We need to REMIND them about the way of things

Dec 2nd, 2013 6:07 pm | By

Damn, I’m beating the dead horse of Elan to death here, but I got around to reading his triumphant post-flight post about what a great job he did of teaching people to be nice and I just couldn’t not say anything. So here’s Elan Gale on teaching everyone to be nice:

A lot of people have been really nice to me and called me a hero today. It’s really fun to hear but it’s not true.

Our troops are heroes. Fire fighters and policemen are heroes. Doctors and teachers are heroes. Flight attendants and pilots and waiters and baristas… These are the people that make things work in this crazy world.

What I did today was just point out something we all know: Be nice. It’s Thanksgiving. Be nice. 

Wow. That is some classic cognitive dissonance there, describing his taunting and harrying of that woman as pointing out “be nice.” No. Bullying someone isn’t pointing out “be nice.” It’s actually pointing out the opposite. “Look at me, I’m being nasty, way nastier than you were. Now you know how to be nice, right?” No. Not right.

If he were really interested in teaching everyone to be nice, would he have sent all those boastful tweets about his oh-so-funny punishment of Diane? Hardly.

Be nice everyday, but if you see a man or a woman working on a holiday you better respect that they would like to be with their family too.

So have some compassion and have some appreciation.

Most people do. Most people are great. And then there are a bunch of Diane’s in the world.

And it’s OUR job to tell every Diane to shut up.

It’s OUR duty to put the Diane’s of the world in their place.

We need to REMIND them about the way of things.

We outnumber them.

So, I’m really glad we had fun today, but I really hope you guys join me, look a jerk in the eye, and tell them to eat a piece of your body, because really, that’s what the holidays are all about.

That’s disgusting. Really, really disgusting. The combination of delusional piety about having some compassion with the horrible boastful bullying – We need to REMIND them about the way of things – ugh, it makes my skin crawl.

I think that’s the last I’ll say about Mr Gale. I don’t like feeling disgust.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



The dancer from the dance

Dec 2nd, 2013 4:49 pm | By

Jason figured out something about the “rage blogging” trope.

The really interesting thing is, the people complaining about “rage bloggers” and “drama” are doing the exact same thing as the bloggers they complain about, by pointing to things they disagree with and disagreeing with them. Publicly. Calling them out on things they disagree with, even while they themselves decry the “call-out culture” of disagreeing with people publicly.

Well yes.

Actually the people doing that fit the description much better than we do, because they’re the ones who spend literally hours on Twitter or that unsavory forum every day tap tap tapping about nothing but a small handful of bloggers. That’s the only subject of their rage-tweeting and rage-forum posting.

Anyway, yes.

It’s like Diane and Elan, in a way. On the one hand, some crabby entitled behavior in reaction to a delayed flight, which ended. On the other hand, a sustained campaign to punish the crabby entitled behavior, which still hasn’t ended.

Which is the rage, who is the rager?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Contemptibly rude versus wildly irritating

Dec 2nd, 2013 1:11 pm | By

More Elan-commentary.

Ken White at Popehat:

Mr. Gale serves to teach us two lessons about social media and the internet — and more broadly, about life.

Lesson One:  Douchebaggery Is Not A Zero-Sum Game

The first lesson is that boorish behavior is not binary.  People are complex, life is complex, and despite our hunger to see the world in simple terms of white hats versus black hats, sometimes all participants in a social media melee are assholes.

In this instance, it’s perfectly possible to recognize that (1) that “Diane” — if she exists — was contemptibly rude and entitled towards airline staff who have no control over when a plane leaves and who are simply doing their jobs under trying circumstances, and (2) also recognize that Elan Gale is contemptibly self-involved for seeing Diane’s rudeness as an opportunity to confront and torment her for his own amusement and self-promotion.  Recognizing one does not diminish the other, because douchebaggery is not a zero-sum game.  “Diane” thought — either out of bad character, or temporary frailty — that she was entitled to vent at some poor bastard working for an airline on a holiday.  Mr. Gale thought that the abuse of an airline employee was a swell opportunity to put a woman “in her place” and preen for his followers.  You can criticize both without letting either one off the hook.

