There is a blogger named Jill who blogs at Write Likes She Talks who has been complaining for months that I banned her from this site because I disagreed with her point of view. This is a bare-assed lie. I banned her because she was being a tiresome asshole.
She’s making the claim again today, and I am tired of being slandered. I left a comment on her blog that I do not expect to be published. So I am setting the record straight on this blog.
The post on which Jill got herself banned was “Explaining Obama, Defining Abortion Terms from July 4, 2008. In the early part of the comments thread, Jill and I have a polite exchange of views, and if you read the comments you will see I treated her very respectfully.
The thread went south beginning with comment #21, by Debcoop. Debcoop’s comment had several misstatements of fact regarding what Roe v. Wade provides, and also, IMO, twisted my post around to say things it didn’t say. See also Debcoop’s comment #22. I respond to Debcoop in comment #24.
At this point I’m relishing the debate, because Debcoop was proving my point of the post — that regarding abortion, few know what the hell they are talking about. Here was someone defending Roe v. Wade who didn’t know what Roe v. Wade actually said. Great fun. Debcoop responds to my response in comment #28, in which she tries to weasel out of her earlier argument and also twist my argument into something I didn’t say. I set her straight in comment #29.
So far, so good. But then in comment #30, Jill butts in and complains about my responses to Debcoop. Utterly ignoring what Debcoop and I actually had been arguing about, Jill says, “I read that as saying that you don’t see any other way to look at what he’s [Obama] said and you don’t recognize that others see it differently.”
However, once again (at this point suspecting Jill is a few cherries short of a pie) I responded to her politely in comment #31.
This is not good enough for Ms. “the world revolves around me and my neuroses” Jill. She let’s me know in comment #32 that I am wrong to disagree with her in any form, however politely. “Frankly,” she says, “it’s destructive to judge others for how far they can go or not go in criticizing.” In Debcoop’s case, I had drawn the line at telling lies, but it also seemed to me that Ms. “mine is the only legitimate point of view on the planet” Jill was taking my responses to Debcoop as criticism of her.
So in Comment #33 I told her this isn’t about you, and you don’t get to tell other bloggers how to handle comments on their own blogs.
Now in comment #34 Ms. “I can criticize you, but you can’t criticize me back” Jill whines I am being rude to her. And it was comment #34 that got her banned (see comment #35).
And ever since, Ms. “everything is always about me me me” has complained that I banned her because of her opinion. Dear, your opinion doesn’t concern me. It’s your personality that needs a tuneup.
July 4, 2008: last weeks of the struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. The nomination had fallen out of Clinton’s reach. As a result, everything Obama said or did was parsed down to its molecules, and put forth by Clinton supporters as evidence that Obama is anti-woman.
It didn’t work; at least there’s that. But it gave rise to some mighty twisted, self-destructive quasi-thinking (“Party Unity My Ass”) that eventually tried to put an insanely anti-woman woman, Sarah Palin, in the White House. Classic example of missing the forest for the trees.
Re-reading that old post and comment thread reminded me how completely irrational and self-centered the “PUMA” mentality is. I guess I’m not surprised that they’re willing to trade actually living in the present for nursing old grudges.
Even Usenet had killfiles which were useful for posters like Jill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(usenet)
Somehow if she’s hate blogging about it a half year later I kind of doubt she would add anything worthwhile.
Day-um…I’m glad I stay in tune so well…