I am banning DreamOfPeace from the site. I don’t do this lightly. She posted this comment accusing me and also Markos of paying Tom Kertes to “stir up” our sites.
I asked her if it was a typo and she didn’t respond. Susan wrote her personally to see whether she was serious. Evidently, she thinks that I take money and instruction from party bigwigs and don’t disclose it. She thinks someone in Washington DC called me to let me know Tom was going to post some diaries and that I should be nice to him. I don’t have to put up with this shit and I won’t. She’s banned. I have nothing against OurWord.org, or the efforts they are making. I know that DreamOfPeace has several friends from that site that are also valued members here. I expect some of them to be upset with my decision, but I really don’t have to tolerate members that think I am a dishonest person who is secretly taking direction from DLC assholes in Washington in an effort to sell out women’s rights. So, she’s gone.
The fecal matter has struct the whirling blades. The result cannot be called “art”.
I can attest, first hand, that the Booman’s ‘Offices’ have not been recently gold-plated, nor have his teeth (just what he’d do with slush-money). Nor has his lovely wife’s br–ts.
I’m sure this lady was very naughty, and that she has plenty of other places to say her piece freely, but someone must have paid him to ax her.
JOKING! JOKING!!
I feel a chill. It must be Autumn.
your bro just called me and he is trying to get in touch with you, and trying to pawn of your cat and plant duty on me. You are going to pay for this.
Thanks for the heads up! I definitely won’t be returning that call…
I trust your judgment. You have been transparent about your process from the first day the site went live.
I agree WRT your judgement and appreciate the transparency of your decision.
I feel kind of attacked also. Is she a close personal friend or neighbor and saw you Tom out for drinks or overheard a conversation between you two? Where does one hear such “rumors” in this medium of expression? Any poster could be anything but what they claim to be, how do “rumors” begin when most of us don’t even know each other in the flesh and wouldn’t recognize each other if we were standing in the checkout line next to each other? I have posted all of my current experiences on this site, and other users are planning on all meeting up in D.C. next month. I guess that’s why I feel a little bit attacked by her also. This is my chosen Blog and I’m just fine about the banning.
Hey Tracy,
Where are people talking about meeting in DC in September? I live just outside of DC and can offer up a couple of beds to BooTribbers who aren’t allergic to cats.
Shucks, I’m allergic to cats… but are you coming to the march with us, then?
Tell me when/where and I’ll be there.
Sorry you are allergic to cats. 🙁
I’ll send you an email shortly!
Great!
If you do know of anyone who needs a place to crash while in DC, tell them to e-mail me. I have a spare bedroom and a pullout couch. They just can’t be allergic to cats.
I think once Boo banned her all her posts were banned too so I couldn’t see what the fuss was. Beyond that, I too missed the Tom stuff but I too will trust Boo’s judgement.
one hears rumors in this medium of expression via what are referred to (according to my sources :::looking around furtively::::) as email trees. i’d be happy to diary about this at length but i just got home from pulling two tens, a twelve and a fourteen over the last four days.
i think its about time all this came out though and i’m willing to share what little i know about it, if you care to listen.
maybe if i can find the time i’ll post it as a diary and everyone here can put in their 2¢ about what they think.
but before i do so i need to sleep a bit. but here is a taste of an area we might delve into.
next time you get a chance, i want you to talk to a friend of yours. janet strange from austin. i know you know her because i’ve admired photos of the two of you getting ready to fight the good fight. i want you to ask janet what she knows about fried marbles.
and if you get her started on that, ask her to tell you about the gainesville 8.
and then ask her what she knows about how the gainesville 8 were infiltrated by the government in an effort to disrupt their activities. and ask her if she knows the name of the government infiltrator who did the number on them.
and then stop for a moment and realize
wow
you know this democratic party…
they used to BE a government. and they want to BE the government again. and if janet knows first hand about how political groups are infiltrated by outside actors to disrupt their activities and cause dissention then hey, things like this really happen, it isn’t just paranoia.
