Here’s a great link. Everything that’s wrong with D*rr*n M*d*g*n

For those who don’t want to bother hitting it and waiting for it to load, it’s the redoubtable Aaron Hawkins, finally musing, a year later, as to why he was such a fine and pleasant host to me during my brief tenure as a commenter on his excellent weblog.

Mind you, I found it on a Google search; Aaron doesn’t want to talk to ME about why he treated me with such gentle kindness, nor did he have any interest in dialoguing about it at the time.

Here’s some quotes from lovely, pleasant Aaron:

Aaron seems to have no interest in open, honest dialogues with anyone who might substantially disagree with him, but I knew that already. But hey, by all means, let’s see what else he has to say about me behind my back:

Yes. It just sucks when someone shows up, doesn’t really do anything wrong except be much smarter than you, and you can’t, no matter what, admit that that’s the reason you dislike him and don’t want him hanging around. Personally, I feel for Aaron.

I’m sorry, that was a bit bitter. Let me simply go back and try to say more simply: if a year later, after you’ve ridiculed and abused someone who honestly enjoyed your blog and honestly wanted to hang out there, you post stuff about him after taking measures to make sure he never reads or responds to it in any way, and what you front load is ‘my main problem with him was that he wasn’t a troll’, you’ve got some serious issues.

Being cleverly argumentative, I could intuit from this that all Aaron’s regular posters, whom he has no problems with at all, are trolls… but I know, I know. That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is, he would have felt justified tossing me off his blog if I’d been a troll, but since I wasn’t, he had a problem simply suppressing me. Which I suppose argues well for Aaron, and I think in many ways Aaron is a decent human being. But… well… let’s continue to follow the torturous rationalization chain of Aaron Hawkins in re: an annoying fat white man who showed up on his blog and demonstrated greater wit and intelligence than he himself seems to possess:

Let’s break that down. Aaron’s weblog is public and he has comment threads that are open to the public on it. He invites public comment, in general, without restraint, except the universally implied restraint of civility, a rule Aaron himself violates more often than I ever did. He himself has admitted I was not a troll, apparently through gritted teeth because it bugs him so much that I wasn’t. His fairly subtle indication here is that his weblog was invitation only and I was an unwanted party crasher, but irrefutably, that’s nonsense so specious it borders on personal abuse.

Throw out the party crasher innuendo and what we’re left with is that I was ‘utterly lacking in social skills’, I ‘didn’t know anyone’ and I ‘proceeded to dominate the conversation’.

Now, first, I have often admitted on this weblog that while I do have social skills, I will on (sometimes frequent) occasion deliberately deviate from established social norms in my behavior when doing otherwise would cost me self esteem points. Nonetheless, I did not do that on Aaron’s blog. He’s saying I was rude, and I wasn’t. I simply am a smart guy, I’m a talented writer (it’s one of the few things I’m very very good at) and I’m a fast typist with virtually no life. All that meant that, because I absolutely loved Aaron’s blog and thought he and his regular posters were all very cool, I posted a lot of comments very quickly (in response to a vast plethora of interesting material posted by Aaron and his other frequent commenters) and some of my comments were lengthy.

Now, other regular posters on Aaron’s blog also posted comments frequently and many of them were lengthy as well, and they didn’t get lynched. Aaron became annoyed with me because (a) I was taking up a great deal of space in his comments section and I wasn’t female and (b) I was taking up a great deal of space in his comments section and I was being funnier and wittier than he was. Whether or not Aaron was becoming annoyed with me because I was Caucasian and he has a tendency to talk racist shit every once in a while because, you know, it’s not racist when a black guy does it about white people, I don’t know. (As a white guy, I’m not entitled to pass judgement on what seems to me to be anti-Caucasian racism from minorities, a lesson I’ve learned the hard way.)

I very nearly just went back and took that last long sentence out, but fuck it. Aaron does talk racist shit occasionally, which he seems to think is okay because he’s a black guy saying it about white folks and white ‘culture’, such as it is, in general. And for all I know, he would have cut me considerably more slack if I’d been black… and I am absolutely certain I’d still be happily posting on UppityNegro.com were I a stacked white chick with exactly my same personality, writing style, and overly prolific posting tendencies, but that’s an entirely different bias from racism, and one I myself am profoundly sympathetic to. If I attracted the same level of female attention with this blog as Aaron does with his, I might well put up with the level of brattish behavior from said females as Aaron does. I hope I’m not that whipped, but you never know, I might be. (Although given the way I’ve responded to some of my few female posters when they’ve seemed out of line, it seems I’m really not.)

