The Tears of Things

Oh, for Pete's sake. You wrote:

"I do believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that these are paid commissioners."

You were wrong and, as invited, she corrected you. That was a favor, not rudeness.

Perhaps you could refrain from pouring your vat of nastiness over so very many people. Is it important to savage total strangers? Why make things up about other people in the process of saying what you want to say? How is that helpful?

Ms. Peterson:

You have a lot of damned gall to come around here and accuse us of rudeness. The people you work with and for --Stephen Lemons, Amy Silverman, Lilia Menconi-- need to hear certain words that have just come to me out of the blue:

Perhaps you could refrain from pouring your vat of nastiness over so very many people. Is it important to savage total strangers? Why make things up about other people in the process of saying what you want to say? How is that helpful?

That above is pretty much a description of New Times general editorial policy. Where were you when Stephen Lemons savaged Catherine and encouraged others to do likewise? Keeping your mouth shut. You're a goddamned coward and a hypocrite. You're not on a high horse, you're in a whorehouse.

As to Ms. Norman, do yourself a favor and run this scenario through your head:

Ms. Norman becomes aware of the two Echelman postings, and logs on. Lo and behold, she finds your correction of my mistake. And this is what she doesn't say:

"I'd like to confirm what Ms. Peterson has written above. Now, as to your points about the birds, the vandalism, the process, and so on, here is what I have to say. . . "

But nothing like that happened. Instead, she just barged in and spent her whole message on herself and the wonderfulness of volunteering. Her her her. Nothing about the birds or the vandalism or the thing itself; just presumptuous peremptory narcissistic rudeness. So I wrote what I wrote.

You don't come around here with any kind of attitude, Ms. Peterson, when you've got no backbone of your own.

I have the luxury (if anyone would call it that) of communicating with New Times staff privately and in person. (Not necessarily because I write for the Night & Day calendar, but because I do other work there.)

I can't expect you to know anything I've said or done or what I believe if no one has told you. (I'm not on a high horse, though -- you're absolutely right -- and I do have a lot of damned gall. Thanks!)

There are billions of maligned women in the world and only 24 hours in a day. I believe strongly in a lot of things that I don't make public atttibuted noise about, not just Catherine's privacy and dignity. Which are doing fine without me, and I'm glad they are.

Yes, it's attributed, with an r. Yes, I'm a proofreader.

You also have the freeloading luxury, and plenty of those 24 hours in a day, to come around here and hassle us for no good reason. You're about half an electron from getting your IP banned as well, because we're sick of your vamping on and on, using up our bandwidth. We suggest you get your own blog.

But thanks for confirming that you're a sycophantic coward. I don't believe for one second that you have read Stephen Lemons the riot act for one goddamned word he has written. And it wouldn't matter anyway because while we've been taking hits for almost five years from some of the meanest people in town, because we speak out in public, you're just sailing along, singing a song, and then droning on about your so-called private conversations with people we would cross sewers to avoid. Why should we believe a word you say? We're on the record, naming names all along, and we've suffered like nobody would believe for going on the record.

You're a coward, I say for the third time. And it is a lie to say that you believe strongly in Catherine's dignity and privacy; if you did, you would have stepped forward publicly long ago to say so.

But you didn't and you haven't and, I predict, you won't. You're too happy to take the money to make sure that when some shitbird down there writes, "Kick the nun in the box," it's spelled correctly.

I realize I can't convince you that I'm sincere, or that my relative politeness to you means anything at all about me, or that my comments here are not "for no good reason." They're about the things you write in your blog, though, and when you write about someone -- as you did about Andrea Norman -- and then take her to task for responding, I am flabbergasted, given what you claim to be about, and it's hard to keep that to myself. It's hardly enough on which to base my own blog.

And now it's time for Julie Peterson to find another weblog to bother, since we've just banned her IP. She can express things that are hard to keep to herself elsewhere, and what she leaves here for the record is her cowardice and her sycophancy.

Ms. Peterson, if you find your way to these words, we regret to inform you that you have become intolerably wearisome, repetitive, insulting, and boring. We're done suffering through your pedantry.