will have killed most of the people who disagree with them.
And we can be sure they’ll still all be “people we like,” because our herding them into “protected zones” and our barely-controlled slaughter of their countrymen and relatives will have had no effect whatever on their opinions or their relations with us.
The Ole Perf’s grasp of political psychology is really staggering.
The Ole Perf’s grasp of political psychology is really staggering.
Well, that’s pretty much a given.
You aren’t gonna do well at political psychology if you can’t even comprehend human psychology.
Or human decency.
Or human ethics.
Or, well, you get the idea, The perfesser’s an armchair sociopath. I bet he faints at seeing actual blood.
Yeah, that’s pretty funny, in an old person falling down and breaking their hip kind of way. But really, it just makes me want to print Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” on a 2×4 and beat the shit out of the guy (whoever he was).
About the Boer War; when it’s history was taugth to us in high school in Ireland, it was usually shown as the beginning of the end of British Empire.
The whole idea of crushing the will of a populace reminds me of the final moments of 1984 (fuck me I love Orwell). Yeah sure, you can break the will of a man to control him, but you’re not left with a man, you’re left with a gibbering, piss-stained wreck wishing for a bullet to end it all. But I guess that would suit the Right Wing Authoritarians just fine.
HTML Mencken (if that’s your real name, Mr. Montalban):
You still do not have the common decency to call Glenn Reynolds by his real name! “Perfesser Corncob”! Really! I’m sure if you had breasts, you’d be flaunting them in the presence of some ex-president.
And you still allow people like me to steal Ann Althouse’s identity.
Oh the humanity!
No wonder moderates like me prefer the company of genocidal maniacs to your lack of couth!
Good day, Sir!
So the Boer War is the historical analogy du jour? What’s next? Halliburton = East India Company? Iraqi police force = Indian sepoys? Strapping Iraqis to the muzzles of cannons might just turn this around, so why don’t we get all those old cannons out of the Civil War National Parks (how ironic! how apt! National Parks might turn out to be good for something after all, but do liberals appreciate that we’re conceding that point now? Of course not, the unreasonable swine!) and send some ancient ordinance to Iraq where it might do some good.
Parallels abound throughout history; if you don’t see them everywhere, you’re just not trying hard enough. For instance: Maliki + Ahmadinejad = Washington + Bourbon, and the British would totally have won if they had just widened the theater of combat to include Calais, and maybe Paris (after all, the French countryside was just brimming with people who would have welcomed the Brits with flowers and Valenciennes lace – those thoroughly decent Robespierre and Marat fellows, for instance), but the poor Brits didn’t have the stomach for it and were stabbed in the back at home by that liberal, rebel-sympathizing, freedom-hating Edmund Burke.
Excuse me, I’m feeling a bit dizzy after that one…
“Somewhere in the 20th century, the idea of victory as an end in itself was lost.”
I think that idea was discredited by that quaint group of Germans whose battlecry was Hail Victory
I love this Boer War shite. Indeed, your Majesty, the victory of England over our Dutch backed rivals gave way to a thousand flowering years of the British Empire. OK, it gave way to 10 years before a near fatal fall, 20 more years before terminal decline set in, and 70 years before all the parties involved in the conflict gave up the ghost and awarded the whole damn thing back to the locals. But man, was it ever worth it!
It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines […] from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq.
To be fair, it’s hard to imagine applying the methods that transformed the Philippines from friend to bitter foe in the first place, simply because there are few countries on the market in the $20 million price range. What’s a discerning imperialist to do?
“Comprendo.” Ha. Thus the inept cosmopolitan. But then, there’s quite an ignorance on display when a fellow writes this sort of post and decides to name himself after Mencken. And “respond accordingly”? With….a blog post? Why, yes.
Truly, the archetype of impotence.
No worries, [HTML’s name]. Your full name may remain the common knowledge of just the greater [HMTL’s location, sort of], metro area for all I care: the rest of the world may continue to know you by your GI Joe code name. Because, of course, you have a unique right to avoid consequences that no other human does. You may pilfer wedding photos, try (and fail) to smear those you dislike, and pursue an idiot’s vendetta for years, all based wholly upon a would-be intellectualism gleaned from the bargain bin at Books-A-Million: but Lawzy, no one better inconvenience [HTML’s name]! Turnabout is not fair play!
Which reminds me: I do believe that the time may be approaching to spotlight a young ponce, desperate for the credibility online that he cannot find in his personal life, prancing about as Eric Draven….
Ding ding ding ding. Close but no cigar! Still, close enough to set things into motion….
But really, the ‘turnabout is fair play’? Still dishonest after all this time, Tacky!
Hey guess what everybody: Highlighting the depravity of one’s public words is *just like* outing pseudonymous people and digging into their private life. It’s the exact same! The Online Integrity, you know!
[HTML’s name]. I like the ring of it. And it rings true enough for [HMTL’s name] to edit post facto.
“I’m a hypocrite: I like to study people, but don’t like it so much when they study me.
Indeed!
And by the way: no one — no one — who steals my private wedding photos, is asked nicely by third parties to refrain from using them, and refuses, and is warned again, gets to whine about folks “digging into their private life.” You crossed that line, [HTML’s name], braying all the way.
It bears repeating: “I’m a hypocrite: I like to study people, but don’t like it so much when they study me.”
Get ready, [HTML’s name].
Italics closed!
Is that the real Trevino or just a parody?
So he’s not for genocide after all, as of now, because now he knows you live in America? Makes sense to me.
Outing someone’s home town but not their name clearly demontrates that Trevino could have thoroughly responded to the factual disembowelment he just received above but chose not to because he is above all that.
You fucking moron. You posted those on your public site for all to see — on your site where you publish this pro-genocide garbage. I did not and would not post photos of your family. We edited the photo of you with the lightsaber. I didn’t take any pictures from a private site or any site for that matter, that is divorced from your writings.
SORRY you looked stupid with a lightsaber. SORRY you write shit that is easy to point to as depraved and insane. But then I dressed like The Crow for Halloween and took a picture and posted it to myspace; plainly an equivalent!
Geez, if you only knew what people have written to me, disgusted by your webstalking so much that they tell me things about the Carpatho-Russian Disocese and.. well, I shouldn’t say too much. Yet. Unless I have to.
It’s the real Trevino:
New comment on your post #5099 “Boerish”
Author : Josh Trevino (IP: 71.4.63.67 , mail.pacificresearch.org)
E-mail : jstrevino@hotmail.com
URI : http://www.americanreich.org
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=71.4.63.67
Comment:
In response to “islmfaocist”: there’s no point, and frankly, I don’t really care too much whether I’m a sociopath or an angel in the eyes of this crowd. The standards for both are so deranged as to be meaningless.
I do care about a friendless freak from around [HTML’s location, still not quite right] who has pursued a vendetta against me for years, and finally crossed the line when he stole my wedding photos. Let me repeat that: he stole my wedding photos for use on this blog. And then has the temerity to bray about the sanctity of his pseudonymity.
Well.
[HTML’s name] is being offered a chance to back down, here: he’s never received as he’s given, and he will hate it if he does. I say if, not when, because he has an out: a simple, “Hey, sorry — I shouldn’t have appropriated your wedding photos,” without qualification, will stop the wheels, as far as I’m concerned. He can — and will — go on yelping forever about my moral unfitness for public life, and whatever to that. But he’s involved my family, in my eyes. And in doing so, he’s crossed the line mandating restraint.
This is an eminently fair offer, which the sensible man will take.
You posted those on your public site for all to see….
No, [HTML’s name]. We’ve been over this, and we both know you’re lying by omission here.
Do the right thing.
The thing about mutually assured destruction is that the better-known entity has more to lose.
Hmmm.
Nah, you’re not going to get me to lie, Tacky. That’s not what happened. Be precise.
private wedding photos posted on the Internet?
Odd definition of privacy there.
This is the gospel truth. I will repeat it ad nauseum because it is the truth. Now if you want me to say ‘Im sorry’ for using the lightsaber picture, that’s one thing — but dont pretend that it was acquired in any other way than what I say in the link, because it wasn’t. And also don’t pretend that it is an attack on your family, because it’s not.
Umm Tacky?
We all think you’re a sociopath.
Just so you don’t labor under any mistaken impressions there bucko.
Well. You “repeat it ad nauseum” because the truth makes you a hypocrite.
There’s no meaningful “destruction” to be had here, of course. Neither of us can cost the other his job, nor his standing within his milieu. My own record is public, and I have the forthrightness to put my name to my work.
As far as may be seen, the only person with something to lose here is you: by your own admission, you are profoundly insecure and sensitive, and you would deeply hate to have anyone critique you in the manner in which you critique others.
It’s nothing to me, but as it means quite a lot to you, I suggest you do what’s needed to cast the wedding photos issue aside, so we can move on: you to a lifetime of complaining about me, and me to a lifetime of being infrequently annoyed by you. This is fair.
Coda: I’m a bit mystified at your references to the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. Full disclosure: it is my father’s diocese — which does, by the bye, make your threatened invocation of it an “attack on [my] family.” I attend, when I do, which isn’t especially often, a Greek church — and I converted in an Antiochian parish. I’ve only been meaningfully involved with ACROD twice: once when I wrote a piece for the diocesan newsletter in 2004 — which I’m not sure I was even credited for — and again when I was going to go to Istanbul under the Metropolitan’s aegis. The latter fell through.
Someone seems to think this is about the Bores, not the Boers.
Um, getting back to the post that this follows…
He forgets to mention the use of concentration camps and mass murder. I mean, worked on the Boers, not so well in Viet Nam.
That’s cool, Billy. No worries there. I’m not here to correct that.
This is an eminently fair offer, which the sensible man will take.
“This is a new blog you got here. Be a shame if something were to… happen to it.”
Tacky, maybe you SHOULD think about hiding your work behind a pseudonym.
Sociopathic racism and advocation of gneocide may not be acceptable forever, is all I’m saying….
S,N! just ate my comments. That’s a direct attack on my family, many of whom often use the web.
“Respond accordingly”? Please, Draven. Whaddya gonna do, accuse me of wanting to slap you with my COCK? Deliver another devastating “Adlerian” analysis of my character based on a handful of blog comments?
Take a deep breath, have a pulled pork sandwich, and consider what it is you’re saying here. I’ve about had it with your personal attacks.
If your bluster makes you feel manly, have at it. Revenge of the Nerds in cyberspace was always a predictable niche market, and you have filled it admirably.
But it’s time for you to separate your world from mine. Please. Because honestly? I’m running out of patience, and I’d rather not spend my days embroiled in blogfights.
Give it a rest. Move on. Do something else with your life.
I’ve never heard of anyone so panicked at the idea that their wedding photos might be exposed to the world. Is she ugly? Fat? Brown? A man?
Oh good god, are they all going to show up now?
Sorry, ya cant get me to lie, Tacky, If you want me to say I’m sorry for making fun of the lightsaber thing, well okay (I’ll white lie, to keep Freepers and Pasty-ites from hunting me down with axehandles, or ‘bringing guns’ to my home as they threaten to do to the next Eschacon, or burning down my house, or all other things wingnuts are capable of doing since their words always fail — that is why so many Lefties remain anonymous/pseudonymous, you dumb shit), bit I wont say that the lightsaber photo is equivalent to stalking someone over long period of time until you find their myspace site which is entirely divorced from their public writings. Sorry, no can do that.
Heck, he doesn’t have to do something else with his life in my book: he just has to do what he’s doing within the limits he demands from others.
The really good hectoring scolds are the personally consistent ones, after all.
No, no, [HTML’s name]: as stated, without qualification.
And no, your silly MySpace site is not protected by a magic barrier made of unicorns and rainbows.
Kids these days.
Gah, you again?
If your bluster makes you feel manly, have at it.
See? You don’t get it, do you? I’m not like you — I don’t worry about feeling ‘manly’. Now fuck off so I can deal with Tacky.
The really good hectoring scolds are the personally consistent ones, after all.
Why is that? And how would you know?
After all Billy Bennett is STILL a professional scold, after losing more money in gambling than you’ve made in your entire life.
I don’t worry about feeling ‘manly’.
This is probably for the best.
Tacitus–
Don’t you have some online integrity to go police somewhere?
You’re sounding loopier by the minute.
Nah. Not gonna lie or be blackmailed, Tacky. But go ahead; it’ll look great with that OI thing on your resume.
Oooh, the Throat Yogurt guy is in da hizzouse. Party wit’ the wingnuts, y’all!
Guess ‘handful of blog comments’ means he no longer supports genocide too, now that Mencken has been cleverly unmasked as a resident of America.
If only you had made this info public earlier, HTML, maybe no one would have ever advocated the US commit genocide at all, discounting a handful of blog comments of course.
No one is asking you to lie, [HTML’s name]. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
But, as you prefer.
Mr. Tacitus may be depraved; obliquely endorsing the British methods from 1900 is pretty nasty indeed. They gave us the English term “concentration camp,” after all.
What’s even more aggravating about Mr. Tacitus is his shallow understanding of history. To use the Boer War as a positive example for a “thought experiment” is to expose oneself to endless ridicule, for all the obvious reasons Mr. HTML points out. Here’s another example: To argue that the USA “won” the Vietnam War (but for the Dolchstoß by Dan Rather, the hippies, and the Democratic Party) is to reveal that one hasn’t read very much about the Vietnam conflict.
If you pontificate on weighty issues, without having even a basic understanding of the historical examples you use, you shouldn’t be surprised if people point you out as a callow fool.
Jesus Christ, it’s like the Modesto bus station in here, with these wingers muttering polysyllables to themselves as they shamble by wrapped in a blanket.
Jeff, Josh: giove it up. Ownership of a thesaurus does not make you smart, and outing pseuds so that your unbalanced readership can threaten their families does not constitute integrity.
Oh Jesus, here come the shrieking warbloggers with their strident squeaks of protest. They can scrounge for pity in this thread. Let’s move on to another topic.
Omigod, you have the same first name as Tacky!
No wonder you wanted to use a pseud.
Hmm HTML your love of long quotations and actual knowledge of history reminds me of Brad DeLong. Yes that Brad DeLong. (I consider this high praise)
It’s cool, Tacky. You’ve left a hell of an evidence trail for anyone who wants to know what’s really happened RE: pictures. I know you won’t link to it, but I will.
In fact, speaking of outing, I just had a fascinating idea. Maybe you *are* Brad DeLong and that post about Fuck fuck fuck the neoliberals was just a cover up.
I don’t worry about feeling ‘manly’.
This is probably for the best.
True dat. It keeps me from ‘demonstrating my manhood’ by advocating genocide or threatening to slap people with my cock.
Yes, Robert, that’s it! Gaaaahh! Like Myxllplyk I’m now cast back into the 8th dimension!
*POOF*
Ah damn, the link’s broken to the “American Reich” site. Think maybe iit’ll be fixed soon?
Calls for genocide followed by denials and retractions will just have to hold us til you get those nude photos of Prussian Blue up.
Dumb question: Is JT actually outing HM over and over, and getting edited by site admins? Or is he typing in the [] substitution himself?
I see someone blew the Trevino whistle again.