if you consider yourself grassroots, and i just bet you do, you must be aware that there are people in the upper echalons of the party who think the grass needs to be mowed and kept carefully tended and basically milked for cash and used to further an agenda.
what dream is doing, frankly and i will be as up front about this as i can be, is accusing both tom kertes and booman of being part of this top-down effort to control and influence us grassroots types. now, you can feel free to assume shes way off base accusing booman of something like this. me? i don’t think she’s right about booman.
kertes?
well, who can say? where there’s smoke theres fire perhaps. i did see some very old-line booman members also get their back up over kertes post.
but if you think the foundation of her concern is madness or paranoia, you will be wrong. because lets be up front about something. the democratic party is moving to the right and they are doing so by bringing into the “big tent” of the democratic party candidates who do not believe in your right to choose, candidates who do not believe in stem cell research and candidates who do not feel that Emergency contraception should be available without a prescription and also a few of whom believe that birth control is not much different from abortion, sort of a baby pesticide thing. i .could go on and on about this.
but on this subject i want you to ask questions of our most autoritative expert. moiv.
find fault with dream’s accusations against booman as unwarranted if you will. but believe me, the basis underlying her concern is something that concerns me too. frankly, i think the stress just got to her, she lost it, and her head exploded. i’ve told artemisia in the past i think that dream’s a pistol! haha… and obviously she is! in fact i love her posts because shes often just got lightning flashing from her fingertips. kind of like you, in a way, tracy. kind of like you.
now here’s what i won’t be doing. i wont be accusing booman of anything.., heck i like the guy. i don’t agree with him that abortion is a “moral wrong” but then he’s a guy so what does he know? :::snickering:::, so i’ll cut him some slack and just chalk that up to the guy thing.
but what dream’s concern is based on is a feeling among a lot of women that there is a movement within the democratic party to go pro-life. and part of that move will be to get women like you and me, to shut up and go along and vote for pro-life candidates under the promise that “the pro-choice crowd will still control the flow of legislation”.
i’m not buying that.
anywho, im tired. maybe i’ll chat later.
enjoy.
thank you bay for getting this out in the open. we do need to talk about how and when the party insiders try to manipulate us grassroots types.
i agree that dream was wrong about boo. but that doesn’t make her overarching concern paranoid.
this banning, I am sure if she had responded, you might have been able to work out this difference. I feel that you truly work hard here, to provide all of us with a forum to voice our opinions concerning what is happening in our country and the world.
If no one has voiced it today, thank you Martin for creating a place that feels like a commnunity and where I have found some wonderfully surprising friendships.
I am sure that you did not make this decision lightly and as the proprietor of this magnificent establisment, you should not have to put up with any this fecal matter at all.
Again thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be a member of this remarkable place in time.
…everybody knows you’re a shill. <snark off>
I have seen more fantasies and paranoia lately…
Frankly, I’d be honored to have someone try to bribe me. It would mean I was making people pay attention. But I’d still tell them to fuck off.
I’ll give you $5 and I’ll even buy a mug for… hmm… how about some graft to be determined later?
I’d have a better bribe, but I’m on a student budget now.
but you are probably jealous of Sean Penn. 🙂
Thanks for this place Martin. You sure don’t have to take malicious accusations. No one should.
offer to buy you more “special” coffee when yours ran out.
But I was assuming it was the eco-friendly, pro-choice coffee beans, not the genetically modified kool-aid kind.
your somewhat cryptic post. But this is only the second banning ever done here. The first was because someone posted private emails. This is because someone is spreading idiotic, insulting, rumors about me. If you have zero respect for me and are going to malign my character, then I don’t think I should have to put up with it.
No one has ever been banned for their mere opinions, no matter how much I disagreed with them.
It was just a joke, really. I totally suport what you did.
I was refering to a comment I made in an open thread, about how your articles had been so gloriously hard-hitting lately. I offered to buy you some more coffee when whatever you were drinking ran out.
My apologies for sounding non-suportive. I’ll go lay low for a while.
