My mom was having a hard time getting into my website over the weekend for some reason, so she googled my site to try to access it that way. If you've been following my site for a few years, you may remember the day I got Lefty-lanched, when hundreds of people came to my website to tell me how dumb I am. My mom ended up back in the middle of that mess via google, and what she found really surprised me when she told me today.
Someone didn't like a blog post I wrote. They thought it was dumb and mathematically unsound. So he wrote a post about what an idiot I am. I personally think that's in very poor taste, but whatever, it was his choice for his hate-filled website. But his comments section went too far. Apparently some commenter published my name, address, and phone number, and the contact info for my parents as well. Thankfully, other commenters thought that was a low blow and the owner of the site took the info down. But, man: I just realized that two years ago I was personally attacked for something I said online. People who disagreed with me seriously meant to hurt me. And I didn't even know it until today.
It's funny because at that time, I got some really hateful comments. This site had nasty comments too -- including the ones that said that my husband left his wedding ring home from Iraq so he could get laid -- but this other blog owner also got a handful of comments defending me. It was nice to read this comment:
I saw all of this via cruel.com, and really don't get why everyone piled on. It didn't seem to me that she was doing a stat analysis so much as making a (not very carefully worded) point about reporting bias highlighting certain aspects of a poll already suffering from several questions that presented insufficient response choices to options that begged other questions.
I was not under the impression that she literally thought that only 615 people in the entire United States responded in a certain way to question quoted above. In fact, it was obvious to me that she wasn't. To think that's what she meant, you'd have to assume an almost non-functional level of stupidity. I guess the assumption of simple-mindedness was in place because of the general trend for lefties to view righties as intellectually inferior, for the simple thought crime of not being lefties.
Coming from cruel.com, I'm used to good quality links of people making asses of themselves. I'm still waiting for the punchline on this one, and I can't tell if the intended stupidity was supposed to be the original blog entry on tryingtogrok or all of this odd, over-the-top follow up.
Now that's some common ground I can enjoy! (emphasis mine)
I've been thinking a lot about comments these days. Lots of the big right-leaning sites don't even have comments sections, and I can completely understand why. Charles Johnson has to answer for everything that's written on his blog, when he himself only posts links and pithy snippets. But he's a "racist" and a "fascist" because of his comments section. I've often wondered how Markos Zuniga lets people post the crazy things they say under the umbrella of his site. No one takes note of the diarist; they just attribute the whole thing to Zuniga.
So what's our relationship to our comments? The other day I somehow managed to get a comment from a White Power site. I don't know how they found me or what they thought they read in my words, but there they were. Does it make me a white supremacist because someone thought he had identified me as one? Am I a religious fundamentalist just because Will Sommerset called me one?
A lot of times I've just considered shutting my comments section down. But I guess I've grown accustomed to the noise.
Posted by Sarah at April 17, 2006 03:53 PM | TrackBackThe haters think but calling people names it dulls their pain. Their pain of self hate and drepression brought on by their believe in a negative ideology.
I had a slight taste of that myself this week.
http://jameshudnall.com/blog.php?/weblog/secular_religious_zealots_in_action/
Posted by: James Hudnall at April 18, 2006 12:04 AMWhat vakue would the blog have to you without a comments section? How would you know anyone was listening?
Needless to say, though, I take issue with the person you quote. As if "righties" treat "lefties" as THEIR intellectual equals or superiors. Yeah, I'm always warmed by the respect with which Ann Coulter treats people who disagree with her.
Posted by: Pericles at April 18, 2006 12:07 AMArgh. Typos. I should have proofread that.
"The haters think by calling people names it'll dull their pain. Their pain of self hate and drepression brought on by their belief in a negative ideology."
Leftism is largely based on angry emotions and that comes largely from depression. The left wing elites feed that negative reinforcement. It has become a cult of self hate kind of like the Palestianian jihadists are trapped in a death cult.
Posted by: James Hudnall at April 18, 2006 12:12 AM"What vakue would the blog have to you without a comments section? How would you know anyone was listening?"
There's always e-mail. Works for me. Never had a comments section since I started in 2002.
Posted by: Amritas at April 18, 2006 01:06 AMJames---Thanks for proving my point about the level of intellectual respect that the left gets from the right. :)
Posted by: Pericles at April 18, 2006 01:27 AMI don't believe I've ever gone onto someone else's site and made a confrontational comment. If I think the person is full of baloney, I'll just move on and likely not ever return.
Life is too short to be going onto people's sites to pick a fight.
Posted by: Jim - PRS at April 18, 2006 03:13 AMI only wish I had the courage to write about some of the stuff you've written about. I know that my skin isn't thick enough to handle the kinds of comments you receive...I would have shut down the section long ago. Thanks for being gutsy and putting it out there!
Posted by: Nicole at April 19, 2006 01:02 AM