You know, Trevino, no one would have had any idea that innocuous picture was a wedding photo. It just looked like a snapshot of a white guy in khakis, as I recollect, handling a lightsaber. No flowers, no bride, no cake. Why you insist on repeatedly referring to it as a WEDDING PHOTO is beyond me.
It’s almost as if you’re trying to draw attention to the WEDDING PHOTO.
Tony, he’s outting me over and over. I’m doing the brackets to edit it when I see it.
I get it! The wedding photos were stolen, you see, but the Myspace page was fair game, since it “is not protected by a magic barrier made of unicorns and rainbows.” So you see, the two things are totally different, and obviously the difference is in Trevino’s favor. Obviously.
Trevino clearly regards himself as a skilled rhetorician, which invariably leads him to believe that his clever wordplay actually results in proving something. You can stick any cute label of your choice on something, but facts are stubborn. We’re back to this delusion that conservatives have the power to create their own reality, something I thought we dispensed with several years ago.
Maybe pretending to be Han Solo is as close to marrying Carrie Fischer as he will ever get. He must have a picture of her in the slave outfit taped to the ceiling above his bed.
Watching “Conservatives” (the kinder term) painting themselves as “victims” has become so expected that it begins to lose its entertainment value.
Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Trevino are, apparently, in very bad moods these days. And is it any wonder? Not too long ago, these young men could dream that one day (after ‘making their bones,’ so to speak) they would be brought up to ‘the Big Show,’ the well-paid ranks of the Right Wing Political Machine.
But now that the majority of their fellow citizens have rejected their particular brand of madness, it is not likely they will be rewarded with newspaper columns, telelvision contracts, or government positions.
I am sure they do not look forward to ‘wandering in the wilderness’ from here to their disgruntled middle-age, ranting on the side-lines about how those damned Liberals ruined their lives.
So, it seems, rather than fade back into obscurity with what is left of their dignity, they will insist on kicking and screaming all the way, desperately trying for one last turn in the spotlight.
> cf Kim DuToit, who is sandpaper to Boot’s silk on basically the same point.
I imagine it’s been noted before, but someone please tell me DuToit is pronounced the way I very much hope it is.
Ugh. I can’t read any more.
What the fuck?! What the FUCK?! I.. how… when did they get this raging hard-on for the British Empire? Did they forget that there were reasons for why we freaking broke off from them? If their tactics were so goddamn effective, why have they been reduced to their own Isles when they used to span around most of the globe?
Jesus tapdancing Christ. They’re back on the “war crimes win wars!” meme. Which, of course, would have ment that the Axis would have fucking steamrolled the entire world in about a month.
Never mind the sad irony that the Pro-Mass Murder crowd sound just like the al Qaeda enemy they claim to be so much better then.
No ‘t’ sound at the end in the French pronunciation, so get your dirty little Anglo-Saxon mind out of the gutter.
You brought me up here, Retardo. See your first comment.
And I invited you to leave me out of this. I don’t take kindly to veiled threats — particularly when they are unprovoked.
Now take a deep breath and don’t do anything stupid.
Wedding photos!? Congrats to Josh T & Ben D, and thanks to the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts for making their love possible.
Wait, what? Josh’s extraordinarily tenuous defenses of plagiarism didn’t spring from the sweetest romantic loyalty?
Hmm. Guess you should have made those photos public after all.
And in the absence of an actual threat, Mr. Goldstein has always been able to imagine one.
Yeah, Mencken, you said ‘CandyMan’ three times! It’s your own fault! Stop making Jeff post stupid things here!
Because, you know, block quoting someone from their blog is a threat. Obviously.
I think I’ve figured it out:
These pundits sound “smart” because they use haigh falutin’ words like eschew and folly, and- well you get it. But the reality is they are stupid semi-literate people with access to the Sherlock thesaurus.
Sounds like, in the absence of proof, somebody’s going to try carpetbombing.
How “progressive.”
Umm, Pasty, the provocation is the google cache work you and Tacky did within minutes of each other. You know what I’m talking about. What — you thought it’d go unnoticed? Hardly. I just said what I did in the first comment to let you know for sure that I knew.
The blueprints of Treblinka have got to be around somewhere. Go with the classics.
Actually, no: it meant that despite your best tricks at washing your site (it’s really too bad I couldn’t have a laugh at you with regard to the Liberal Avenger comment scandal, since you’re the original comment-manipulator, though you’ve now cleaned those up to look real innocuous, clever guy; did you and Pattycakes arrange that?), I still have a shitload of incriminating links, enough to do 3 or 4 more comprehensive posts on your silly politics and personal ummm defiencies as demonstrated through violent and sexual threats. Now I could be lazy and NOT humiliate you any more than I already have (tick, tock , tick tock — A Pasty Boy Mystery: While The Cock Ticked), but if you decided to use what you dug out of my myspace, then you’d force me to work a bit harder. Unnerstand?
But I love it when you try to play the victim!
What a desperate pickle both these asstards are in now… So embarassed at being humiliated by their own direct quotes endorsing genocide as the only final solution that they will resort to digging for personal data to smear Mencken with, but neither can they actually denounce it on their own site without their mouth-breathing readers realizing they’re pussies who won’t stand up to defend their prior bloodthirsty insanity.
It’s a quandary… what will they do now? I predict more poo-flinging.
Jeff ‘Protein’ Stain is a pseudo-intellectual hack that never got his phd. He was ‘that close!’, but stopped for some reason. After spending as much money as it takes to get ‘that close’, I really can’t understand why he didn’t just buck it up for one more semester and finish his thesis. Unless, of course, he’s lying out of his fucking pussy ass. My guess is that he got his master’s, and is now using whatever ‘work’ he wanked out during that 2 years as ‘proof’ that he was working on his phd.
Now, he stays at home while his wife works to support his blogging. He spends his days trolling lefty websites in an attempt to out them.
Tacitus, aka, the Grand Wizard of Torture/Genocide is a sad reflection of a real human. A real human piece of shit. His intellectual ‘prowess’ hovers right about the same level of your typical unibrowed corner poster. His depravity soars to levels unseen since the 3rd Reich. After advocating torture, internment camps and genocide, watching him out good ‘ol HTML is not much of a surprise.
And, You Fucking Loser Tacitus, the right does not own the patent on Mencken, even though you asshats think you can quote him without realizing how much Mencken would have hated your fucking guts. Have you ever actually READ Mencken, other than cherry-picking quotes that make you sound manly (raise the black flag, asshole?). Mencken would have eaten you for lunch, then shit you out on the pile of all the other intellectual lightweights who misappropriate the poor dead philosopher.
So, Jeff G – why don’t you go back to your sycophantic little JizzStain blog and make your piss-stained fearful posts about the scary brown middle eastern men?
And Tacky – why don’t you just fuck off and die already? Hell needs some more cordwood to keep the fires going, asshole.
Google cache work? What, you mean copying your photos? Well, I didn’t do that — I don’t have the tech savvy — but I certainly saw them, and I certainly do have access to them.
Is that a problem?
Because I seem to recall my photo appearing here on your site attached to the body of a French general. And when I first saw your MySpace page, you hadn’t yet made it private.
What do you fear, anyway?
Are you suggesting that you think it wrong to grab people’s photos and doctor them? Or is it just your photos that you hope to keep from receiving such treatment?
Let me give you a bit of advice: the best way to do so is to stop prodding people with a stick. You brought me up in this thread. So you can quit pretending you have some moral highground — particularly after you pored through my archived internet comments like some obsessive teenager working toward putting together the PERFECT Beyonce collage, all so that you could do your “Adlerian” analysis.
Face it, Retardo. You mention me here with a frequency that borders on the truly creepy. Move on.
“And I invited you to leave me out of this. I don’t take kindly to veiled threats — unless I’m the one making them.
Fixed yer typo.
February 20, 2007 at 18:44
I smell poo…
I’m running out of patience, and I’d rather not spend my days embroiled in blogfights.
Too much drinking on a thursday afternoon and not getting published to do, ya know.
Jeff G – didn’t I and many others on this site, ask that you just fuck off already?
Fuck Off Already!
Don’t you have a diaper to change, a psychiatrist to see about your klonopin scrip, or a slightly sardonic short story to write? I hear Dumfuk College is having an open mic poetry night. I bet you would just SLAY them with your razor-sharp wit.
Oh my. Well, the die is cast, etc., etc. It’ll be a few weeks — partly so you have some time to think things over when you’re not as hot about getting shown up — but barring a return to sense, it’s coming.
Cheers, [HMTL’s name]. Just remember that you sought the attention: and you can as easily deter it. “Hey, sorry — I shouldn’t have appropriated your wedding photos.” Think it over.
Oh, one aside:
Have you ever actually READ Mencken….?
Yeah. Do you know what he thought of self-proclaimed, bawling democracy-purists like [HTML’s name]
Again, cheers.
Britain, in spite of its horrible tactics during the Boer War, still was a civilized country with seemingly misguided yet civil proto-neocons. Nowhere in your article is a reference to rabid accusations of treason.
It’s not in the article, but there were accusations of treason as strong and even stronger than what we see today. In 1900 was the ‘khaki election.’ The British populace decided to give the war supporters one last try. Analogous to 2004. Even though the war ended in ‘victory,’ the backlash in succeeding elections threw the imperialists out of power.
You know what we need? Someone to pledge to uphold certain principles of online integrity. That’ll do it.
Huh. So, when Trevino pulled the same thing in Billmon’s comments a few years ago, posting his real name, was that because Billmon had APPROPRIATED WEDDING PHOTOS MY GOD THE HORROR, or was it just because Trevino’s a brownshirt with a thesaurus? It’s a mystery…
Personally, I think it’s interesting Trevino has no problem with being called a pro-genocide sociopath with a shallow understanding of the history he uses to showcase his ugly opinions, yet his real beef is with some wedding pictures that made him look like a dork. Wow.
“Oh my. Well, the die is cast, etc., etc. It’ll be a few weeks — partly so you have some time to think things over when you’re not as hot about getting shown up — but barring a return to sense, it’s coming.”
Smell the integritudiousness!
When you sandwich it in between stilted sentences and smear some turgid overblown rhetoric on top of it, it smells even better!
Jeez, it’s like sitting on top of a bunker and watching a couple of companies chunk mortars at each other. A lot of noise and smoke, but all anybody’s losing is sleep. Reckon y’all better fix bayonets and close the range or saddle up and hump home. ‘Cause this is nothin but silly…
mikey
Let’s just end the mystery right here.
Mencken’s home is at 1524 Hollins Street in Baltimore’s Union Square neighborhood.
mikey,
Eh, keeps ’em off the streets. And it’s not like they got anything important to do.
I am teh real HTML Mencken.
Cheers, [HMTL’s name]. Just remember that you sought the attention: and you can as easily deter it. “Hey, sorry — I shouldn’t have appropriated your wedding photos.� Think it over.
Again with the outing and the threats? What a sorry spectacle you’re making of yourself.
One day, probably tomorrow, you’ll think about what you posted here today and be profoundly embarrassed by it. It’s too bad for you you won’t be able to delete these comments the way you delete much of your online oeuvre.
Oh, one aside:
Have you ever actually READ Mencken….?
Yeah. Do you know what he thought of self-proclaimed, bawling democracy-purists like [HTML’s name]
Again, cheers
yeah, asshole, I know what he thought of ‘democracy-purists’. He didn’t, you fucking moron. You won’t find that phrase, or anything similar, in anything he wrote.
what he WAS against was intellectual blowhards like yourself that advocate imperialism, enable fascist cronyism and bullshit wars for no reason.
He was against the puritanical bullshit you and your peers spew all the time, and would have mocked you for every word you have ever written.
….I know what he thought of ‘democracy-purists’. He didn’t….
Wrong.
Right Wing Authoritarians. This is what they are folks, everything else is just a symptom.
Geez. The braintrust of the rightwing blogosphere has all the wealth and power of a piggybank.
How surprising is this?
Not very, actually.
One day, probably tomorrow, you’ll think about what you posted here today and be profoundly embarrassed by it.
Are you kidding? He’s incapable of it. Like I mentioned above, he did the same thing to Billmon once, only then he didn’t pretend he was defending his poor besmirched honor; he just felt like it. Hell, he seems incapable of commenting without dropping full names, places of employment, birthmarks, etc.
In his free time, the whackjob bastard probably calls up random strangers in the phone book just to say in an ominous voice, I know who you are and I saw what you did!”
It’s interesting that Trevino has 14 comments in this thread, not one of which contains a defense on the merits. Oh, but there’s plenty of time to blather on about outing.
When all you can do in response to charges like these – established by your own writings, no less – is to vow retribution against the author, that really says it all.
Cock-slappy and Tacky in the same thread? Oh, I must be dreaming….
As I’ve said: there is no moral compulsion to defend another person’s GI Joe code name. [HTML’s name] may ask his girlfriends to call him “Cobra Commander” in private — this would not be especially surprising — but that’s of no concern to me. Bottom line? Eminent left-bloggers like Duncan Black, Markos Moulitsas, [redacted by request of blogger in question], Tom Boggiano, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, Stirling Newberry, Scott Lemieux, Amanda Marcotte, Matthew Yglesias, Brad Reed(!) [Bradrocket adds: That’s muh name, don’t wear it out!), et al., are quite fine with their names appended to their work. Whatever else one thinks of them, they have this honesty, and this confidence. And they’re doing just fine, thanks.
[HTML’s name] of [of HTML’s still not quite right location], is by comparison a quailing coward. Having shown that he thinks nothing is off-limits — even after being nicely asked once, and warned once — I won’t respond in kind. That’s his game, and he’s welcome to it. But I will, with pleasure, needle him in a manner that inspires his shrieking paranoia. That much, the fool has earned.
Somebody married Trevino? On purpose?
And with that, second time’s the charm — cheers to all.
Sincerely,
Josh Trevino of Sacramento, California
Bejus, what a drama queen.
“Having shown that he think nothing is off-limits … ”
Mr. Trevino, that is exactly the point you are evading. It looks like most people here today are less interested in the tantrum you are throwing than they are in thinking about just what has gone wrong inside your head to cause you to advocate a murderous policy in which “nothing is off-limits.”
That is to say, publishing an embarassing photo of you seems to be some sort of ‘crime against humanity’ while mass murder is just “Reason[able]” policy — at least in your mind (such as it is.)
OT, but:
GOP donor hit with terror charges
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17241633/
WASHINGTON – A New York man accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan has donated some $15,000 to the House Republicans’ campaign committee over three years.
Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to charges that include terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering….
That Trevino kid’s not quite right in the head, is he?
Damn “democracy-purists” and their belief in freedom and equality…
By the way, Mr. Goldstein is now coyly telling his ‘readers’ that he may “quit blogging” at the end of March.
It is interesting how often he gets away with this sort of thing. He tells the poor things (now and again) that he just can’t go on and then sits back to sun his ego in the warmth of their pleas: “Oh no, Jeff, please don’t go … if you do, the Muslims and the Liberals will eat us.”
goddammit. That was a really excellent post completely derailed by the Goon Squad. *sigh*
But that reminds me of a funny story: My neighbor took my newspaper without asking, so I broke into his house while he was asleep and stole his TV. And his dog.