As to Aaron’s objection to the fact that I didn’t know anybody, well, nobody knows anybody when they hit a new, popular blog. I wasn’t personally abusive to anyone. And then he gets to what his (and everyone else’s) real problem with me was: I ‘dominated the conversation’. And, yes, apparently, this was how my frequent posting was perceived. Or, at least, what I have gathered, from this post and long previous to this from Hanne Bok, was that people took exception to me because I posted quite frequently and they found that annoying.

What I say to that is, if you have a problem with someone who posts a lot to your blog, or a blog where you yourself post a lot, you are an insecure child and you should stay home and play with your dollies and not go out and interact with grown ups.

Me, I wish to God I had someone like me posting as much to my blog as I used to post to other people’s. But I suppose that’s because I lack social skills and I like to dominate the conversation. Oh my yes.

Beyond that, this whole passage is rather self congratulatory. Aaron apparently feels he is providing an enormous service to the world at large, by creating the only site in the history of the Internet where one can talk about politics without getting ‘too wonky’ (whatever that means) and geek stuff without getting ‘too geeky’. I think it’s very nice that Aaron does that for all of us… well… all of YOU. I think he should get a Nobel Prize. Don’t you?

However, Aaron is still talking so let’s tune in once again:

Aaron’s being blunt as he snivels to his coterie of sycophants about me behind my back, so let me be equally blunt: people like Aaron Hawkins, and most of his toadies, make me extremely happy that by their standards, I have no social skills.

This is perfectly fair. Yes, he should have. He had every right to. You know why (despite what he’s about to say below) he never actually did?

Because he’s weak, and he’s petty, and he’s obsessed with his self image and desperate to keep anyone else from figuring out any of those things. He only wants certain types of commenters on his blog, and that’s fine. But he doesn’t want to have to publicly cop to the notion that if you show up and you don’t give Aaron a handjob in every comment, and worse, if you actually come off as smarter and funnier than Aaron himself in every comment, he will find you ‘alternately annoying or boring’ and wish fervently that you would ‘shut the hell up’.

Now, again, I hear that. I suspect we all do. I would vastly prefer it if everyone who posted comments to my blog gave me a handjob in every single comment… but you know what? In all truthfulness, that’s not accurate at all. I don’t need to have my ass kissed and honestly, I don’t want to have my ass kissed. I am trying to make friends, or at least engage in intelligent conversations, yes. I am desperately lonely, and I certainly prefer positive attention to negative, oh MY yes. And I admit to all that (frequently). Nonetheless, I have never and will never find someone ‘alternately annoying or boring’ because they don’t flatter me enough, or because they post comments in which they come off as smarter or funnier than I am.

I have many regular commenters who are clearly smarter than I am… in fact, most of my friends have always been smarter than I am, all my life. I enjoy getting comments from these people; I do not like the feeling I get, when I’m getting no feedback at all, that I’m simply talking to myself. And I would not want to surround myself with a posse of asskissers like Aaron has. But, well, later on one of his regular commenters will go into detail on what she perceives as the major difference between Aaron and I, so let’s leave that and move on:

Ah, yes. The troublesome thing about freedom of speech is when people who don’t say what we want to hear insist on doing so anyway, often where we can actually hear them doing it. Mind you, if Aaron doesn’t want to read my old comments, that’s fine; I’ve had comments on this blog I don’t much want to reread, either. (Hell, I’ve had entries on this blog I don’t much care to reread… the problem with being prolific is that you produce more bad stuff than good stuff.)

If Aaron doesn’t want to continue to pay to maintain them on the Web, well, that’s even more fine, that’s absolutely his right. And he has a right to whine about how he doesn’t want to do either of those things, but he doesn’t want to delete them either… just as I have a right to note that this is, pretty much, just pointless sniveling on Aaron’s part. I’m sure he has a chat threads control box, and I’m sure, with a little bit of time and trouble, he could go in and x out all my comments. If he doesn’t want to be bothered, well… I guess the next best thing is to bitch about it like a six year old.

What’s interesting here is that Aaron does not seem to understand that he does not, in any way, have any ability to confer or withhold other people’s freedom of expression. The implication here is that some people have ‘full rights’ to speak to him and others do not. I believe this speaks volumes for Aaron’s outlook on the world and, well, I guess I’ll just leave it at that… no. I won’t.