Now, me, I think Ken exaggerates Diane’s badness there. As I’ve mentioned in comments, all Elan reports her doing in his first tweets is 1) complaining about a bad situation that affects everyone around her, as if it affected her alone, and 2) telling a flight attendant who tried to sympathize or deflect by saying he wanted to get home for Thanksgiving too, “it’s not about you.” I don’t think that does amount to “contemptibly rude and entitled.” Moderately rude, but not contemptibly so.

I think the deal here actually is that she was irritating, much more than she was actively rude. I recognize that distinction, because I find people irritating all the time – especially in airports and on planes. Ohgod ten times more so in airports and on planes. My hatred of both environments causes my irritation-meter to go into hypersensitive mode. A Diane complaining about things that are obvious and shared could be irritating way out of proportion to its real rudeness. On the scale of things flight attendants have to put up with, I doubt it even registers. They work on planes! With people who are squashed in like sardines, breathing horrible air, with some stranger’s head in their lap.

But a lot of people are reading backwards. They hated Diane as soon as Elan started tweeting about her, or as soon as they read his first tweets about her, and then they read awfulness back into her behavior to justify their hatred. It’s very like “guys, don’t do that.” A lot of people read their hatred back into that small, cheerful piece of advice until it became unrecognizable.

Diane was irritating, as self-centered people are irritating, but if they’re strangers to us it’s almost never our jobs to set them straight. Sometimes it is, but not often. On that flight? It really, really was not Elan’s.

And Shoshanna Jaskoll on the Times of Israel blog.

He’s doubling his following and becoming more and more popular with every move he makes against the anonymous “Diane”. Eventually, he tells her to ‘suck his d*ck’ and it really derailed from there.

Many people posted the story and called it hilarious, awesome, incredible etc. I felt like I was the only one who found it grotesque and over the line. Elan seemed to me like a gladiator in the pit being cheered as he hacked apart a smaller opponent.

Not the only one at all.

At the end of the saga, Elan tells Diane to ‘look him up online’. Doing so, we see that he is “producer of ABC’s The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor Pad…”

I can’t help but think that Elan has gotten reality TV and actual reality confused.  On reality TV, the participants are paid to be humiliated, have their best and worst moments documented, and to be judged by an audience where the biggest smart ass wins.

In actual reality, the players have stories far beyond what we are aware of, their lives are not for entertainment, and their reactions are not scripted to best effect. Elan played to his audience, his crowd, and repeatedly battered a woman who was clearly having a horrible day.

And whether she really has cancer or not, whether the face mask was just because she has a cold or wanted to avoid getting a cold, she didn’t need an Elan Gale straightening her out.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Decades after we decided as a society

Dec 2nd, 2013 12:04 pm | By

Even the Telegraph has a blog post about the heroic adventures in schooling women of Elan Gale.

Look, joking aside, and God knows Elan is a risible clown who deserves all the pointing-and-laughing one can mete out, there’s something profoundly depressing about the fact that, decades after we decided as a society that using sexual threats and demands as a means of shutting women up was unacceptable, young men like Elan are still using them on strange women in public spaces and other young men are cheering them on.

His mommy must have glowed with pride as she stirred the turkey soup. But perhaps he doesn’t care. Perhaps, after all, this random middle-aged woman reminded him of mommy and he was acting out. But I’ll bet you £100 that, had he deemed this woman worthy of his beardy sexual interest, he would never have behaved toward her in this manner. And that fear of getting more than a slapping would have made him duck his head had Diane been a man.

Really. Does anyone seriously think he would have done that if Diane had been a man? Or, if you think he made the whole thing up (and apparently he has a history of such invention), do you think he would even have made it up with the role of Diane played by Donald?

I sure as hell don’t. Why? Not primarily because of relative degrees of physical fear. No, it’s more than that, and worse than that. I think it’s more because of an unconscious background assumption that women are a class subject to being schooled and that men are not. I probably share the assumption, in case that makes you feel any better.