Hey, fair’s fair. Eye for an eye. He’s a coward for locking his door in the first place. Etc. etc. ad nauseum infinity eleven no takebacks.
My goodness, (brushes dust off of her shoulders) What. A. Mess.
You know you’re lying about those photos Josh. There was a link to the photos on your website. Now STFU, get back to dreaming of genocide, and leave these good people alone.
Don’t make me pulll this blog over.
Jiggavegas, you misunderstand:
goddammit. That was a really excellent post completely derailed by the Goon Squad. *sigh*
Not at all. Mr. Tacitus proved, by studiously avoiding any discussion of his genocidal ravings, that he has no defense for his atrocious misreading of history. None whatsoever. All the furious hand-waving was supposed to distract the reader from the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of his original Boer War post.
As a distraction, it failed. Utterly. As a window into his frightened little world, though, it was instructive.
Treblinka, nah too modern. Try maybe Corinth or another city-state that the Romans laid waste to (including salting the fields) or even get biblical with some nice bloodthirsty xtian wargawd myths.
Well, that’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back.
Pasty should really share his meds with Joshua von Stickenbuttzen.
On topic:
cf Kim DuToit, who is sandpaper to Boot’s silk on basically the same point.
Isn’t Kim America’s Most Loved Eugene Terreblanche Impersonator?
Eminent left-bloggers like Duncan Black, Markos Moulitsas, [redacted], Tom Boggiano, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, Stirling Newberry, Scott Lemieux, Amanda Marcotte, Matthew Yglesias, Brad Reed(!), et al., are quite fine with their names appended to their work. Whatever else one thinks of them, they have this honesty, and this confidence. And they’re doing just fine, thanks.
The fourth in your list specifically asked you not to use her real name. I have to give you chutzpah points for including her.
Bradrocket adds: I give you dumbass points for repeating her name when you quote Tacitus 🙂
Private persons are entitled to respect for their privacy regardless of their activities online. This includes respect for the non-public nature of their personal contact information, the inviolability of their homes, and the safety of their families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted. The separateness of private persons’ professional lives should also be respected as much as is reasonable.
Public figures are entitled to respect for the non-public nature of their personal, non-professional contact information, and their privacy with regard to their homes and families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted.
Persons seeking anonymity or pseudonymity online should have their wishes in this regard respected as much as is reasonable. Exceptions include cases of criminal, misleading, or intentionally disruptive behavior.
Violations of these principles should be met with a lack of positive publicity and traffic.
Er, make that third. Math is hard!
Has anyone seen my 9 iron?
The fourth in your list specifically asked you not to use her real name. I have to give you chutzpah points for including her.
not to mention that Boggioni was threatened with outing by Ace, or Patterico, so made his name known publicly.
Yeah, that Treviño, he’s a real
cracked assclassy act.Let me get this straight.
HTML posts excerpts of, among others, Tacitus, advocating genocide as a tactic in Teh Great War on Terror or Teh Epic Clash of Civilizations or whatever the wingnuts are calling it this week..
HTML shows, using historical and political references, the similarities of the Iraq disaster for the USA to the disaster that was the Boer War for the British Empire.
In a comment, HTML mentions that he knows that Tacitus and Jeff G are up to their old tricks of Online Integrity Offensiveness.
And then…Tacitus (with an assist in the form of a mini-tantrum from Jeff G, which, like most of his tantrums, can be dismissed), comes here to comment, repeatedly, NOT to defend himself against the charges of advocating genocide and being an all-round immoral and dishonest nitwit, but to post (I assume) HTML’s real name and location.
Tacitus, you probably actually believe you are a Christian. In this, like most of your heinous and disgustingly immoral ideas, you are profoundly mistaken.
I don’t know how we are going to live with these people once our country comes to its senses and votes them all out of power. I really don’t.
They are morally insane. I can’t think of any other way to describe them.
tigrismus, that’s a pre-2/19 mindset. We cannot afford such thinking in a post-2/19 world. Integrity will inevitably lead to islamofascism.
Totally class acts. All the way from their self-righteous male pattern baldness to their genocidal ingrown toenails.
That list of bloggers is really something, isn’t it? It’s hard to imagine someone like Trevino even successfully making his pets like him.
Criminitly, over a hundred posts and nobody’s talking about the original post anymore.
Which was fucking brilliant and stomped the targets into mush.
That’s why they don’t want to talk about it.
Wait, wait, wait… Did I just actually see Tacky Tush use the term ‘democratic purists’ to suggest that unflinching commitment to democracy was a bad thing?
Let’s review: we have prose poems to the desirability of genocide and disdain for democracy when it leads to outcomes he doesn’t like. All he needs to do is mix in a little “enemy within” rhetoric and he’ll hit the One Day Mein Kampf trifecta.
Trevino: “History never offers exact parallels, but it does have useful lessons. In assessing manning needs for Iraq, one would do well to look to prior conflicts of similar nature… one might look especially to the Boer War[…]”
But ..but! To use that quote as evidence of its creator’s psychopathy is unfair, says its author…
“[…]The point of the excursion into the Boer War example is not to make a policy prescription, but to conduct a thought-experiment[…]”
The funny thing about this whole Boer-War imbroglio was the disclaimer from Tacitus that he wasn’t actually advocating anything similar, like rounding civilians up into concentration camps. Apparently the only reason he had described the British tactics was that he had recently read a book on the topic and wanted to show off his knowledge.
Then the imbrogliation quickly degenerated, with Tacitus complaining to his detractors over at Lawyers Guns & Money that they should keep quiet because they weren’t qualified historians. I never worked out how he knew that they weren’t qualified historians… possibly their disagreement with him was the proof of their ignorance.
Having shown that he thinks nothing is off-limits…
This is especially priceless. The wanker’s all upset because [who gives a fuck] is not showing the proper restraint in his commentary. This, after the wanker writes a post praising the horrible lack of restraint by the British Empire.
The guy tells us this: “I have stated previously that I endorse cruel things in war — to eschew them is folly.” And goes on to describe all the wondrous things the British did in their brilliant lack of restraint.
But [who gives a fuck] has apparently crossed some kind of moral line, one that should never be crossed by anyone civilized, because he re-posted a pic (that the fool had placed on his own site) that made him look like a dork.
See, in online personal/political beefs, there’s this thing called decency and it is sacrosanct. Violate that code, and you reveal yourself as completely lacking in ethics.
In a war, however, such concerns are irrelevant and potentially disastrous if they restrain one from indiscriminate slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc.
If one should disagree with that horrible philosophy, one must not be sarcastic in doing so, for that violates the Blog Ethical Code somehow, and one must be punished.
Certainly, the argument Tacky made can’t be refuted or defended on its merits. Why bother, since it’s so much more fun to start this bullshit flame war.
That, and his “argument” has already been pretty thoroughly destroyed by [who gives a fuck]’s original post and the pile-on by commenters. It’s like arguing with a Scientologist- they never defend their position, but they always attack critics.
His attempt to hijack H.L. Mencken for the wingers is particularly funny, though. I’ve read a bit of HLM; it is not possible to pigeonhole the guy into any ideology. He pretty much despised everybody, and I suspect that’s why everybody loves him today.
His only consistent position was against anyone who places ideological interests ahead of human ones, and he reserved special scorn for those whose politics is reactionary, not based on any coherent thought but just mindless fear.
Here’s a few choice quotes, of relevance today:
“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” (emphasis mine)
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
Interesting that Trevino referred to Mencken’s contempt for democracy, (“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”) since it seems the only thing Mencken considered worse than democracy was religion:
“Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.”
“Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.”
“Sunday — A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.”
And idealism: “An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”
Or both…: “The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.”
Lest you think he reserved his contempt for Democrats… :”In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
Ok, that’s all. Submit!!
When I was on guard duty in Vietnam, I was killing time in the day room before my walking post.
Two short timers, both intelligent and college graduates were playing cards and talking.
The next thing I knew they were arguing about some 17th century philosopher and then … one pulled a knife, the other picked up a rifle and locked and loaded.
I now have a little perspective.
People, life is too good for this really stupid crap.
Somewhere in the 20th century, the idea of victory as an end in itself was lost.
And to echo what Non Nato said upstream, the idea of Total War wandered off into the long grass at about the same time.
Herr Dok: the idea of Total War wandered off into the long grass at about the same time.
Is that another pot joke? Sheesh.
Gentlewoman completely nails the incredible hypocrisy and intemperate idiocy, but just to put a little addendum to what she says… Guys, guys… if online existance drives you to constantly write things you are ashamed of the next day, if seeing people whose views differ from yours drives you into enraged behaviour that you’ve openly pledged online to try and stop doing and yet cannot help repeat all the same… and if you have periods of extreme lethargy, where you feel you just cannot bear the terrible terrible pain of it all… then guys, you have a genuine illness there. It’s not the fault of other people, and if I’m honest, I feel somewhat sorry for you, because it’s not really your fault either. Your time online has unbalanced you, and made you ill.
And illness isn’t amusing. You aren’t going to improve your own life, let alone the entire world, by engaging in these shameful destructive fights online… Constantly trying to lash out and “hurt” HTML will change nothing… because the rage you feel today will be back again tomorrow. It’s coming from nowhere but inside yourselves. Step back and take some “me” time huh, guys? Because look at what happens when you don’t… the very same damned if you do, damned if you don’t arguments get used against yourself… Why bother printing your name, and location, when you know people will use it to find nerdy pictures of you… just as you yourselves are rummaging about trying to do the exact same thing to others in turn? You are effectively engaged in self destructive behaviour, even if you believe you are struggling against the vast masses of external demons. Give it up guys… for your own sakes, if nothing else.
It takes real “courage” for Josh to post under his real name. Because he’s totally in danger of losing his wingnut welfare job if he posts something crazy, malicious or libelous.
Josh: I did specifically ask you not to use my real name. I have no problem with people online figuring it out, which is why it’s not exactly a deep dark secret, but I’d rather not have people who know me in real life, and most specifically my students, be able to find my collected political views too easily. If someone here could edit it out, I’d be much obliged.
Moreover: it’s easy for me to be relatively open about who I am. I have tenure. Other people have other problems. von at our site, for instance, doesn’t want lawyers he goes up against him to be able to find his ObWi posts. This makes perfect sense to me, and it’s his right.
When you decide to out someone, you are taking upon yourself the right to inflict on them whatever consequences they are trying to avoid, without knowing what those consequences are. This is wrong. That’s why I signed on to your online integrity thing, and it’s also why, when people said: hey, Tac isn’t actually serious about this, this is some sort of game on his part, I said: tough, he’s right, and if it turns out that he’s being completely disingenuous about it, I’ll deal with it then.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt. It’s a pity I was wrong.
satire is dead
Isaac, maybe the satire in question just stinks so bad you’re mistaking it for dead.
Sincerely,
Josh Trevino of Sacramento, California
Shouldn’t that be ‘Mrs.’?
josh’s attitude is not surprising–it follows directly from any number of old testament stories. treblinka is nothing, corinth is a walk in the park, compared to sodom and gomorrah. now THAT is how you fight a fucking war. salt the fields? turn women into salt. concentration camps? just cordon the whole city off. and weapons-wise…i think a bolt of lighting from the sky that kills tens of thousands of people, that’s the real deal. shit, even ralph peters could get behind that.
by the way, my real name is robert green. i don’t give a shit about josh trevino’s real name, or menckens, or whomever–just the quality of their ideas. why this is complicated for josh (and why he, or for that matter html) and why anyone who posts shit of their own on the internet expects any protection is beyond me.
josh, it seems to me that you made outing people a practice, and that while i would gladly have sided with you regarding your wedding photo–did i mention it was a wedding photo? i think i did, anyway, you had moved well beyond the presumption of propriety. you are a bad actor online, espousing principles you don’t uphold, and advocating behavior (genocide, for instance) that you are unwilling to practice yourself.
thankfully, now that i think about it more.
I am HTML Mencken.
Methinks Josh Trevino has my poster on his wall:
“My name is Josh Trevino. You quoted my words. Prepare to be outed.”
why anyone who posts shit of their own on the internet expects any protection is beyond me
No one’s expecting “protection.” A simple adherence to the stated principles one posted in order to bash one’s ideological opponents over the head with would be a nice start.
You know, I keep reading all these articles about employers/professors who google search potential candidates and then don’t hire them because of things they said on the Internet. And that’s supposedly totally ok, because they put it up under their own names, so how stupid were they in the first place?
THEN I hear all this crap about how you shouldn’t have an anonymous pseudonym, because it’s cowardly, or something, and who cares in the first place?
You know what? I’m an atheist and a liberal. That my right-wing born-again boss might not have hired me because I occasionally post comments on Pharyngula is both totally possible and complete bullshit. It is also the reason why lots of us use pseudonyms online.
Well, you know, once you’ve endorsed, war, lying, torture, genocide, and internment camps;
what’s a little threat and intimidation?
you are missing my point. “expects” in the context of blogging about oneself, having a myspace with photos.
i went through this. my wife took photos of crying children. she became in certain circles infamous for this (in other circles just famous). people who didn’t like us found our children’s websites and left vicious posts (i will note that they came in equal measure from referrers from malkin’s site and boingboing–technolibertarians and fascist scum have a surprising overlap) on the guest comments page.
it sucked.
but it is also life. we password protected the kids sites and moved on. i expect that someone who’s thinking of hiring me may find my online writings (especially my blog) and may not like it, and may not hire me. and if that really concerned me, i shouldn’t have written it.
so i guess in this battle i’m agnostic, and i try not to let the fact that i loathe trevino and everything he stands for, and respect montalbanken and pretty everything he believes get in the way of my views.
[redacted by request of blogger in question]
It’s repeated in the italicized text in the comment at 22:01.
Wait, wait, wait — suddenly Mr. Josh “My WIFE had ASH in her HAIR on 9/11 and that is why we must DESTROY ISLAM!” Trevino is shy about his family being discussed online?
The same wife, by the by, that he often drags out as a liberal prop in his writing, whenever he’s confronted with his own authoritarianism. “Don’t you know what I do for a living? Don’t you know what my wife’s politics are?” Etc., etc.
Truth to tell, I’ve been around these parts for the better part of a year, and I still really have no idea who this Josh Trevino cat is. I’ve seen him talked about quite a bit, but it hasn’t yet made me curious enough to go read his ramblings. Hell, the dood doesn’t even have a Wikipedia Entry, fer cryin out loud. Can’t be much…
mikey
I think this thread is a great example of the Wimp Factor in action.
It certainly didn’t get as – umm, lively – as a typical pie-fest.
I still really have no idea who this Josh Trevino cat is.
I think he’s known on the Internet for two things: (1) being “Tacitus,” a founder of Redstate.org, whose writing combines incredibly mannered prose with amazingly disgusting imperialist ideas and (2) sponsoring the ill-fated “Online Integrity” project.
I notice the OI site has been down for a few days. Trevino hasn’t been involved with OI for a while, so I assume the fact that the site has gone down wasn’t in anticipation of the creepy display today. But it’s interesting timing.