If you send a private comment to a close friend via email or snailmail or you say such on the phone or in a private conversation, even if it’s in a public place, someone else jumping into the middle of that dialogue is, flatly, rude. I suspect this is what Aaron is saying… there are certain people who post regularly on his blog that know him well and that he feels some intimacy and trust towards, and therefore, he feels they have a ‘right’ to say certain things to him with an impunity he will not extend to strangers.

This would be fine if these conversations were taking place privately. And Aaron, again, seems to think they are… this goes back to his previous implication that I was a party crasher. But in fact, Aaron knows this stuff isn’t taking place privately. He could create a private blog page. He could send emails only to a select group of trusted friends, instead of posting to a public weblog. He doesn’t. He wants the opportunity to increase his circle of positive attention providers, and like most emotionally immature people, he does not want to deal with any of the less desirable repercussions of that… like, when you walk into a public place, get yourself a soapbox, and start haranguing the crowd, you may attract hecklers… or, worse, in Aaron’s book, you may attract people who enjoy your work and want to engage you about it, whom you find unacceptable and undesirable, for various reasons that do not reflect well on you.

Aaron needs to understand, however, that his weblog is public, and if he’s going to talk to people on his weblog, he is implicitly inviting contributions from other voices. If he doesn’t like those other voices, fine… but he should take responsibility for shutting them down, instead of blaming it all on his other participants, and then whining about it a year later, while specifically taking measures to see to it that the person he is whining about doesn’t ever get to respond.

Actually, Aaron doesn’t ‘need’ to understand that. And I suppose he’s just not going to. Aaron is apparently one of those people to whom reality is entirely subjective; if he comes across something that doesn’t fit into his preconceived little perceptual array, he just finds a way to get rid of it without having to ever admit that he’s that kind of guy.

Once again, Aaron Hawkins, like nearly everyone else I’ve met on the Internet who has taken a dislike to me, does me a service. If someone like this actually wanted to be my buddy, I would know for a fact I was doing something horribly, horribly wrong.

But wait… Aaron isn’t quite finished yet listing all the people who have full rights to freedom of speech in his little reality tunnel. Let’s, by all means, pay him the attention he is due as he finishes up:

But wait! It gets better! Now here’s someone else, presumably with Full Rights Of Speech On Aaron’s Blog, talking about everything that’s wrong with me and right about good ol’ Aaron:

I haven’t gone in to fisk this one, line by line, because I’m troubled by it. As with Aaron’s post, it seems that there is some truth in there, but… ::shrug:: I don’t know. It seems to me that Garrity, in much of what she says, is talking more about Aaron, and herself, than me. It also seems to me that when she says “and DM rambled too much and too clumsily because he needed to be the center of the action, so he could feel loved. This behavior ruins the conversation. Buh-bye”, she betrays a clique-centered cruelty that I find… well… horribly sad. What I get from that is that in the world of Garrity and Aaron and their emotional cohorts, no one is ever allowed to be the center of attention except them. And anyone who comes in and tries to contribute in any meaningful way to their self absorbed little dialectic without their specific permission and approval is going to get tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail out of town pretty quickly… and they think that’s okay.

Just the same way the established cliques at all the various schools I was ever the ‘new kid’ at while growing up (we moved a lot) seemed to think it was okay to be mean to me, just because they could.

But, again, this troubles me. I don’t think Garrity is correct in her assessments of me. But I can’t be certain. She is, like everyone else, voicing a subjective perception, and as such, it contains as much or as little objective truth as any other… and I think she’s being extremely self indulgent… but where I’m sure Aaron is simply a moral coward, I don’t feel as assured of making such a judgement on Garrity. She says she’s read my stuff. I think, in her out of context isolation of a certain joke I made that was certainly no more or less offensive than many similar things Aaron has said about women and white people (and me) and that she and others on Aaron’s blog have said about men, she displays enormous amounts of self indulgence, as well as an utter lack of anything remotely approaching wisdom or a sense of humor… but again… I’m not sure I’m right. (Her whole post reeks of deadly earnest extreme feminist zealotry to me, but, well, again… could be wrong.)