But that’s one reason I think this story deserves some heavy breathing, even though it is “just Twitter.” (But then, “just Twitter” isn’t all that tiny, is it; not in the sense of being totally without impact.) Maybe it will help a lot of people recognize that background assumption and try to correct for it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Something annoys you? Blame feminism!

Dec 2nd, 2013 10:55 am | By

That seems to be Christina Hoff Sommers’s policy at least.

chs

Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers

Wow! Some Brits organize an event to raise awareness on men’s health. PC feminist freaks out. Not a parody!  http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/why-movember-isnt-all-its-cracked-be …

Yes but that’s not what happened. I posted about that article on Saturday, so you’ll all know that’s not what happened, because you read everything I post here and remember every word of it. No but seriously – here again is a sample of that absurd New Statesman article:

So what message does Movember convey to those whose moustaches are more-or-less permanent features? With large numbers of minority-ethnic men—for instance Kurds, Indians, Mexicans—sporting moustaches as a cultural or religious signifier, Movember reinforces the “othering” of “foreigners” by the generally clean-shaven, white majority. Imagine a charity event that required its participants to wear dreadlocks or a sari for one month to raise funds—it would rightly be seen as unforgivably racist. What is the difference here? We are not simply considering an arbitrary configuration of facial hair, but one that had particular, imperial connotation to British men of our grandfathers’ generation and currently has a separate cultural valence for men from certain ethnic groups. Moustaches, whether or not “mo-bros” mean theirs to be, are loaded with symbolism. We often wonder how our fathers (both life-long moustached men) must feel each November, when their colleagues’ faces temporarily resemble theirs, and are summarily met with giggles and sponsor-money. No doubt they draw the obvious conclusion, that dovetails with many other experiences of life as an immigrant: there are different rules for white faces.

Is that obviously just feminist and nothing else? Hardly. It’s a jumble of nonsense, but what’s most prominent is a confused attempt at anti-racism and post-colonialism. It’s much more that flavor of bullshit than it is any kind of feminist-flavored bullshit.

Sommers is scapegoating. That’s bad.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Dude, you’re the one who took the brawl to Twitter

Dec 1st, 2013 11:39 am | By

Now Elan is all pissed off at people who don’t think his bullying of a somewhat rude passenger was the wittiest and most richly-deserved schooling ever.

elan

elan gale @theyearofelan

My wife’s dog’s friend knows a guy who saw a guy who knew Diane and he also knows the guy who anonymously posted stuff about her health

So last night I met the dude who saw the guy who knew a man who wrote the stuff on the message board and then I WROTE AN ARTICLE ABOUT IT

Oh, I saw someone write an article about a thing my dog’s wife’s friend saw on a message board and I AM ENRAGED

I have poorly thought out opinions about things I skimmed through on the internet! I demand answers! I demand justice!

[and one more not in the screengrab]

Everyone feels one way! I AM SMART AND MUST FEEL ANOTHER WAY IMMEDIATELY!

It’s funny how easily one could just turn that line of thinking around on him:

Oh, I saw some woman on my flight being crabby about the delay so I KNEW she’s a horrible entitled bitch and I had to FIX HER IMMEDIATELY

Also:

Everyone feels that bullying strangers into better behavior is just bullying. I AM SMART AND MUST FEEL ANOTHER WAY IMMEDIATELY!

So easily.

Update some hours later. More bitter tweets about how misunderstood Elan is.

elan

elan gale @theyearofelan

My pledge: if you end up sitting next to me on a plane for the next year, and you are nice, I promise that I will offer to buy you a drink

[that one got 129 retweets and 753 favorites]

Just read somewhere that Diane was the last remaining unicorn and was just trying to get back to repopulate her home planet

Please make sure to include the new Diane was a unicorn evidence in all future media. Seems viable. Someone said it

In other words the cancer claim may be bogus. Sure, it may. The bullying was still bullying, even if Diane is as healthy as a mountaineer.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Passenger ethics

Dec 1st, 2013 10:23 am | By

Mostly I’m seeing people agreeing that Elan’s first commentary-tweets were ok but his actual confrontation of Diane was not ok, but I’m also seeing a sizeable faction insisting that Diane deserved everything Elan dished out to her and perhaps more.