Great post HTML Mencken,
I don’t have much to say about Tacky and his threats that hasn’t been said really well already except; fuck him. I hope this internet thug in chickenhawk’s clothing can’t really cause you any trouble.
Oh, you pathetic moonbats.
Trevino: genocide and murder are the last items on any sane wartime agenda
See? The last items. On a…um…sane agenda. Yeah. Can’t take them off the table.
And: Algeria was lost. Kinda like America was lost when you fuckers decided to raise the finger to King George.
I hope this internet thug in chickenhawk’s clothing can’t really cause you any trouble.
I’d estimate he’s about as dangerous as his lightsaber; that is, capable of embarrassing only himself.
Addendum to Algeria was lost – well, except you fuckers were British, and the Algerians were not French.
F, you forgot something here:
I think he’s known on the Internet for two things: (1) being “Tacitus,� a founder of Redstate.org, whose writing combines incredibly mannered prose with amazingly disgusting imperialist ideas and (2) sponsoring the ill-fated “Online Integrity� project.
There’s also that craptastic site “noendbutvictory.com”, which Tacitus helped co-found, and which until recently featured a very large picture of an ecstatic Iraqi woman waving her purple finger at the viewer. Curiously, that image is now gone. Also now gone is their manifesto which vowed to struggle against the Enemy Within: The Leftists Among Us. Because of course the real enemy in the War on Terror isn’t abroad in the Middle East somewhere: it’s right here at Home!
There ain’t no Stoß like the Dolchstoß, baby.
I still really have no idea who this Josh Trevino cat is.
Along with those other definitions, an important one is the man Maximos is trying to be.
Grade A post.
The shitstorm in the comments was way too long. I have never hit someone in my life but I’d kick the shit out of JT after all that. Prick.
But a general response to all of this: Y’all need to get a life that does not involve the internet. it was like reading a usenet forum fight.
and if that really concerned me, i shouldn’t have written it.
I hear what you’re saying, and I’ve heard the same argument before. It sounds reasonable, but the result of that policy is that people cannot freely have discussions in a common space.
Once upon a time, people used to go to meetings, or join clubs, or what have you, to express their personal beliefs or engage in a discussion on topics that interest them. Now we have the Internet. And before, the content of those discussions was privileged, “private” in the sense that sure, anyone walking in off the street could hear the conversation, but it’s not the kind of thing your employer would hear about or bother with.
Now, apparently, even doing your best to protect yourself (and your employer, for that matter) by using a pseudonym is not good enough– you “deserve” or “should have expected” anyone with any agenda whatsoever to make assumptions about you based on those discussions.
That means your participation in a community discourse is limited to only what you could say to anyone, in any milieu, without fear of consequence. I don’t know about you, but I’m not real excited for the “How About This Weather?” blog.
And what exactly does America ‘win’ by emulating the Boer War in Iraq?
Lets see, first it was “Saddam is on the verge of giving WMDs to Al Qaeda to plant in American cities! So we must attack NOW!!!!!!!” (nope)
Then its, “So what if there weren’t any WMDs and no Al Qaeda cooperation. It was NEVER about the WMDs it was about freeing the poor Iraqis from that dreadful Saddam1!!” (Saddam’s gone)
Then its, “Until Iraq and the “Middle East” are converted to Freedom Loving Democracies, the United States is in MORTAL DANGER.”
Which appears to morphing into, “Let’s kill them all and call ourselves the winners!!”
It appears now that “Victory in Iraq” is a wank fantasy of Genocide.
Trevino et al. , you are a sick fucks who should be under medical supervision.
Y’know, all this joyous enthusiasm for brutality, war crimes, near random murder, collective punishment and genocide has got me thinking. Ordinarily I am very careful about anyone’s “qualifications” for having an opinion. In matters of war and peace, I will not take the position that I am somehow “righter” than people who didn’t have to experience the things I did. But I’m going to make an exception. I think there has to be a rule. If you are going to espouse this kind of killing, brutality and crimes against civilians, you may only do so if you have looked someone in the face and killed them. Up close, jet fighter pilots don’t get to play. If you haven’t heard the sound of a high velocity round hitting a person, if you haven’t had to deal with the stuff that spills out when you tear a man open, if you haven’t checked yourself in a panic to make sure that all the blood and meat on you isn’t yours, then put your deathhead logo back in your pocket. Oh sure, you can have an opinion about the war, about foreign policy, hell, you can even call for more, better, longer bloodier wars. But you can’t tell people they need to be steel-hard, civilian shooting, detainee executing, life taking motherfuckers until you understand what it is to live with your actions…
mikey
w00t!1!!
This post really cries out for some fine photoshop.
mikey,
Thank you.
Wasn’t Tacky the one on RedState that was furious Ben Domenech’s plagiarism was uncovered?
For heaven’s sake, Retardo, if you’ve actually got something on Treviño, then for the love of Pete, post it. You’re not doing the world any favors by protecting the man’s reputation.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not real excited for the “How About This Weather?� blog.
A thread for you, Jiggavegas. Or perhaps not.
Oy! That Lee Trevino was some golfer.
But that nephew of his? Nothing but trouble.
He needs a good schmitz on the eisl, if you catch my drift.
(a good swift brikn would also do the trick)
You forgot another Tacy online accomplishment: the irrelevant Swords Crossed blog, which he co-founded with fellow personal-disorder sufferer and nominal progressive Armando. Neither is with the blog anymore as, “due to personal circumstances Treviño and Armando have moved on to other projects.”
I imagine that the “personal circumstances” involved the fact that neither of them are capable of treating other human beings decently for more than about ten seconds at a time.
er…that’s “personality-disorder sufferer”
WHERE’S MY PREVIEW BUTTON!!!11!!
IF YOU DO NOT RETURN MY PREVIEW BUTTON, YOU’LL REGRET IT. MAYBE NOT NOW. MAYBE NOT TOMORROW. BUT SOON AND FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!
CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!
Whoo-wee you really want to punch Trevino, don’t you? What a dick.
Hey, Josh ‘n’ Jeff! There’s a reason normal people don’t like you. You’re a couple of fucking assholes.
People who advocate extermination need their own special gated community, complete with men in white lab coats and heavy duty security to prevent them from leaving. Preferably on another planet. One without oxygen.
our story thus far:
stinki-tush writes some pro-genocidal crap to “amuse” his psycho moron readers (ie; fans). html mencken compiles an excellent analysis of stinki-tush’s moral and intellectual decrepitude. stinki-tush responds…”apologize for publishing the photo of me brandishing a light-sabre (like an idiot), and i won’t reveal your real name and city.” klod-dopin’ boy chimes in with absolutely nothing. denials are denied and accusations are accused. feces are thrown repeatedly. stinki-tush feigns nobility by not responding to genocidal love-notes. many tyrants respond defensively to questioning about their desires to commit genocide. stay tuned.
> if you haven’t had to deal with the stuff that spills out when you tear a man
> open, if you haven’t checked yourself in a panic to make sure that all the
> blood and meat on you isn’t yours, then put your deathhead logo back in
> your pocket.
If someone’s wielding a lightsaber at a wedding reception, I’m guessing spillage of some sort was a constant, menacing threat.
There’s certainly been enough outrage about the rightie praise of British scorched earth policy, but S, N!’s (or rather, Taylor’s) last point has been ignored. If the neocons are going to use the dubious exercise of historical analogy, then it appears they want some sort of Apartheid to emerge as the political system in futureIraq. (And don’t argue that Apartheid did not appear until 1948; the British leaders in the first half of the twentieth century approved a number of practically-Apartheid segregationist laws in South Africa from its independence. Why do you think the Boers were willing partners in the WWI landgrab from German colonies?)
One of the first sustained critiques of the British war in the Cape was by J. A. Hobson. He argued that certain financiers within Britain manipulated the entire episode to score profits. (These financiers, of course, were Jews, according to Hobson.)
May I suggest that you deal with Josh the way that Taylor Marsh dealt with Debbie Schlussel and provide alternate artwork?
Anyone who wants to has my permission to use this photo of Josh instead.
I support Wally Whateley’s artwork, with the caveat that the Josh Trevino in question looks far more intelligent than the Josh Trevino who blabbered away on Sadly, No! today.
“I have stated previously that I endorse cruel things in war — to eschew them is folly.”
never mind the endorsement of genocide and war crimes, anyone that writes in 2007 “to eschew them is folly” when discussing anything, should never be listened to regarding anything, ever.
Me, I’m sort of a classicist, like Josh, when it comes to goofy pictures of him wielding a lightsaber:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/4793.html
Accipe non susbtitutum!
Thunder, the hair-helmet hides the fact that cartoon-Josh’s skull comes to a point.
Actually, I guess the same goes for non-cartoon-Josh, too.
Trevino et al. , you are a sick fucks who should be under medical supervision.
The funny thing is that they both are on psychoactive medications. Gee, big shock there, I know.
I don’t really need to see Tacky’s wedding photo to know that he’s a dork.
JuvenileNegrofascism!
Enjoy.
Brilliant analysis, HTML. But I don’t understand all that fuss in the comments. Why don’t the guys you quoted just respond with their analysis where they prove that the meaning of:
It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines for us, and South Africa for the British, from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq. Would that they were.
is:
“It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines for us, and South Africa for the British, from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq. Thank God our military avoids these tactics, and punishes any such criminal acts committed by our soldiers or contractors.”
H.L. Mencken said: The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Mencken also said: “Keep out of Los Angeles or you will die a Christian.”
Not that it has anything to do with the matter at hand … just came to mind …
The first AWOL cokehead tries to hide from an 86 year old reporter.
Displaying the same courage as his cheerleaders.
[…] you totally blocked out the entire time we were a couple? « Boerish […]
Jiggavegas said,
February 21, 2007 at 3:00
Once upon a time, people used to go to meetings, or join clubs, or what have you, to express their personal beliefs or engage in a discussion on topics that interest them. Now we have the Internet. And before, the content of those discussions was privileged, “private� in the sense that sure, anyone walking in off the street could hear the conversation, but it’s not the kind of thing your employer would hear about or bother with.
Anonymity in written political discussion, widely published, read by many, and archived by some, is nothing new in American politics; it was a basic part of the political process since the before the dawn of the Revolution and well into the Federal period. Our “founding fathers” wrote them all the time in pamphlets, broadsheets, open letters to hundreds of newspapers and magazines, even bulk mail.
There have always been personal consequences (like losing your job, alienating your friends and colleagues, gov’t arrest, getting shot in a duel) to expressing unpopular or radical beliefs.
Anonymity has long been the accepted means to protect the free flow of ideas, no matter how personally offensive or politically radical. It’s best to assume that those who try to maintain their anonymity have excellent personal reasons for doing so.
To violate that anonymity is to substitue a direct personal attack (with unknown consequences) for a rational refutation of the argument. Totally unethical, in other words.
Lesley said,
February 21, 2007 at 4:36
People who advocate extermination need their own special gated community, complete with men in white lab coats and heavy duty security to prevent them from leaving. Preferably on another planet. One without oxygen.
Eliminate them all, in other words? Is that intended to be ironic? Sorry I have to ask; it’s so hard to tell these days.
Damn, Mencken, you must have quite the goods on Trevino. If I’m not mistaken, that was perceptible blink by Tacky upthread. (As for Goldstein, it’s harder to tell; he’s always twitchy.) Looks like this could have gotten uglier than the usual Trevino/Goldstein/Patterico foot-stamping. Would that it could.
By the way, very fine post.
Oh, and Jiggavegas: those meetings and clubs of old were pretty much guaranteed to be filled with like-minded people of the same class and ethnicity, so respect for privacy was assumed.
If a public figure said something personally insulting about someone, or just something really stupid, even in a private setting, their political opponents had absolutely no qualms about telling everyone who’d listen exactly who said what; gossip is the oldest form of politics.
On the other hand, public discourse in which one’s identity was not hidden was kept extremely civil, on account of all those dueling pistols lying around. One could only be publicly rude if one were an excellent shot.
Or anonymous, like the brave souls who send death threats to bloggers. In their case, too, they have a good reason to be anonymous. Death threats are criminal acts.
Great source on this stuff- Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic by Joanne B. Freeman.
(Here’s a review… http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?BookId=4852 )
She really gives a fine, close look at the nature of turn-of-the-19th-century politics. The material on anonymous publication and the “flame wars” of the era are especially relevant to the modern blogger who wants a little historical perspective.
so I’ve waded through nigh on 200 comments and no one has answered the key question. why is Josh Trevino wearing khakis and a lightsaber to his wedding?
if we could get some people on that, I would much appreciate it.
a few other thoughts come to mind. perhaps at 200 comments, I should let the ship sail on. but what would that make me? another ship sailer-on, I guess.
Like how Josh actually outs another blogger (hilzoy) in his attempted “gotcha, HTML is a coward” comment. Or how he refs TBogg’s real name, as if TBogg wasn’t outed by a Trevino crony. which he was.
Dude. It is the *internet*. we can actually review and remember what happened. I know you keep forgetting this, but try to keep up.
*sigh* Is there anyone sadder than Trevino? If he didn’t literally wish that I and my family would die, I might feel sorry for him.
I believe it was actually a friend’s wedding, Kathleen.
Yes, he apparently has some. Go figure.
Why don’t you and Tacky just fuck each other and get it over with?
The post (as usual) is great, but the weird junior high in-jokes and intrigues are just really fucking annoying.
go write your own blog, ann, if you don’t like junior high in-jokes and intrigues. That’s why we all keep coming back here!
ummm, ‘Zacula, I think she was referring to the junior high behavior of Pasty and Tacky, not the junior high behavior of the Sadly No! environs.
Well, Brad Delong outed Hilzoy a long time ago: [Redacted]
Well, Brad Delong outed Hilzoy a long time ago:
Fucknuts, you haven’t been reading. Upthread, Hilzoy writes:
Josh: I did specifically ask you not to use my real name. I have no problem with people online figuring it out, which is why it’s not exactly a deep dark secret, but I’d rather not have people who know me in real life, and most specifically my students, be able to find my collected political views too easily. If someone here could edit it out, I’d be much obliged.
Now take a look at the URL YOU POSTED, dimwit.
An edit by the Sadly crew might be nice here as well.
You know, the funny thing, after reading through all this, is that the only thing I can think of is how rihghties like to complain that liberals and lefties are moral relativists who don’t believe in evil.
The funny part is that I’m not a moral relativist, and I have no problem saying that Tacky is an evil person.
I missed something. Where are we going to get the oil to carry out this genocide after the Muslim world revolts?
Somewhere in the 20th century, the idea of victory as an end in itself was lost.
Do these morons remember nothing from all those histories they claim they’ve read? Especially all the English-public-school-Classics-curriculum stuff, like what the Greeks did to each other, and how the Romans expanded upon the Grecian failures with some improvements, and then (after a few centuries to allow a collective failure of memory) the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ and the Crusades stuff, leading with dispiriting predictability to…
Duh! Of course our current personal batch of morons don’t remember the inconvenient mosaic murals formed by the last 4,000 years of military history… they’re too busy admiring the occasional shiny pebbles embedded in those murals. (Or, more accurately, in admiring their own distorted reflections in those shiny pebbles.)