I know we have a witch test around here somewhere… </rummaging through desk>
hmm… it seems to have something to do with a duck and very small pebbles.
oh, has she turned anyone into a newt??? that would be good to know.
😉
my wife is a witch and I am sure she would not want anything disparaging said concerning her avocation and livlihood.
sorry gdw, but we’re gonna have to burn your wife. we can’t just have witches running around all willy-nilly. that, or you’ll have to pay the fine… and, since it’s a pain in the ass to have to go over to the witch authority, you can just pay me and I’ll take it there myself, and we can move on from all this ugliness.
pay you with, rummaging around in my medicine pouch, hmmmmmmmmm eyelash of dragon, eye of newt, some natural tobacco leaf, a frogs hair, a crystal and some sweet grass, mmmmmmmmm interesting, will any of that do for payment.
Now I can’t tell you what else is in the bag, you will have to create your own to know what to put in it for you mojo.
yep, fits in with the Republican (and far too often Democratic) turning back of the clock on science, abortion — hell, not even abortion — how ’bout women even working (Santorum)?
yep. that’s what makes it funny… =)
Oh, great. With my name in the subject line. I swear to you people I had nothing to do with this!
Unless maybe my joke was so terrible the commentor despaired of humanity and turned off her computer immediately after reading it…
Booman, you needed to do what you needed to do. No one should come here and disrespect you like that. That’s so not cool.
great community:
I love this place, I love you all, and you do what you feel you need to do. Knowing you as well as I think I do (which really isn’t very much, but I like what I see) I trust your judgement.
Further, I do think that you actually believe in this site — taking more responsibility (and you should take more credit) than just your name on the door. The personal investment and integrity shows. All the while, it is obvious to anyone who reads the well thought out commentary, almost always provided with respect, that this is a different sort of site. For those that want to stir up trouble, for no other purpose than to stir up trouble, please don’t put Booman and others in a position that he apparently was in — because I know that he would not take such an action lightly.
Bring on honest, sincere discussions about controversial subjects (and relaxing, thought-provoking, less serious ones) … but check the drama at the door — we have enough in our own lives.
Hmmm then why do you always drive around a souped up SUV with bullet proof tires and windows hmm? How can you explain that?
Plus you’re always going on vacation, 5 weeks just in August! And flying around in “your” helicopter, which you say it isn’t yours but why are you always riding around in it? Always playing golf, fishing, bicycling.. how do you have time for this???
Oh wait a minute.. oops sorry, I thought this was the whitehouse website 🙂
Pax
At times it is very hard to tell when any poster is being serious or being in booman’s infamous words-‘a prick-as in don’t be a prick’ which is why most posters will be asked to clarify or explain their comments when they sound wrong or are taken the wrong way. Which is only fair to everyone.
When I had read that particular comment my first thought really was that it had to be a way over-the-top attempt(bad attempt) at humor. I know that those particular diaries were bringing out, at times in excess, much passion and heated debate-the operative word should always be debate and not personal attacks or accusations.
As long as their has been no response to that post it therefore stands on it’s own as a serious accusation toward Booman and I find that offensive to a guy who is doing a great job in fostering and shepherding along a terrific community spirit here. The attitude of any site like this starts at the top so with much respect I think Boo is doing a fucken outstanding job with Bootrib. With continued emphasis and reminders to be respectful of others-another way of saying ‘don’t be a prick’..hey I just like writing that cause it sounds cool.
I’ve always enjoyed comments from ‘dreamofpeace’ and have even sought out comments by ‘dop’ at times. Seeing anyone banned always distresses me although I know realistically that it just isn’t possible for such a large group of people not to end up with differences either minor or in this instance of more substance.
Or as Rodney King would say-‘why can’t we all just get along?'(i.e. there’s that don’t be a prick thing again basically)–well that’s really an impossible dream unfortunately but yet it is something to continue to strive for while respectfully disagreeing at times.
OMG, Thank You! I had forgotten the one rule!
I have but a small clue about what all the drama was about, and frankly that’s the way I like it.