So, I don’t know. Maybe she’s got me exactly right. Maybe I am a black hole of emotional need, but, well, isn’t pretty much every public blogger? And everyone who posts frequently to a public blog? Aren’t we all, to some extent, black holes of emotional need? Is there ANYone out there who feels they are getting enough approval, enough affection, enough love on a day to day, minute to minute basis?

Anyway. I do think it’s pretty obvious, with Aaron’s avoidance of my full name, and Garrity’s following suit, that there is very much a… well, a covenant, if not a conspiracy… among the sycophantic posse on Aaron’s blog to make certain that whatever they say about me, I don’t find out about it… and I seriously doubt they are trying to spare my feelings. And that, I think, says absolute volumes about them.

As Aaron clearly does not want to hear from me, I won’t send him a link to this page. But I’ve mentioned his full name several times, as well as the name of his blog, so if he does Google ego searches, I’m sure he’ll find this.

Let me close by saying this: I don’t expect anyone to comment on this entry, unless Aaron and/or a few of his toadies does stumble across it, in which case, I imagine they will shred me pretty good (although in point of fact, I imagine they will actually confine their shredding to pages they know I most likely won’t read, at least, for a while; that seems more their style). My regular commenters have tended to avoid commenting on anything too personal here, especially where they might have to say something negative about me. I suppose I appreciate that, and, by all means, feel free not to comment on this nonsense if you really find it distasteful… god knows I do.

Still, if anyone does have anything meaningful to say, I’d like to hear it. Good or bad. If those of you who have read my work for a while feel that Aaron and Garrity have valid points, I would like to know.

Bear in mind, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know me as well or better than those sneaky, hypocritical, backstabbing, two faced… um… no, no… sweet, kind, generous, honest, upright, courageous, supportive, moral and outright heroic folks, yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket… do. It’s not out of line for you to weigh in, and I will absolutely read with interest, and reflect carefully, on anything anyone has to say.

Even, you know, one of Aaron’s orbital planetoids. Clearly, they’re all intelligent people, and obviously, they have enough rudimentary sense of social conscience to know that, vaguely, it’s just plain wrong to treat me the way they did… otherwise, why the endless rationalizations a year after the fact?

Oh, and, yeah, just one more thing… if Aaron is really “another voice in the chorus that chants, incessantly, rhytmically, lyrically, about the absolute necessity of interpersonal respect”, then why, exactly, did he throw me off his blog, while blaming it on other people? Why did he find me ‘alternately annoying and boring’ simply because I ‘was not a troll’ and because I was ‘too wonky’ about politics and ‘took things over the edge’ on geeky stuff?

Of course, I’m just an emotional black hole of need, so I really have no right to comment on this, but honest to God, I cannot regard the manner in which I was treated on Aaron’s blog, by him or by his regular commenters, as being anything that was remotely reminiscent of ‘interpersonal respect’.

But, again, what do I know? Clearly, I do not respect myself, and therefore, I do not have the capacity to respect others. I’m very good at cloaking that in clever, cute rhetoric (thanks so much), but, well, there it is.

And now for something completely different

Just briefly… I’ve adjusted my already very short blogroll, making it somewhat shorter by deleting Inkgrrl and Blue Streak by Devra. Both are fine blogs and you may well want to check them out. However, I only blogroll people who blogroll me back. Inkgrrl and Devra used to blogroll my first blog, but they haven’t responded to emails sent to them about this one, and I guess I must have made them as uncomfortable, without meaning to, as I made the happy assholes at Uppity-Negro.com… or so I gather, from their utter lack of acknowledgement of my infrequent attempts to get back in touch. So, off they go.

Of the other stuff on my blogroll, allow me to STRONGLY recommend that folks check out all of it, but especially Pen-Elayne on the Web, Flashbulb Moments, Pop Culture Gadabout, and Why Not? (A Blog By David Fiore). Not all of these folks post here a lot, but all of them are intelligent, articulate, interesting people with blogs that are rather better than mine, and they get even fewer comments than I do on a regular basis, which makes me sad.

You could, also, do worse than to check out Aaron Hawkins at www.uppity-negro.com. Honest to God. I mean, yes, he’s an ass, but he’s an interesting one and if you’re female, or want to pretend to be, he will be very very nice to you. Just, for God’s sake, don’t tell him I sent you. If you’re male and insist on being honest about it, well… just don’t post too much, and by all means, don’t be funnier or smarter than Aaron, and you should be okay. And honestly, he posts some funny, smart, insightful, interesting stuff.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.