Shorter Military Wanker, as per a button I found at an sf convention many years ago: We’re going to keep repeating history… until we get a passing grade.
“why is Josh Trevino wearing khakis and a lightsaber to his wedding?”
Because he is a fucktard…
Sorry, missed this before:
Actually, no: it meant that despite your best tricks at washing your site (it’s really too bad I couldn’t have a laugh at you with regard to the Liberal Avenger comment scandal, since you’re the original comment-manipulator, though you’ve now cleaned those up to look real innocuous, clever guy; did you and Pattycakes arrange that?), I still have a shitload of incriminating links, enough to do 3 or 4 more comprehensive posts on your silly politics and personal ummm defiencies as demonstrated through violent and sexual threats. Now I could be lazy and NOT humiliate you any more than I already have (tick, tock , tick tock — A Pasty Boy Mystery: While The Cock Ticked), but if you decided to use what you dug out of my myspace, then you’d force me to work a bit harder. Unnerstand?
But I love it when you try to play the victim!
What did I clean up? Have I ever denied altering comments from trolls spamming my site?
Go ahead, post away. I mean, now when I do it I use brackets and italics (I think — it’s been a while), but it wasn’t always thus.
But I told Patterico all that.
In fact, I once told Rightwingsparkle that that’s a good way to frustrate comment trolls into ceasing their trolling — and it beats banning them.
Use whatever links you have on me. Write a thousand more posts about my deficiencies, Josh.
I couldn’t give a fuck, to be honest. But I will have me some fun with all that shit people sent me from your MySpace page.
In fact, I’ll call your bluff right now, Draven.
Ok, well, nothin I can do about that atm.
But two comments:
a) Your comment editing was excused at Patterico’s as a ‘one-time thing for which [you] apologised’. This is a lie and you know it if Pattycakes doesn’t (which I doubt)
b) Don’t pretend that people sent you stuff from myspace. I caught you on there. At least be honest about that.
As for what I’m afraid of, which you asked upthread, well, it’s easy to figure out. I have posted pics here an at elementropy of myself. Obviously I’m nto worried abotu your photoshoppery. What I am worried about is the same thing tacky claimed to be worried about when we first posted the lightsaber pic: that his family’s images would be dragged into the mess. We were never interested in doing that — frankly, it’s a wingnut thing to do. Which is why it’s exactly what you’ll do, to people who’ve done you no trouble. But then again, you’ve threatened to sexually assautl and worse people who’ve attacked your idiotic politics, so you’re capable of anything.
Honestly, while I have the (public) ammo consisting of your writings to use against you, the more you do to fuck with people hoping that their identity will be exposed to violent consequence, the better your side will be discredited. It’d really be a shame if some grisly end came to some blue person in a red state (as I am), agged on by idiots like you. Then again, it’d also be a shame if someone ended up mugged or assaulted or worse at DNC ’08, and I know what site’s comment section would be the first the authorities would look at. Do you worst, Dude. Please give me more ammo! Also, be sure to insult me based on my location and what you percieve to be my socio-economic station — I *love* it when you insult your own site’s constituency! Shows how smart you are.
Kathleen,
“Or how he refs TBogg’s real name, as if TBogg wasn’t outed by a Trevino crony. “
Tbagg is a Trevino crony?
Next you’ll tell us that cats and dogs live together in harmony.
Oh, and Retardo? Grow the fuck up, loser.
I caught you on there. At least be honest about that.
Dude, I totally caught you being on the internet! You’re so busted!
Honestly, while I have the (public) ammo consisting of your writings to use against you, the more you do to fuck with people hoping that their identity will be exposed to violent consequence, the better your side will be discredited.
Like this?
Oh, wait a minute…
In reverse order: b) I was on your Myspace page, sure. What I said was (and if I didn’t, I hereby apologize for the misunderstanding) is that I wasn’t using some Google Cache thing to find you.
Somebody sent me a link to the Google cache of your myspace page. But that’s not really relevant because — as YOU well know — I knew of your Myspace page months and months ago. And I never posted anything from it until you went after me AGAIN recently.
Similarly, I didn’t grab any photos from it. But that doesn’t mean other people didn’t.
And what “violent consequence” are you worried about were you to be exposed by name? And why aren’t you worried about the potential for “violent consequence” you bring to the table each time you incite your moron readers to go after people or their families with each dishonest stroke of your nasty little faux-rocker finger pecks? Lo Ping Wong. One of yours, if I remember correctly.
And no less a stellar human than Deb Frisch sites you as an authority on my character.
Congrats!
a) Did I excuse my comment editing at Patterico’s? Did I even post there? I don’t recall. But I’ve posted about it now, cockstar/popstar.
So go on and do what it is you want with my writings. I wrote them, which means I’m not likely to be embarrassed by them.
But you might want to search your own site for “cock” references. I think you’d be surprised at what you find.
cites
I didn’t say that you said that at Pattycakes’s site — or, if I did, I didn’t mean to. What I meant was that was the excuse given, by whomever (actually, I think it was Pattycakes himself).
No, I really *didn’t* know you knew of my myspace page months and months ago. I knew you knew of quoteland months ago. That’s all. quoteland I don’t give a shit about because it’s irrelevant. Had I known you knew about my myspae I would have put it on private then.
I dunno who Lo Ping Wong is. I do know that idiots on your site, with whom you converse in a familiar way — i.e. not liberal moles — talk about you bringing guns to Eschacon, axehandles to Yearly Kos, etc. ‘Violent consequences ‘ — when I started blogging I lived a large city and then it wasn’t a big deal. Now I do not, and it’s more worrisome. If someone burns a cross in my yard, you and Tacky and the first names I’m giving to the cops. *That’s* why it’s not good for me or for you if you continue the outting project. But then you may not think your commenters aren’t capable of that, axehandles, guns, ‘show you where Jimmy Hoffa is buried’ on the side.
But hey, Pasty, do what ya wanna! If it ain’t me it’ll be someone else you’ll out to disasterous effect — which is exactly what you want — and then not only will you be further unemployable, you’ll be famous to all sorts of agencies and NGOs. I’m thinking SPLC, first of all.
So have at it with outting me, because either way, your name’s gonna be attached to more infamy. But if you just wanna photoshop *me* or make fun of *me* without outting me, then, really, that’s ok and potentially funny. Your choice.
may think
Ahh, ya did it. Take my name of your post, Pasty
If someone burns a cross in my yard, you and Tacky and the first names I’m giving to the cops.
If you’re sincerely worried about that — that is, if you think you’ll suffer unique consequences that no other named left-blogger ever has, ’cause you’re so important — then the intelligent things to do would be:
1) Give our names to the cops and/or relevant authorities now.
2) Restrict your public comment to, say, actual substantive disagreements, instead of veering off into….well, stealing folks’ wedding photos, for starters.
Suffice it to say, I don’t think you actually are concerned for your own physical safety. The fake victimization is simply cover for chilidish hypocrisy. The [HTML’s name] Method, viz.: “I shall now viciously personalize my attacks, and — OHGOD NO THEY CANNOT DO IT BACK TO ME.”
Eh.
Dude, by “wedding photo” do you mean this photo?
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/4793.html
Hard to tell it was taken at a wedding. Just looks like some dork embarrassing himself. Did you really dress like that at your own wedding?
Hmm… HTML actually seems to be a little arroused at becoming a “victim” … if something were to actually happen to his abode, I would tend to drop stuff like this into a detective’s ear.
Well, Tacky, not many liberal bloggers live in an area like mine.
I didn’t steal wedding photos. You posted them. On your site. Which I can prove. And there’s no evidence in the picture we used that it was a wedding, which you well know.
As for personalizing your attacks, have at it! I have several pictures here and at elementropy, plus a whole archive of posts to tear apart, just as I have done to you and Pasty. There’s no hypocrisy; it’s just that you’ve advocated depraved policies, starting with genocide, where Pasty has made violent sexual threats at his site and all over the web. You two are pissed that I’ve never sunk to your level, so all you can do is try to out me and hope that something bad happens to me in real life because of it. That’s the wingnut way.
He does loves him some illusion of oppression. In lieu of personal accomplishment, it imparts a sense of self-worth.
I’d love to go back to ignoring you, [HTML’s name]– sorry, [HTML’s name]! That’s achievable if you’re just squandering your youth bitching about my policy preferences. Once you start issuing threats and grabbing personal items, though, I have to pay attention. So — in your hands, there.
As a man once squeaked: “Comprendo?”
Right, Darleen, because those things are always fakes!
HTML
Did I say ‘always”?
Just funny, though, how someone keeps braying about “ooo… I just might be a victim. Really, pay attention me… I might be a VICTIM..you know, in the future …really” feels forced to make it happen…all by his/herself, as a demonstration of Larger Truthiness and Accepted Wisdom(tm)
You know, fake but accurate.
Ahh, but now it’s too late, Tacky. Pasty already posted my name and won’t retract it. Patterico was there to quickly repeat it, and carry it back to his cave where he’ll no doubt be busy with research for the rest of the evening. All hell’s broken lose.
See ya in the funny pages.
my policy preferences
That’s really rich. It’s a “policy preference” to be a genocidal racist chickenhawk Young Republican whose favorite hobbies are posing as (1) Edmund Burke and (2) a Jedi knight (n.b. he gets a little pissed off if you catch him doing the latter).
Well, Tacky, not many liberal bloggers live in an area like mine.
No, no: call me “Destro.” Please. And honestly: what a self-important coward. Like I said, [HTML’s name], if you actually fear for your safety, report me now. Otherwise: bluff called.
I didn’t steal wedding photos. You posted them. On your site.
Read slowly, as this has been explained to you before: they were not posted “on my site” — they were and are in the archives of my Flickr account, where they were private until briefly un-privated — months before you used them — so I could show them to a co-worker seeking a wedding photographer. In that brief window of time, you or someone you know grabbed them. This indicates the following:
1) As the photographs were never front-paged at my site, nor even on my Flickr account, you or your friend had to be specifically trolling those archives.
2) As the brief time the wedding set was un-privated was months before you chose to post a photo from it, you clearly saved it in a sort of odd stash for a rainy day. No doubt you have many others.
Both give me cause to label you — what’s that word you like to mutter when obsessively checking your referral logs? — a stalker. And a freak.
….there’s no evidence in the picture we used that it was a wedding….
Wow, that’s relevant. No evidence it was taken on planet Earth either. BEHOLD THE POWER OF [HTML’s name] MIND. Cripes, boy.
As for personalizing your attacks, have at it!
[HTML], you can’t even let your common first name slip without wetting your pants at the vision of, uh, blog-readers coming to lynch you. “Have at it”? Such tiny fists.
…..it’s just that you’ve advocated depraved policies, starting with genocide….
Whatever, there. Think and say as you wish. Not why I’m here.
You two are pissed that I’ve never sunk to your level….
Ha. Yes, [HTML]. That’s our beef: you haven’t degraded yourself enough. Lordy.
Pasty already posted my name and won’t retract it. Patterico was there to quickly repeat it … All hell’s broken lose.
Good God. YOU MUST TELL THE AUTHORITIES.
This should be a Great Moment in Policing: “Officer, some guy I’ve never met on a blog used my first name!”
You pompous fuck. You read carefully: You have more than a link to Flickr on your site, you had thumbnails of your Flickr album on your front page, you stupid shit. That constitutes ‘posting them on your site’. People could see the jpgs of your photos on your front page! All they had to do was click on one, and it was albums galore!
Ha. Yes, [HTML]. That’s our beef: you haven’t degraded yourself enough. Lordy.
Actually, that’s exactly it. Your degradation is what cause people to laugh at you in disgust, hence the popularity of my posts. You’re pissed because my generic social democrat blogging can’t be presented so hilariously, so you’re ‘forced’ to try to out me. As for Pasty, it’s his insanity that’s at issue. Maybe if I had threatened probably a hundred people with sexual assault, I’d be able to be ridiculed too. But I haven’t. I’m not ‘manly’ enough to do that or something. So he too is ‘forced’ to out me.
Out of curiosity, what’s with the GI Joe thing?
That constitutes ‘posting them on your site’.
In [HTML] Universe, perhaps. To the rest of the world, you’re a stalker and a freak. Free clue, [HTML]: in the sane world, the theft and antagonistic manipulation of wedding photos is considered the act of a deranged jackass. On which, QED, but still, you’ve been offered multiple outs on this….
All they had to do was click on one, and it was albums galore!
Actually, if you click on one….you get the photo you clicked on. Aren’t you a smarty. There is a “More” link present, but even there, it’s a minimum of three click-throughs before you get to one of the archived sets. You really do have to know what you’re looking for — and look assiduously, until a surprise set pops up.
Stalker. Freak.
You’re pissed because my generic social democrat blogging….
I guess there’s some virtue in believing your own press, but — wow. “Generic social democrat blogging.” Gonna remember that one.
But what are you hanging around here for? CALL THE POLICE. ARM YOURSELF. HIDE BEHIND THE WOMEN. Go, [HTML]!
Out of curiosity, what’s with the GI Joe thing?
I wondered about that myself. I think he means something like “Joe Blow” or “Joe Sixpack,” as in, “His Joe job is…” It’s sort of a revealing slip, as it shows both an inability to speak idiomatic American English and a certain contempt for those poor stooges who actually have to fight the wars young Trevino is constantly lusting for (but not actually fighting in; he’s got important wingnut welfare stuff to do).
Tacitus, eschew thy lightsaber as a toy. The Clash of Civilizations calls: get thee to a recruiting station!
….get thee to a recruiting station!
Heh. Okay, I’ll take that advice — seriously.
Someone drag [HTML] out from under the covers while I’m gone. 😉
No, the ‘stalker’ is the guy who obsesses over the identity of those who make fun of him, to the point of digging up myspaces and old baseball threads. Geez, I’ve caught you making several google searches, and that’s just what I happen to see in my logs! There’s no telling what kinda time you had to devote to finding the other stuff.
To the rest of the world
By which you mean the rest of the world that agrees that it’s a pity we can’t set up concentration camps — iow, a handful of wingnuts as insane as yourself.
Hmm, as I remember it, you click a pic and– yes that pic shows up, and to the side of that pic is everything else the idiot fool Trevino wants people to see, whom he can blame later for looking and laughing.
But, like I said, all hell’s broken lose (you just had to share, didn’t you, just as you have to repeat my name in these threads?), so see you in the funny pages.
a certain contempt for those poor stooges who actually have to fight the wars
Ooooo! Projection!
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
For all hell has broken loose! Hold me, Daddy!
No, the ’stalker’ is the guy who obsesses over the identity of those who make fun of him, to the point of digging up myspaces and old baseball threads.
vs.
I still have a shitload of incriminating links!!!
Um, yeah.
Brilliant!
Darleen appears to be unfamiliar with the familiar rhetorical device known as “irony.” Not all that surprising in a regular reader of “Protein Wisdom.”