While I don’t work in a cubicle, I am stuck at work … so, frivolity on somewhat of a hold, though conspiracy theories will be limited to what the right wing nutjobs will try to pull tomorrow at Camp Casey. Well, at least Randi Rhodes will be there, and I look forward to updates from her. Thank you to all the BooTribbers who sacrificed and made the trek — you honor us all.
I leave for a little bit and just look at what you guys get up to. Banning is so not fun (probably why this is only the second person -as far as I am aware- to have been banned here), but I can understand why this was done. Thankfully, I missed the entire Tom Kertes thing.
What’s sad is the level of distrust that seems to be gaining strength among various folks (some of it not all that surprising, due to shock over what some others on some other sites have said about women’s rights and so on), but I still think it’s unfortunate when it pops up here. Or at other places, referencing here…
Well, looking on the bright side, it’s one more thing to lay at the feet of the all powerful Boo, who so far seems to have (in the minds of some):
engineered the entire pie fight in order to get new (female in particular) users here
at the same time and same day, arranged for there to be a diary which contained an ad for what some considered to be a dubious enterprise, in an effort to chase away women and gain more men
Oh, and a couple of other things I’ve forgotten that I think involved black helicopters or something.
Obviously the making of the new Boo Gates, and we’ll no doubt soon all be getting our gold plated frogs in appreciation for being a part of the conspiracy.
So much celebration at the assertion of authority.
I was kinda thinking that, as well.
He had to do what he had to do, but I’m not exactly doing cartwheels over it, or…something?
I’m sorry it came to this, but when there’s a lack of trust, it has to be brought out and cleared up before it spreads like a virus.
It sounds like Boo and Susan both tried to clear things up offline (sending emails); when they didn’t receive a response, Boo did what he had to do.
It’s always best to get problems out in the open early, so they can be dealt with and not allowed to fester. That applies to community issues, issues in marriage, or national affairs…if someone with cojones had stood up and actually questioned the intelligence, maybe Casey Sheehan and 1850+ other American men and women would still be alive today…
I’m not sure what good it does to ban someone under those circumstances, but it is your site, Booman, and you get to make the rules. Personally, I think the accusation in question is so ridiculous that it would have been better off being curtly denied and then ignored. But that, again, is a matter of the site owner’s personal prerogative.
Who the heck is Tom Kertes anyway?
he’s Joe Lieberman’s secret agent man. Or something.
He has a diary up explaining why Hillary is his candidate in 2008. I pay him to spew DLC talking points, and he pays me to be nice to him. It’s a brilliant insidious plan.
remember your “don’t be a prick?”
in a diary where you excute members is not the place depreciating humor.
for that you get a two from me.
you should be a little more serious when you ban someone. this isnt a joke.
not
the
place
4
depreciating
humor
gawd i wish i could edit comments. we can do that at our word you know! you can edit comments!
I can’t. I can erase them. But I can’t edit them either.
yeah is that a feature? or whut?
it’s because if you could edit comments, someone could edit one of their comments that was replied to, and make the person who replied to it look like an idiot. Here’s an outlandish example:
See what I mean?
It is probably possible for Booman’s database administrator to go in and edit comments on the server. It is also probably more trouble than it’s worth, and that deleting the comment and starting over is a better idea.
it’s the same reason you can’t edit polls. You could get any result you want if you could edit the polls after the voting.
i see it more as an “etched in stone” feature that disables my ability to correct my embarrasing mis-spellings. using blogs that work it both ways i can say i much prefer to be able to edit.
as far as changing a comment to make someone look stupid, or fudging the results of a poll, that never really occured to me. and i’m proud to say that too by the way! so isnt that kewl? i have that power, but not only didnt think of using it i also wouldn’t now that i know i can.
oh two additonal thoughts. i’m speaking specifically about how drupal works, should have mentioned that.
i also just looked into it and it seems that as a standard member you can edit comments you make to a “diary” UP UNTIL someone comments to you. at that point you lose the ability to edit. so it seems the open-source folks anticpated the concern about changing the meaning of someone elses words by editing what they’re replying to, after the fact.
after a “guest blogger” accused me and a bunch of others on the site of being basically terrorist enablers, I relate.
I suppose you are doing pretty good. A bunch of the lunatic fringe called me that in Crawford and I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCKamole. If I’m a terrorist enabler then surely THEY ARE TERRORIST CREATORS. I mean if we’re going to throw shit around then hey, let’s throw it around.
i really dont want to jump into the middle of this thing, but at the risk of being banned, i guess my question is, why did susan hu contact her directly instead of you?
maybe its just me, but if someone questioned my integrity and accused me of behind the scenes shenanigans, i’d email them myself and ask them about it.
now maybe you did email her directly and i don’t know about it. that’s possible. but your post only says that susan hu contacted her. so i’m left with the question, why her and not you?
under other circumstances i might have emailed you privately to ask this question, but you’ve put it all out on the front page, so that seems to me sort of invite to discuss it all publicly.
“At the risk of being banned…”?
Hm, surely a nice chap such as Booman didn’t intend to strike terror into the hearts of his little band of contributors with a banning. Fear not.
well i’m concerned abut being accused of insinuating more behind the scenes shenanigans. i mean, here’s what i see. dream made an allegation about boo in a thread and didn’t respond to his question of whether it was a typo.
so then susan hu, either on her own (or at the request of boo? i’m not accusing, just asking) writes a private email to dream and asks her what she meant.
dream responds, in a private email to susan, describing her suspicions. then, it can only be that susan shared that private email exchange with boo, and that boo, in turn decided to 1) ban dream; and 2) share the content of her private email to susan with everyone on the blog by posting it as his reason for banning her.
i still don’t get why a private email between dream and susan hu becomes grounds for banning, even if it does make unsupported allegations about boo.
in my view, here’s what should have happened. dream should have raised her concerns with boo in a private email. when she failed to do that, and made an allegation in the thread, boo should have personally emailed dream to express his anger to her directly. as you say further downthread, he could have also deleted her comment and given her a warning or simply troll rated her.
but instead, we have the content of a private email exchange between dream and susan hu being posted by boo on the front page of blog as justification for his decision to ban her.
and yeah, i confess, i do wonder if questioning this process will get me banned too.
Susan, who is not feeling well by the way, emailed DreamOfPeace on her own initiative after I shared the content of the post with her. She then gave me the general outlines of her position, which was that she she was accusing me of taking money from bigwigs and being instructed in advance that one of their agents would be posting at my site and that I should be friendly to him.
This was after she accused me of directly paying Tom to cause controversy on my site and refused to respond to me inquiry whether her accusation was a typo or serious.
She also suggested that all of this was a rumor that was going around.
There is no point in warning someone who has so little regard for me that they would make that accusation openly and unapologetically to Susan.
I know banning is harsh. But I am so offended that I don’t really want to pretend that I ever want to see her post here again.
first off, let me be clear, i’m not defending dream’s allegations. but in the end, aren’t you essentially banning her for comments she made in a private email to someone else?
and didn’t you, for all intents and purposes, publish the content of her private mail to susan on the front page of your blog? and wasn’t the only other person banned done so for posting private emails?
i’m not suggesting you should ban yourself from your own blog. or even for that matter suggesting you shouldn’t be angry that your integrity was questioned. but frankly i see you acting more out of anger than rationality around this. and that’s your right.
but while speaking ill of you in private emails and then posting on your blog may be in poor taste, i would suggest that if what people say about in private emails is grounds for banning, you might mention that in your terms of service.
your point, but I didn’t publish a private email, I only explained the substance of what I understand she thinks. And really, my anger justifies my reasoning or rationality. All Susan wanted to know was whether we were reading her posting correctly, and she happened to add more fuel to the fire.
Seems like artemisia’s got a good point, Boo, about the private email stuff. I hope you’ll come back and talk about that here. Perhaps there’s a mitigating factor we don’t know about? I know I’d be horrified if I ever got upset with somebody here and I let my hair down about it with somebody else on the site in a private email and then I came on-line and found my rantings laid out in public.