Hey, Pablo dumbshit: Tacky’s googling consisted entirely of ‘Retardo Montalban’ and ‘real name’.
Otherwise, he’s welcome to read what I’ve written, and google it to his concentration camp-loving heart’s content.
Moron.
I’m more familiar with the puerile “chickenhawk” meme, now more commonly coupled with the Kerry/Rangel fiction that the US military is where only losers with no other options join.
Of course, such purveyors really really support the troops (only when they shoot their officers).
Your love just oozes.
Well… something is oozing.
Speaking of love, I just love the name “Darleen.” It’s the double “e” that gets me. It just instantly conjures up mental images of some subdivision around Atlanta or Nashville or some other creepy New South enclave. Practically oozes them, you might say.
Eh. There are plenty of nonstalkerish reasons to be in someone’s archives–you’re looking for something you remembered reading a few months ago for something you’re posting about currently, whatever. If you had ’em linked from the front page, even if they weren’t directly linked, even if it took a few clicks, I don’t think you get to cry foul.
I’ve got a picture of my hairy leg linked somewhere on my blog. If someone finds it and makes fun of it, you know, I guess I’ll deal with that. It’s what I get for making it publicly available.
If you wanted those photos kept private, why didn’t you just email ’em to your coworker? Work blocking image attachments?–Use his home email address. Or just show them to him at your own workstation while you’re logged into Flickr. There had to be other ways to guard those photos than unprivatizing them. It’s a little presumptuous to suppose that Retardo should have known they were private when they weren’t private.
Again?–You can’t steal what’s publicly available on the internet. I actually agree with you that the decent thing would have been for him to remove them once you asked, if indeed you asked as nicely as you’re claiming you did, but this you-didn’t-do-as-I-asked, so-now-I-must-out-you business, that’s what looks all kind of “deranged jackass.” It’s bullying. People don’t always do what you’d like them to. When you try to force them to, you just come off looking like a petty, insecure control freak who really shouldn’t be on the web in the first place.
He can do as he pleases, but if it were me I’m afraid I’d have to be uncivil for a minute, and just tell you to go fuck yourself. What you’re attempting is blackmail. And please, don’t come back at me with the legal definition of “blackmail,” and how this isn’t really it, at least, not legally, not in a court of law, blah blah blah, because I am referencing the common usage of the term, for one, and because I don’t care, for two, because I don’t take these stupid cockfights as seriously as you guys do. Really: If you guys spent as much time romancing your wives as you do declaring mock jihad on every liberal dude who doesn’t like you, it’d be a better world.
Hey look, it’s Powderfinger Pablo the belligerent cuckold. How’s that sailor treating your wife, big guy? She still working his mizzenmast like a pro?
Maybe Trevino, Darleeeeeen, and Powderfinger should all get together and run to court to get a restraining order because they were flamed on the internet. It’s what manly men like Jeff Goldstein do.
Sallust
Oh so sorry to disappoint you. I’m a second generation native Angelino, actually born in St Vincent’s Hospital. And I still live in So Cal. ‘Course, being the daughter of a WWII, Korean vet probably just makes me as worthy of your contempt of all those other US military losers
but hey, I won’t question your patriotism or anything.
BTW “Darleen Click” is my legal birthname. Knock yerself out.
Moronblogger (apt nom d’commenter there)
Why should I get a restraining order? I haven’t seen any lefties here who could scare an 80 y/o grandmother with a bad ticker even on their best hormonally-challenged day.
Unless it’s the threat of getting a stitch in one’s side from laughing.
hey, I won’t question your patriotism or anything.
Darleen, I thank you for that. Because it would really upset me if a discerning “Protein Wisdom” reader like you challenged my patriotism or otherwise contested my opinions. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.
Darleen,
Are you this tedious and derivative in real life as well?
Moronblogger,
Hey look, it’s Powderfinger Pablo the belligerent cuckold. How’s that sailor treating your wife, big guy? She still working his mizzenmast like a pro?
That’s waaaay ex-wife (which you’d have picked up on if you were a more talented obsessive) and I’ll bet his buddies are getting more of it than he is, what with all the travel, as she’s what you might call “generous” like that. And as for the other, she was never very good at it. No raw talent there. Maybe you could give her some lessons?
Great name, btw. It captures your essence.
Retardo,
Hey, Pablo dumbshit: Tacky’s googling consisted entirely of ‘Retardo Montalban’ and ‘real name’.
And your point, Retardo? You got a problem with using real names all of a sudden? Whatever for?
I see you’re whining about it over at Goldstein’s site, “Pablo”. Just to make clear, I’m not making fun of you for being divorced. I’m making fun of you for being a cuckold. Big difference. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t caught you in the bathroom with those pictures of Goldstein. Or maybe you’re just a snooze in the sack. Or both.
And in the epilogue to our continuing story;
Stinki-tush’s hench-monkey goes ahead and does the reveal, as we all knew was as inevitable as broken chromosomes in wingnuts. Hilzoy, Tbogg, Theres, Billmon, and now HTML Mencken; somehow its always, always, always absolutely necessary that the fu**wits expose identities of people who prefer to express their opinions (semi-)anonymously. As is any author’s right, but even customary among political expositions that benefit from preempting ad hominem criticism. The nutbag who adored Malkin and sent fake anthrax letters to Olbermann and Stewart, and the threats to the San Diego college kids show that the gasbags wingtards are definitely random, but not always harmless, similar to a hubcap flying from a highway overpass onto a crowded city street.
I haven’t seen any lefties here who could scare an 80 y/o grandmother with a bad ticker even on their best hormonally-challenged day.
Well, that’s understandable.
It’s probably hard for you to meet ANY lefties, hanging out in Momma’s basement like you do.
And threatening 80 year old grandmothers is the Right’s department.
Trevino, you are a pathetic sack of shit.
I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to point out to the racist wingnuts here that SN can see their IP addresses AND their actual e-mail accounts?
Darleen: the K-Lo of the right blogosphere.
In saying:
“The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future, … ”
the original author of the piece seems to have blurred the not-so-fine distinction between the art of foretelling and the curse of the merely boring. Hardly surprising, I suppose, considering the source.
http://debfrisch.com/archives/2007/02/final_settlemen.html#more
Mr. Goldstein is dreaming of real estate in Oregon; perhaps he’s hoping to pick up what he can in Arkansas as well.
Good work if you can get it, Jeff.
This one’s for you, Pablo:
http://www.weeuniverse.com/patrioticanchors.html
All together now !
The only worthwhile thing to come out of the Online Integritude project is seeing what feeble pretexts its adherents will come up with as ex posto facto rationales for the egregious violations they’re so patently desperate to perform. But arguing that using a picture from a Flickr account linked from your main website constitutes “theft” and hence justifies an outing? Christ, it’s like they’re not even trying anymore.
I also agree with ilyka that I would have taken the pictures down when the third party asked, although I also believe in erring on the side of protecting people’s privacy. Needless to say, there aren’t many people who are in less of a position to complain about this than Trevino. (I can’t wait to hear his excuse for once again using Hilzoy’s real name after being told not to do so–maybe she quoted from a post that required an extra click into his blog archives!)
I return to find that [HTML] is whining about being Googled, and Scott Lemieux, Ph.D., has me on a Technorati hotlist.
Truly, the world is mad. I surrender.
Since Ilyka put so much effort into it….
There are plenty of nonstalkerish reasons to be in someone’s archives….
True enough. [HTML] has none of ’em. He’s been obsessing over me in various fora since 2003, which I only realized when he got my attention last year. The boy has problems, and he’s passed the point at which I simply assume he’s benign.
If you wanted those photos kept private, why didn’t you just email ‘em to your coworker?
The set contains several hundred photos. It’s massively more convenient to simply give her a URL.
It’s a little presumptuous to suppose that Retardo should have known they were private when they weren’t private.
No one assumes that. He is penalized now for two things:
1) For continuing to use them after being informed they were private.
2) For his probable stash of multiple other private photos of family and friends, the use of which I wish to dissuade.
You can’t steal what’s publicly available on the internet.
Yeah, that’s what those kids on the filesharing network said.
People don’t always do what you’d like them to.
What an incredibly valuable lesson, Ilyka. Thank you for explaining that.
He can do as he pleases….
As may I. It pleases me to turn the tables on a gutless wonder who has obsessed over me for nearly four years, his sick hatred culminating in increasingly questionable acts. Your estimation of the moral quality of that riposte is irrelevant. He is at last receiving as he has given — though not hardly in full measure — and he cannot take it. I am pleased.
Really: If you guys spent as much time romancing your wives as you do declaring mock jihad on every liberal dude who doesn’t like you….
Nah. Take Scott Lemieux, Ph.D., for example. He’s got an internal Trevin-o-meter that goes off about once a month, at which point, like a geyser (if geysers could be desperate for tenure track), he lets off a bit how he dislikes me, etc., etc., and then moves back to currying favor with feminists, degrading academia, and whatever else he does. It’s harmless, and I mostly ignore it. Lemieux is a mild obsessive with character issues, but not, as you put it, “mock-jihad” worthy. Certainly I’ll never have to wonder when he’s going to post my wedding photos, and that’s because he’s not lost all touch with sanity.
[HTML]? Long gone from the world of the sane, Ilyka. Long gone.
What Scott said.
HTML’s actions may have been bad, if taken devoid of context, but we do not live in a contextless world. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have done it in his shoes; but then, I wasn’t in full-contact mode with the tedious shrieking idiots in question. Trevino, et al., will doubtless pound their sippy cups on the high chair and proclaim otherwise — that’s what I have “no doubtâ€? about.
Or something.
I lost a bet on how long it would take [redacted] to show up. With myself. That’s the worst!
[Nice try re-outing Thers, bub. -the mgmt]
Funny. I’m winning my bet on how long Tac continues to make a spectacle of himself.
You should blog about it, and then complain in your comments threads about how I don’t give you any attention….by not showing up in your comments threads.
Go, Andrew, go. Give it the old Hornets try.
Holy crap. I just saw your post about my use of your REAL NAME. OMFG ORCS.
I hate blogging, for showing me that so many Ph.D.s truly are infantile buffoons.
OMG ORCS. Cripes, [redacted]. Roll 2D20 and call the doctor in the morning.
So you do read my comments threads! And you know who I am! And the nickname of the teams at the community college where I teach! You looked that up!
And you’re insinuating that I’m “obsessive”!
I love you. Honestly.
And I, you.
Love the children, he said. Even the grown ones who “teach.”
But he’s not a stalker. No, Thers. I am, for clicking on the prominently displayed Flickr link on the first page of his blog.
Also, my acquisition and posting of the picture was so ‘stalkerish’ and ‘outrageous’ that he’s throwing a fit about it now, over month (?) after it was posted, ‘coincidentally’ when I showed that his ‘thought-experiment’ of concentration camps was not a ‘thought experiment’ but an advocacy.
HTML, not to mention that he’s on record as offering a “context” defense to excuse exactly the sort of behavior he’s accusing you of — unearthing private data by sifting through a website.
I really do love him. He just “zinged”me and made a D&D joke at my expense… when he’s upset at your use of a picture of him with a light saber. Just amazing stuff.
If only for preserving the sanity of the general public … (since Dr. Trevino seems so concerned about everyone’s mental health ) …. perhaps it would be best to spare us all any more photographs of “Tacitus.”
And maybe if he could be certain that no more embarassing and pathetic photographs of his august self will appear, he can calm down long enough to consider his own precarious mental state.
Just out of curiosity, has JT offered an explanation for why he used hilzoy’s real name in this thread, even after hilzoy asked him not to?
I mean, there’s a lot of posts here, and I’d hate to accidentally call someone an unapologetic boor with neither class nor manners if they had, in fact, apologized and I just missed it.
Mr. Trevino & Mr. Goldstein may have begun to realize that, at a minimum, 70% of their fellow citizens (albeit perhaps 10% for the wrong reasons) disagree with them about the one defining obsession of their lives: their fevered dreams of the destruction of approximately 1.3 billion human beings.
(That, and things like Mr. Goldstein getting dumped by Miss Malkin in favor of BigBrainBrian, and that his increasingly bizarre attempts to extort money from a madwoman are not likely to pay his next month’s mortgage payment. As for Mr. Trevino, judging by his turgid prose style, I would only guess his tantrums are related to an intestinal blockage of some sort.)
But he’s not a stalker. No, Thers. I am, for clicking on the prominently displayed Flickr link on the first page of his blog.
vs.
I still have a shitload of incriminating links, enough to do 3 or 4 more comprehensive posts on your silly politics and personal ummm defiencies as demonstrated through violent and sexual threats.
Yeah, sure thing, Retardo.
I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to point out to the racist wingnuts here that SN can see their IP addresses AND their actual e-mail accounts?
Who’s a racist, Phoenix Woman? And no, you fucking idiot, it wouldn’t do any good. Anyone with 3 brain cells and a functioning internet connection is already well aware of that. But we’re not bedwetters, like your boy Retardo.
Good evening, and welcome to Love Line … this next one goes out to Pablo from Jeff:
http://www.weeuniverse.com/patrioticanchors.html
Pablo, please give me back my identity. Thank you.
Pablo, I’d like mine back as well. Thank you.
Take a deep breath, have a pulled pork sandwich, and consider what it is you’re saying here. I’ve about had it with your personal attacks.
I’m sorry. WTF does have a pulled pork sandwich mean? Is it supposed to be an insult? I had one earlier in the week. Big Joe from Melvin’s. Best Hamburger in the US, BTW. Go Melvin!
Have one yourself, Pasty.
Love the children, he said. Even the grown ones who “teach.�
Because CC is just a second rate education and no one who works there is a real teacher, right Tacky? How is Oxford this time of year and do you miss it from your days as a Rhodes Scholar? Or was that a ROAD Scholar? Or neither?
What I’d really like to know is how do you walk with your nose stuck in the clouds?
Wait, wait … can we get back to the ligtht saber pic of this Josh guy?
How do those of us who give not a half a shit for this mosh get to see that?
Is he in boxers?
Is it at his wedding?
C’mon, someone do something useful with this fucking thread …
I still think ilyka should out Allahpundit (or as I like to call it “A la Pundit”).
Is Jeff still here? Jeff? Je-e-efff?
Please return my calls, OK? I apologize for not making Judaism my state religion when we played Civ IV the other night. I know that makes me a raging anti-Semite. But I promise – promise! – to declare war on whatever civ adopts the muslimaniac religion.
So have mercy on me. I called you at home, I called you at wor — home again. Just pick up the phone next time. Please
I’m sorry. WTF does have a pulled pork sandwich mean? Is it supposed to be an insult? I had one earlier in the week. Big Joe from Melvin’s. Best Hamburger in the US, BTW. Go Melvin!
Have one yourself, Pasty.
It’s intended as a means of bolstering the outing. By telling him to have a pulled pork sandwich, he’s suggesting the region of the country in which HTML lives. This is his idea of clever.
Also, he still hasn’t explained his continued outing of hilzoy.
Nobody cares about your wedding. Although, they would like to see your DD-214.
Man, this is just pathetic. Revealing people’s names to gain points. Wow. Big men there.