I wish dream could e you and say, “I got carried away, and I’m really sorry I impugned your integrity,” and I wish you’d say, “Yeah, that pissed me off something fierce, but I’m sorry I made your private email front page news.” And then you might not have an easy time trusting each other after that, but you might also each be willing to give it a wary try.
Seems like there are things to learn here for all of us and I’m glad people–like artemesia–are willing to take the chance and do the work of bringing up the touchy stuff.
only the sentiments I understand she expressed in her email. And here’s the point. Susan emailed her to give her an opportunity to explain herself. She chose to make even more outrageous allegations, rather than what Susan hoped, which was that she meant something else.
She wasn’t so much banned for what she wrote Susan, but for not backing down from the allegations she made publically, and then making it worse.
Why should I allow someone to post here who thinks that I am a liar, a shill, dishonest, want to sell out women, am secretly working for the DLC or some other centrist organization and won’t disclose it, and is so indifferent about how I might feel about those allegations that she tells Susan that shit?
Think about it. I wanted to ban her from the get-go, but I wasn’t sure she meant what I thought she meant. After Susan corresponded with her, she wanted her banned too. I didn’t need too much encouragement.
I will put up with a lot, as you know. But I don’t have to put up with people that are trading in rumors like DreamOfPeace was passing around. There is no point in trying to give her a second chance. She thinks I am a terrible person, so she shouldn’t want to be here.
Well. . .if I were being picky I’d say there’s not a lot of diff between publishing an email and summarizing its contents. . .
But I wouldn’t want anybody in my house who spoke that way of me, either. Although. . .no, I won’t go there. It’s all too easy to tell other people do work through to a peaceful solution when the truth is I probably wouldn’t do it, myself, in a situation like this.
Just one last note–one thing that almost gets lost in this is that you didn’t really go off half-cocked. You did make a couple of tries to make sure she was saying what you thought she was saying. That’s reassuring.
i’ve got to agree with kansas on this. the fact that you didn’t use quotation marks seems doesn’t mitigate the publishing of the contents of a private email on the front page of your blog.
and i don’t want to belabor this discussion, at the risk of getting banned myself. so i’m planning that, barring unforseen circumstances, this will be the final comment i will make on this subject:
it still seems to me that the comment dream made to the kertes diary was not addressed at the time beyond a simple question of whether or not it was a typo. she was not troll rated, or confronted directly in that thread beyond that simple question. the lowest, and only, rating she got for that post was a 2.
and then nothing happened. for two days nothing happened.
you say you wanted her banned at the time, but as near as i can tell, you didn’t email her yourself, you didn’t troll rate or delete her comment, and you didn’t really confront her in that thread.
so i am left with the impression that but for the things she said in a private email, she would not be banned.
have banned her with no explanation. I’d rather err on the side of making it crystal clear why I did it.
If she had answered my question honestly I would have banned her. Since she didn’t respond, I let it go.
I told Susan how pissed I was about it, and she took it on herself to write Dream. Then she told me the basic outlines of her response and said effectively, “she meant it, and I agree she should be banned.”
And Dream knew that telling Susan she thinks I am swine would be communicated back to me. She has already called me swine publicly. I was just so shocked that I wanted her to clarify before I banned her.
She doesn’t have any presumption of privacy for communicating privately what she had already said publicly. All she did was elaborate on her crazy theory that I am a lying double agent for the DLC, or whatever it is she thinks.
Why should I say, “I banned her but I can’t say why.” I assume Dream would have been happy to post her thoughts publicly, since she had already gotten started and she certainly wasn’t ashamed to share them with Susan even though it caused Susan to recommend her banning.
Did that catch Dream by surprise?
Listen, if you send me an email accusing Susan of being a paid agent of Dick Cheney, with no evidence to support it, I’m going tell Susan what you think of her, and ban you if that is what she wants. And I’ll explain the basic outlines of why it was done.
FWIW, I think you are completely in the right here, Martin.
I was just thinking you could/might write up a short abd sweet piece about site rules and put it in a side bar here, so it’s always up, you just use a block to put it in.