You live a public life. Stop whining about people discovering your wedding pictures. You were dumb enough not to password protect them.
Marc Page cites Deb Frisch as a reliable source.
Deb. Frisch.
And provides a link to her site.
Tell you what, guys. Howsabout you adopt her as your own private Mommy Sheehan?
She doesn’t have a whole lot else to do these days.
Yikes. This place smells of napalm and jism.
See, this is another threat.
If I were you, I wouldn’t be worried about my future employability. I’m a sissified hausfrau, after all. And a writer. Who can (Oh, the Irony!) always publish under a pen name.
You, however, might think about scrubbing your archives — particularly if you’re going to keep going with this.
I’ve asked you to pick on another target. You were never concerned with how your attacks on me — who uses his real name — might incite people to violence. But now you’re worried that the good people of Arkansas, should they find out your name, are going to burn a cross on your lawn? And further, that such an action would be attributable to me?
Christ. And here I thought I was the pussy.
And that’s what drives you crazy, isn’t it? That it’s my choice, and that it’s dawning on you all of a sudden that all the shit you’ve thrown my way over the last year has finally moved me to take up for myself?
Frankly, I find it humorous watching you try to make the rules here. Seems you fell into the same trap as Marcotte — believing your own press.
Listen: you can gather all your leftwing friends together, put out an orchestrated attack (I’m part of an UNHOLY TRINITY! Quick, fasten together a string of garlic cloves and put a cross under your pillows!), and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to me.
This is the fallout from their no longer being any possibility of rapprochement between the hard left and the right. People who read me couldn’t care less what you think — just as your readers couldn’t care less what I think.
All of which is moot — because now, all I’m concerned about is what you’ve done to my name.
Sadly, you seem to think that threatening further attacks on me is likely to keep me from exposing you (and by the way, when did I ever say I planned to do that? I used your first name, and — in keeping with the leftwing tradition, I even did you the service of replacing a letter with an asterisk. Consider it my version of “Godlstein”).
This is a losing gambit — particularly if, as [names redacted — nice try, Jeff] have done — you begin posting libelous comments.
To you, this might be a giant game of chicken. To me, it’s about defending my name. And I’ll be damned if some backwoods nihilist is going to continue on with a campaign to defame me while enjoying the comfort of not having to take real-world responsibility for the real-world damage he’s been hoping to inflict on me.
Funny thing is, you’re so panicked that you actually admitted to such an end-game.
Go ahead. Send my name to “agencies.” Orchestrate your attacks. And lay claim to a presumption of privacy that you don’t have. See what happens.
Or, as I offered before, you and your buddies can choose another target. Because I think you’ll find I’m pretty tenacious when it comes to defending my name.
As [names redacted — nice try, Jeff] are going to soon find out.
“You aren’t going to improve your own life, let alone the entire world, by engaging in these shameful destructive fights online… Constantly trying to lash out and “hurtâ€? HTML will change nothing… because the rage you feel today will be back again tomorrow.”
And so it proved to be. Josh Trevino; Jeff Goldstein; destroying their own legitimacy and mental health day after day with shamefull online obsessiveness, stalking, and hypocritical harassment. If the “Natural Consequences” for two Edwards bloggers of a few intemperate comments were something to laugh about for these poor wretched souls, imagine what they’ve done to their own political futures with this behaviour. A shame, a shame…
Let’s see. Outing psuedonyms is OK. Clicking on Trevino’s links to Flickr that are posted on his website and looking at his pictures is an invasion of his privacy.
Yeah — typical Trevino logic.
I’m going to invite you to try to settle things in a less public way, HTML Mencken.
My Yahoo IM is proteinwisdom. We can chat there. And then, as a show of faith, I’ll even give you my phone number so that we can discuss all this without the constraints of trying to look clever in prose.
The blogosphere is heading down a dangerous path. Perhaps we can put a stop to it.
Ball’s in your court.
Go ahead. Send my name to “agencies.� Orchestrate your attacks. And lay claim to a presumption of privacy that you don’t have. See what happens
YEAH! I’ll run to court to get a restraining order, I will!
Poor Jeff. You know, the military is taking just about anybody these days. It’s worth considering, is all I’m saying.
Tell you what, Moronblogger. You ever get lucky enough to find a mate who’ll squeeze out a mini-mewling moronblogger — only to have some out of work professor begin posting all over the web that your little tyke likes to suck on the crankshaft, or that you molest him — I promise not to think you less manly if you take actions to spare your family, and particularly your offspring, years of having to find that kind of thing when he does a Google search for his name.
Truth is, you know nothing about the situation. But you sure do go in for the macho posturing that your buddies are always accusing me of.
Fuck yourself.
Talk about losers. No really. Losers in the digital and the real world. So here, in the digital, where they feel as though they command something, they rear on their hind legs and bleat out manifestos on “Online Integrity” all the while playing pre-teen stalker. What sad, pathetic golems you are trevino and goldberg.
There’s a lot about this kerfuffle that is stupid. A lot that is merely silly and sad. But what is really funny is the picture. I cannot totally fault tacitus for becoming outraged over it’s display — though his outrage is really projection as the damage was his own doing — and I think he knows this well. Not just in his public posting of the picture in question but the image it portrays. One wonders at the fact that he shared it with anyone, let alone the whole world (which, naturally, includes all us dirty fucking hippies.) I, for one, am empathetic with his desire to strike out in blind rage, but the force is not with him. He is the laughing stock.
I feel his pain. It feels good.
The blogosphere is heading down a dangerous path. Perhaps we can put a stop to it.
Cue ominous music.
Shorter Pasty: I’m going to slap you with my COCK! DO YOU HEAR ME?! MY COCK!!!
Seriously Jeff, you’re like a poor man’s version of a schoolyard bully.
who’s the ‘nothing about the situation’ here Geoffy? To you and ace both:
ever so generous of you to take time — from your encouragement, legitimation and assorted other ways of making up excuses for de- and employment of arms (and thus egging on those ((as usual, still cleanly reputed)) industries thereof) so that mutilation of deemed and esteemed orchards faulted for the rotten appel bitten and poisoning you shall feel YOUR infliction of guilt , YOUR wrath of deflected shame, in short the consequences of YOUR offense taking and making — to prosecute, scapegoat, demonize and ridicule a traitor amongst your own. Obviously light years smarter than 1000 of you dumb warcheering wightringer combined, and a target as easy as a hermit Muslim. Besides, gender and sexual prefs are right too so let’s do her right, right?
I pray to all affected and therefore interested multitudes of pagan deities and lesser decency defenders, especially the micro minions down to the very rocks bearing us up from several continents, that you will be struck down, .. no strike that, i am a pacifist( for peace)maker so, . …that a peculiar case of pac with play up amongst you. PAC. PAC is short for pangs of conscience spurting the carer, carrier and transmitter of that virus on to PlayAct Casualties, the very one they formerly so freely made without any trouble.
So, given this prayer is entirely reasonable in the light of unblinkeredeblinded justice i don’t really need to be at it as constantly and fervently as you might think. By the same token will i not be very suprised to hear wages of holowad grimeur rising sharply cause they are all flocking to DC getting payed better there by the warprofiteers who caved in to the sudden urge to form themselves into live depictions of the very sort of photograph that started this all — the ones that you transitionals between old and truly new media block, won’t face, censor, mock and deny the strenght to haunt and make a more honest person out of you. I am referring of course to photographs of palestinian, lebanese and iraqi casualties — and head to the white house lawn with a wheelbarrow full of rubble and a bucket of fake blood to lie in.
You slaughter and mock sir, i on the other handset, water and rock,
Seriously Jeff, you’re like a poor man’s version of a schoolyard bully.
He’s like the Hasbro doll of a schoolyard bully.
Now with Kung Fu Grip.
Personally, Tread, I don’t give a fuck what you have to say. This has nothing to do with you.
I extended the offer to HTML Mencken, not you. And he seems to think we’re approaching dangerous ground, as well.
Now, I can see how you’d like to poke me and hope that HTML doesn’t accept my offer to try to clear the air — after all, what would you do all day if you couldn’t rubberneck at other people’s crash sites like some feckless little cyber ghoul — but really, maybe you can try not making your own perversions so fucking transparent.
I offered a carrot.
maybe you can try not making your own perversions so fucking transparent
Would that you could take your own advice, cock slapper.l
“Nah. Take Scott Lemieux, Ph.D., for example. He’s got an internal Trevin-o-meter that goes off about once a month, at which point, like a geyser (if geysers could be desperate for tenure track), he lets off a bit how he dislikes me, etc., etc., and then moves back to currying favor with feminists, degrading academia, and whatever else he does. It’s harmless, and I mostly ignore it. Lemieux is a mild obsessive with character issues, but not, as you put it, “mock-jihadâ€? worthy. Certainly I’ll never have to wonder when he’s going to post my wedding photos, and that’s because he’s not lost all touch with sanity.”
Boy, someone should buy Ticky Tacky Sack-o-Shatner a Doctorate from someplace. His envy of the PhD shines bright and clear on this thread.
I’m with Steve: Ticky’s DD-214, and proof that he was ever anywhere near Milton Keynes, let alone Oxford, would be mighty interesting.
Of course, Ticky’s mostly interested in googling ‘Daniel Craig + tee shirt’ when not outing people, so we have to forgive him.
Jeff G. writes (as best he can:)
“All of which is moot — because now, all I’m concerned about is what you’ve done to my name.
You might spare a little concern for what you’ve done to it yourself, and can’t seem to stop doing …
Marc Page cites Deb Frisch as a reliable source.
There’s a good example of how rage affects cognitive function. That ‘link’ does not yield anything from the unfortunate woman, but takes the reader to legal documents — neither private nor less than ridiculous — that explain far too much about the psycho-pathology on display here.
Never mind. I’m sure you’re busy compiling your ‘enemies list’ ….
The two most perceptive comments I’ve ever read about Jeff are: Althouse’s observation that Goldstein has deliberately tried to promote a violent, creepy atmosphere in the blogosphere to advance himself; and Fontana Labs’s observation that Jeff has, for a self-styled blog bad boy, awfully thin skin.
Odd combination, that.
Yes, Hal. There are literally thousands of documented cases of me wandering the earth, beating people with my joint. I know so. I read it here.
Try some new material. Unless, that is, you still get patted on the back around here for bringing up the cockslap. In which case, knock yourself out. I wouldn’t want to be the one to deny you access to your self-esteem boost.
Still waiting for an answer, HTML.
Let me step in here for a second. Jeff, if you want to talk offline, I’ll be happy to help calm things down.
And, Mr. Goldstein, if you don’t want to be a public spectacle, don’t make a public spectacle of yourself. That is to say, Don’t put your business in the street.
The more time Goldstein and Trevino spend embarassing themselves here and conferring with their lawyers the less time they spend crafting new content for their hate blogs so I hope this never ends. Even mentioning someone else’s kids in a blog dispute is evil (and when did HTML ever do that?) but advocating policies that have and will lead to the deaths of thousands of kids in other parts of the world is quite a bit worse. If my dad did that and I found out about it years later I’d be horrified by his callousness and irresponsibility way more than how he was ridiculed by his critics.
No matter what Goldstein and Trevino think they are going to accomplish with this particular fight, there will always be people like HTML to hold ill informed war mongerers up to public ridicule. You can not control it but you are trying anyway. I recommend reciting the serenity prayer 10 times in a quiet space and reflecting on its meaning.
Yes. I’d forgotten how much stock you all put in Althouse’s musings.
And Marc, were you an attorney — or had you any idea what was happening with the litigation — you’d understand the purpose of those documents.
Please, though. Your being rage-free and completely disinterested, why don’t you tell us exactly how those documents “explain far too much about the psycho-pathology on display here.”
Feel free to use an Adlerian template.
Yes. I’d forgotten how much stock you all put in Althouse’s musings.
That’s partly why it stuck in my mind. Not only was it a good point, but it was made by Althouse, of all people.
You can IM me, Gavin.
wouldn’t want to be the one to deny you access to your self-esteem boost.
The only boost around here is watching you flail about madly.
Ahh, but the strawberries that’s… that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with… geometric logic… that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…
Go for the gold, dude. We’re rooting for ya.
Retardo’s piece on Jeff was good too, in that it collected in one place all of the most damning stuff Jeff has written. However, it didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know from reading Jeff about his cheesy demagoguery, intellectual pretensions, stereotyped ideas about masculinity, implicit mental equation of violence and humiliation with sex, etc.
We don’t need “an Adlerian template,” or a ‘bar card,’ Mr. Goldstein, to understand your increasingly odd behavior. (Although, I do wonder if you are familiar with Adler’s work since you don’t seem too interested in any thoughts other than your own.)
To anyone else here with at least a passing interest in the opinion of others, I would recommend you do not make personal contact, especially by telephone. Mr. Goldstein knows exactly how he intends to use it.
Oh Jesus. And you write of intellectual pretension? This sounds like the beginning of a really bad master’s thesis.
That’s right. I’m not an actual human. I’m so evil beast that can’t be trusted and in whose shadow flowers wilt and children turn to stone.
How I “intend to use” telephone contact is to talk on the telephone. Not everything is a grand wingnut conspiracy.
It’s funny — I can invite columnists from the Denver Post over for dinner, or sit around having drinks with Jeralyn Merritt, and there is never any suggestion that I’m the crazed loon you people make me out to be.
But in the fever swamps of this site, you feel like you can know people from a handful of comments, etc.
It’s fascinating to watch.
Mt. Goldstein:
Of course you are “an actual human.” It’s a pity you can’t bring yourself to behave like a decent example of the species.
Just as your running buddy, Mr. “Tacitus,” can find enormous loopholes in a ‘Statement of Principles’ to excuse his bad behavior, I am sure you would have no qualms about ‘twisting’ this ‘personal contact’ you beg for again and again. (I’m betting you’ve already looked into your state’s laws on recording telephone calls … haven’t you ?)
Actually, Jeff, occasionally you can be funny and engaging. I don’t claim to know why you are so screwed up. I was just reciting what I think are some salient characteristics of your Internet persona (which I assume is pretty close to your real-life persona).
But in the fever swamps of this site, you feel like you can know people from a handful of comments, etc. It’s fascinating to watch.
You give these hysterical mouth-breathers too much credit, Jeff.
I don’t think it’s terribly fascinating to see, in print, the unending, delusional melodrama that is otherwise silently performed in the minds of the baristas who prepare my double espressos.
[From the Outhouse:]
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/07/nasty-blogging.html
Maybe some of you don’t remember how nastily Jeff Goldstein treated me. I agree Frisch has a big problem. She’s the weakling who entered a drinking match with a man who can drink you under the table. She lost control. She paid the price—a big one. Goldstein’s you-talked-about-my-child move is a strong one, but it’s a move nonetheless, made by a person who likes to play the game… hard. He’s not a victim. He’s one of the people who has advanced himself in the blogosphere by making it hostile and ugly. Like all of us, he is capable of being hurt by a genuine crazy. But why not just delete the trolls? Why rile them?Some of them really aren’t playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It’s an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.
[And then there’s this:]
http://www.hogonice.com/2007/02/more_on_the_goldstein_fracas.html
I truly appreciate the (mostly) kind words and support you and commenters have shown me, Steve. But the truth is, Pajamas Media and I are still in negotiations. So we’ll see how it goes.
My understanding is that they’re very interested in keeping me on. The devil is in the details.
Best,
Jeff
Jeff G | Homepage | 02.22.07 – 10:35 pm | #
You ever get lucky enough to find a mate who’ll squeeze out a mini-mewling moronblogger — only to have some out of work professor begin posting all over the web that your little tyke likes to suck on the crankshaft, or that you molest him — I promise not to think you less manly if you take actions to spare your family, and particularly your offspring, years of having to find that kind of thing when he does a Google search for his name.
And there we have it. Restraining orders because of internet flames.
Haha. This is too easy.
Now, I can see how you’d like to poke me and hope that HTML doesn’t accept my offer to try to clear the air
I. Just. Can’t. Stop. Laughing.
All of your cock-slapping and innuendos won’t do you any good. I’ve already got a boyfriend. Love ya. *smooch*
I like the idea of a Pajamas Aid for bloggers like Jeff who are being rejected from that great media empire.
My Yahoo IM is proteinwisdom. We can chat there.
Oh, shit! Offers of instant messaging is how the whole cockslapping thing got started in the first place, isn’t it?
Actually, I’m just kidding. I agree with someone above – Jeff can sometimes be genuinely funny, which is very rare on the right. It’s kinda sad that nothing else he ever writes is going to offset the sheer What the everloving FUCK? factor that one gets from reading things like the cockslap threat, or even more bizarre, the whole comparing “Tristero commenting at my blog” to “Tristero showing up uninvited at my house, sticking his finger in my dog’s ass before covering his dick in peanut butter and trying to get my poor dog to slurp it off”. I mean, really, Jeff, that’s just so out there, I really don’t understand what kind of mind thinks like that.
Eh. Anyway, I genuinely hope something gets worked out between Jeff and HTML. (And just for the record, I think making fun of someone for being a stay-at-home-dad and on medication is pointless and over the line as well.)
As for the Pompous Redbearded Fuckwit, I see others have asked what I was wondering: Just out of curiosity, has JT offered an explanation for why he used hilzoy’s real name in this thread, even after hilzoy asked him not to?
I’m against outing except for purposes of mutually assured destruction, and probably not even then–“so-and-so did it first” isn’t an excuse I’m comfortable with.
Plus, honestly, I fail to see what he’s got to do with any of this. Unless his real name is Josh Treviño, in which case there isn’t much I can do besides admire his productivity. Busy guy!
OT/confidential to Jeff G.: I’m sorry PJM made the decision they did. I think it was a stupid one, like most of their decisions. I also think you have the potential to do much, much better without them, and I hope you do. I’m sorry I never made the connection between your hiatus and the crazy lady; until Marc Page linked the legal stuff upthread, I honestly had no idea that was still an issue. Ignorance is a lousy excuse, though, so I apologize for cracking wise about your guest-bloggers ruining your traffic. There was obviously more going on than that. Hope your weekend looks up, and again, I’m sorry.
Word, Fury.
Any truth to the rumor that Bill Clinton has been brought in to negotiate the historic Protein Wisdom-Sadly, No! peace accord?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29317
I agree that it is wrong to post someone’s real name on a public web site after they have asked you not to.
But it’s ironic.
Wow! Pasty is in need of a klonopin refill it seems. Those anxiety attacks must be nerve-racking. Maybe you should cockslap yourself around a little before you go psychotic.
It’d be a shame if this thread were to peter out (so to speak) without Jeff wielding his mighty cock. Wield it, Jeff. You know you want to.
Just out of curiosity, has JT offered an explanation for why he used hilzoy’s real name in this thread, even after hilzoy asked him not to?
Hilzoy also criticized Josh’s Boer War post. Is there any other reason needed?
“And just for the record, I think making fun of someone for being a stay-at-home-dad and on medication is pointless and over the line as well.”
I’m not going to argue with the “pointless” part, but is “how dare you use my public statements against me!” the gist of the rest of it?
ilyka,
Just typin outloud.
Plus, honestly, I fail to see what he’s got to do with any of this…
“Pseudonymous blogger; no one is safe!”
If someone printed that on some ribbon and tied it to a whaling ship would an observer be fair in shouting: “Town-Ho! A streaming comes across the brine…”?
For me, personally, it’s that these are below-the-belt things to latch onto. Criticizing someone for being on medication implies there’s something wrong with being on medication; criticizing him for being a stay-at-home parent implies there something wrong with being a stay-at-home parent. It’s basically the same reason I don’t like people making racist remarks about Michelle Malkin, or she’s-an-ugly-tranny remarks about Ann Coulter.
And just as I’d say about those two, I’d say about Jeff: It ain’t like there’s a dearth of other material to pick on. If someone has to stigmatize people with mental illness or full-time parents in order to criticize Jeff, someone’s really not trying very hard.
ilyka said it so I didn’t have to. Thanks, ilyka!
“someone’s really not trying very hard”
No doubt, no doubt. But when you can get so fat on the low-hanging fruit, eh?
There is nothing wrong with being on medication – indeed it is usually better than the alternative – and there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home parent. But the fact that a pissy, arrogant war cheerleader with a cock fetish is, in fact, a vaguely employed ex-grad student with delusions of metafictional grandeur is one of those (given the amount of blood spilled, pretty fucking bleak) hilarities, endlessly served up by the internets, to which I am inextricably drawn.
On that same list: the fact that the proudest defender of white America’s right – nay duty – to distrust and mistreat foreigners of all not-so-white hues is, in fact, a child of non-white immigrants. Also on the list: that the premier shit-flinging sex symbol of the homophobia caucus represents such an admirably ambiguous standard of feminine beauty.
Also on the list: Oh, man, where to start.
Now I’ve got Papaya farts.
There is nothing wrong with being on medication – indeed it is usually better than the alternative – and there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home parent. But the fact that a pissy, arrogant war cheerleader with a cock fetish is, in fact, a vaguely employed ex-grad student with delusions of metafictional grandeur is one of those (given the amount of blood spilled, pretty fucking bleak) hilarities, endlessly served up by the internets
Sifu Tweety pretty much nailed it there. It is not attractive to make fun of Jeff for being a stay-at-home dad and for taking anti-anxiety medication. But I understand why people do it, given his endless posturing on his blog as a Steely-Eyed Warrior against Islam and the Existential Threat it poses to Our Civilization.
Ticky Tack’s the subject of this Clash song, isn’t he?
The Leader (from Sandanista)
Atom secrets, secret leaflet
Have the boys found the leak yet?
The molehill sets the wheel in motion
His downfall picks up locomotion
The people must have something good to read on a Sunday
The leader’s wife takes a government car
In the dark to meet her minister
But the leader never leaves his door ajar
As he swings his whip from the Boer War war
He wore a leather mask for his dinner guests
Totally nude and with deep respect
Proposed a toast to the votes he gets
The feeling of power and the thought of sex!
Now the girl let the fat man touch her
Vodka fumes and the feel of a vulture
The driver waited in the embassy car
The fat man’s trap was set for capture
So the girl let the thin man touch her
Mixing questions, drunken laughter
The ministry car was waiting there
A minister knows his own affair
The people must have something good to read on a Sunday
Since I am self (un)employed, I use my real name on posts but I can see why others might have to use a pseudonym to not have minor or major job and career dysfunction and retribution. So threatening to out someone who clearly does not want to be outed is pretty scuzzy and nasty and childish.
The day HTML posted the photo of Tacitus w/light saber was one of the first times I visited Sadly, No! There was absolutely no contextual clue in the photo that it was taken at a wedding. The photo was very tightly cropped. Ergo, Tacitus’ claim of having a personal wedding violated here at SN is a canard and an obviously false and melodramatic ploy for sympathy.
And it is strange that someone MANLY enough to blithely discuss the merits of slaughtering, torturing and imprisoning innocent human beings is putting themselves out as a portrait of wounded innocence due to a 100-120 pixel photo. Oh the hurt, the injustice, the indecency, the agony, the unfairness of it all. It’s the type of secret scarring only Hitler could understand.
I would like to personally apologize to everyone on the internets for having taken part (even though it was WAY upthread and THREE DAYS ago) in this train wreck. I had no idea it was still going on.
It’s really too bad, as I think the original post brought out some important points which were well worth discussing. Too bad so few of us discussed them.
You know, I don’t think any of us is going to feel really happy about having participated in this disaster.
Except the sociopaths. You know who you are.
I doubt that anyone is “criticizing him” for any of that; we/they are using it to mock and bait him. It’s so hard to resist. Think about it: How big an asshole does one have to be to make a bunch of flaming liberals consider you an irredeemable — almost subhuman — creep? It’s obvious — as big an asshole as Jeff Goldstein.
I can’t really agree, Gentlewoman. This whole episode illuminates some important dynamics of political discussion on blogs. You think we should have discussed beer or Atlas Pam photoshops?
So, actually, the pro-Boers were patriotic; the Jingos were not. Likewise the anti-war side is the patriotic one in this conflict, and for the same reasons; the 82nd Chairborne is not. Being ‘pro-Boer’ then or ‘anti-war’ now never was and is not treason because such stances confirm a fidelity to the principles of the dissenters’ country. Conversely, the pro-war side in both conflicts urged a course of depravity (concentration camps, torture, genocide) that actively subverts the country’s principles, sells its soul, has the effect of making it as bad or worse than the ‘enemy’. Pro-war is being about conquering another country; anti-war is about preserving our own.
***
The visitors sure don’t want to talk about HTML Mencken’s post.
K, if one of the students turns into a werewolf, you can’t really fault the class for disregarding the lesson plan.
Bad analogy. The students would flee from a werewolf.
Tried too hard not to allude to some kind of vehicular accident, is what I was did there.
And when I start slurring my speech I stop talking.
dear gentlewoman, i must respectfully disagree. vituperative political discussion is normal.
as regards the boer war, the british victory was the impetus for boer subversion/sabotage during ww2. such nice guyz, them boers.
Klod-dopin’ boy would’ve revealed HTML Mencken in any case.
Lee Trevino knows how to handle a driver, Josh Trevino only knows how to handle his putts.
I agree with marc page, (although its probably too late) do NOT talk on your own phone with the psycho. he may say he won’t use it, he may even believe he won’t use it, but he will end up using it.
dear gentlewoman, i must respectfully disagree. vituperative political discussion is normal.
But, aunt bea, this was not political discussion. That was my point. The political got derailed by the vituperative.
Most probably because, as K. Ron said: The visitors sure don’t want to talk about HTML Mencken’s post.
I can’t really agree, Gentlewoman. This whole episode illuminates some important dynamics of political discussion on blogs. You think we should have discussed beer or Atlas Pam photoshops?
No, Linus. I think we should have discussed HTML’s post, which he obviously researched seriously, and in which he made some interesting comparisons. But that didn’t really happen, did it?
I still smell poo…
[…] We hope that makes amends. Now, if we are fortunate, we might join concentration camps-advocate Tacitus and torture-enthusiast Eugene Volokh, our moral superiors who would never ever reduce themselves to […]
[…] his critics used statements he’d posted on his own web site against him. Then it was Tacitus bitching that those minxes at Sadly, No! had “stolen” the wedding photos he posted, for public […]
[…] Trevino: stalker, hypocrite, sociopath = Dr. […]
[…] A rationalization that sounds contemporary, eh? Fast-forward a hundred or so years and here’s Tic-Tac Trevino whining that filthy traitors prevent worthy United Statesmen from taking the genocidal measures […]
[…] Boerish (HTML Mencken, “Sadly, No!”) — the wonderfully pseudonymed ‘Mencken’ collects statements by pro-war enthusiasts Max Boot, Josh Trevino, Glenn Reynolds and others seeking inspiration for American strategy in Iraq in the Boer War — paraphrasing, “sure, there were concentration camps and scorched earth, but the Brits won” — and sets them against an assessment of that debacle by mid 20th century historian AJP Taylor. Eerie similarities surface between politics here and now and politics then and there. Mencken: The ground conditions SNAFU and the politician schemers realized they hadn’t thought things through, hadn’t considered contingencies. Check. Policies and practices which scandalized world opinion. Check. Depraved policies and practices that make a mockery of one’s country’s ideals. Check and mate. […]
You are so interesting! I don’t suppose I’ve read a single thing like that before.
So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this topic.
Really.. thank you for starting this up. This
website is something that’s needed on the web, someone with some originality!
[…] “Desiccated racist” phrase stolen from a comment by Paul. More on the Boer War by HTML Mencken (“Sadly, No”) and plover (“3 […]
Hi all, just simply changed to tuned in to your website by means of The search engines, determined that must be genuinely insightful. Now i am gonna look for brussels. I will be happy in case you continue on this particular in the future. Many men and women will likely be taken advantage of a person’s producing. Best wishes!
hey there! , I love your own crafting quite a great deal of! reveal most of us keep in contact more details on a person’s document in Yahoo? I actually need a consultant within this method to clear up my own trouble. Probably that is definitely you! Having a look ahead of time to determine you actually.
Wonderful defeat! I’m going to novice as you modify your web site, how to sign up to for your site web-site? A profile reduced the problem some sort of applicable deal. My partner and i ended up a small amount acquainted on this your send out furnished gleaming translucent principle
I have read so many articles concerning the blogger lovers
however this paragraph is actually a nice
paragraph, keep it up.
I am going to at once get hold of a person’s feed as I can not to find your own e-mail monthly subscription web page link or ezine services. Have you got just about any? Please enable everyone recognise so that I could truthfully signed up. Thank you.
Heya i am for your principal time in this article. I came across this specific plank and that i to uncover This process practical & the idea taught me to be away lots. I hope to provide one important thing back plus help other people like you helped me to.
Hey, I uncovered your website by means of The search engines when researching an associated subject, your website came upwards, it appears to be being great. I’ve truly added onto favorites|added to the bookmarks.
You undoubtedly make it appear to be really easy with all your presentation however i to find this particular topic for being genuinely the one thing that I feel I would under no circumstances comprehend. That form of feels far too sophisticated and extremely huge for me personally. We’re anticipating with your future publish, Let me attempt to master it!
Great blog right here! Additionally your website rather a lot up fast!
What web host are you the use of? Can I am getting your associate
link for your host? I desire my site loaded up as quickly as yours lol
Pretty great post. I simply stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to
mention that I’ve really loved surfing around your weblog posts. In any case I will be subscribing for your feed and I am hoping you write again soon!
I do think this is among the list of most critical data for me. Using this program . joyful reading ones report. However need to declaration about number of popular points, The site fashion is best, a articles or blog posts is wonderful : Deborah. Great process, all the best
What a material of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge
concerning unexpected feelings.
Howdy, You have done a superb work. I most certainly will certainly bing it plus our watch highly recommend to my buddies. Now i am positive they’re going to be took advantage of this site.
Excellent post but I was wondering if you could write
a litte more on this subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Thank you!
Hello! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you
using for this website? I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had issues
with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform. I would be awesome if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.