You want my opinion? No?
Oh, here it is anyway.
I read the comment and I don’t see the harm in it. The accusation is ridiculous? Dreamofpeace offers absolutely no proof of her accusation. I rolled my eyes when I read it.
I don’t understand why Booman couldn’t simply say, it’s not true–and if you have proof, either present it or do be quiet about it.
Not only that, but banning someone without warning is a bit over the top. I rather fancied that bannings, the cyberspace equivalent of the “death penalty”, were undertaken only after someone committed a series of offences, received warning to stop, and refused to heed those warnings.
My question is this: why didn’t Booman demand an answer in the proper forum, which is the diary where the comment was made? Something along the lines of, “Put up or shut up?” And if dreamofpeace didn’t provide substantive proof of her allegation in that forum, her comment should have been deleted and she would have received warning that making unsupportable accusations in the future was cause for banning.
Ah, well, all of this shows why I am not overly fond of blogs in general–the rules seem to be made up as we go along.
I’m really sad about this outcome and I wish it all could have been handled better on all sides of the issue. I think front paging this was not at all necessary, and not in the best interest of the site.
Whenever this kind of thing happens, all sorts of questions get raised. As someone who has an open site, and who has felt compelled to ban a troll or two, I think I do understand somewhat the issues a site owner wrestles with.
At mediagirl.org, I finally just had to make a choice, and I announced it: it’s my site, and I run it how I want to. I have a light touch and have only banned real trolls. But I did not feel that I could, in good conscience, run the site totally democratically — I didn’t want to have to deal with freepers and misogynists every day.
I don’t know what the approach of this site is — a personal site where others are welcome? So it seems. So I can’t say boo to BooMan about this.
Many of us like to talk about how blogs and “new media” are so much more open and democratic than old media, but this is one case where we run up against the same old problems, and the same old solutions. You don’t work for the New York Post and say publicly that Rupert Murdoch is a sell-out. You don’t go on Oprah and say on the air that she’s part of a secret conspiracy to take over the world. Whatever the merits or demerits of the accusations, this is the “ownership society” and owners decide what is appropriate, or even what’s “true.” Such is the state of so-called “free speech” and how it’s managed in the media.
I missed this whole Kertes thing here. I hate to see banning happen — especially since troll rating was available but apparently not much utilized (and would have, presumably, unpublished or hidden the comment in question). Also, in the spirit of openness, I’d rather see a situation where an otherwise strong contributor’s conflict with the site owner is dealt with openly, transparently, especially if it’s a conflict over facts and (it seems to me) “put up or shut up” could have effectively dealt with it. Unfortunately this banning has the effect executing the messenger without addressing the message, even as un-creditable it may seem to others. (I have no reason to believe any of it, personally.)
Perhaps, over the years, we’ll get better at handling such situations, and not go down the path that, in another context, Google and Apple have trod so recently (i.e., fire the “leaker,” and blackball or sue the pants off anyone who talks about it). IMHO, in the end, the best way to dash outrageous accusations is not the guillotine but the light of day.
I banned her because she thinks I’m a sack of shit. I can’t be any more open. I don’t have any conflicts of interest. The only money I get is from advertisers who I don’t even know, or from selling t-shirts and coffee mugs. I get emails, like all bloggers, from people that are peddling their issues. Sometimes I think those emails contain good stuff and I blog about the issue, but most of the time it goes in the trash bin. I don’t get any direction, I don’t coordinate my message. I don’t even tell Susan what to write about. Or Dan, or Lapin, or Maryscott.
The only thing I am involved in right now is working on getting democrats elected to Congress in the Philly suburbs and I do coordinate that effort with other local philly bloggers. I have been totally open about that, and I will continue to be. I also don’t get paid to do it.
I consider DreamOfPeace’s ideas about me to be paranoid, and I don’t have any interest in trying to rehabilitate her paranoia. I have done nothing to deserve her impression of me. And I don’t want members here that think I’m a dishonest person who is working against the interests I am working to further. They shouldn’t want to be here either.