So I think we need to think about passenger ethics a bit.

Suppose Elan had been sitting next to Diane, as opposed to several rows behind her. Assuming for the sake of argument that she was being actively rude to the flight attendant, and/or that she was being obstreperous enough to annoy passengers all around, I think it would be ok for Elan to say, mildly, that we’re all upset about the delay and the flight attendants really can’t do anything about it, so how about we all try not to make it worse for each other. Something along those lines. I think it would be ok for him to try to persuade her to pipe down. If he wanted to go the extra mile he could nicely offer to buy her a drink.

But that’s about it. It’s really the flight attendant’s job to defuse the situation, not the passenger’s, or the passengers’. Neither singly nor collectively are passengers responsible for enforcing etiquette on other passengers.

Suppose Diane was Don, and got violent. That’s a different story – then it might be right for passengers to intervene quickly.

Suppose they’re not on a plane, but a city bus, and Diane or Don physically attacks the driver. Then the passengers really should intervene, and fast, and together.

But what the actual situation was, assuming Elan reported it accurately (and that’s apparently in doubt, since he’s reported to have a habit of making up stuff for the sake of Twitter stories), was that Diane’s bad behavior had stopped, and that Elan took it upon himself to punish her for having behaved badly.

That is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable for a whole list of reasons. It’s none of his business; it’s not needed; he doesn’t know enough; it’s much more likely to re-ignite a quarrel than it is to teach Diane anything; he’s ignoring the likely meaning of her face mask; they’re all on an airplane, a confined space that they can’t exit; he’s not very good at ethics or manners himself; his behavior was incredibly intimidating. That’s not even an exhaustive list of the reasons his intervention was not acceptable.

So that’s a start on the knotty subject of passenger ethics.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Compare

Dec 1st, 2013 9:19 am | By

Two reactions.

compare

Amanda Marcotte @AmandaMarcotte

http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/11/bullying-at-35-thousand-feet/…If you’ve been passing around that funny story of a man schooling a woman on a plane, here’s the other side.

Renee Hendricks @reneehendricks

Yep, still amusing, OphieB – - http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/11/bullying-at-35-thousand-feet/ … – being ill doesn’t give you a free pass to be a whiny ass to everyone.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



The clean-shaven majority

Nov 30th, 2013 5:14 pm | By

So apparently there’s a thing in the UK called (toe-curlingly) “Movember”? And it’s something about growing moustaches and raising money for charity? I guess? Something like that. Anyway Neil Singh and Arianne Shahvisi tell us in the New Statesman why it’s a bad thing.

For the most part, sponsored activities (day-long silences, sponge-throwing, public waxing) depend on the extreme, the outrageous, the ridiculous. Friends and family are, apparently, only willing to part with money to witness something odd, humorous or downright unpleasant. So what message does Movember convey to those whose moustaches are more-or-less permanent features? With large numbers of minority-ethnic men—for instance Kurds, Indians, Mexicans—sporting moustaches as a cultural or religious signifier, Movember reinforces the “othering” of “foreigners” by the generally clean-shaven, white majority. Imagine a charity event that required its participants to wear dreadlocks or a sari for one month to raise funds—it would rightly be seen as unforgivably racist. What is the difference here? We are not simply considering an arbitrary configuration of facial hair, but one that had particular, imperial connotation to British men of our grandfathers’ generation and currently has a separate cultural valence for men from certain ethnic groups. Moustaches, whether or not “mo-bros” mean theirs to be, are loaded with symbolism. We often wonder how our fathers (both life-long moustached men) must feel each November, when their colleagues’ faces temporarily resemble theirs, and are summarily met with giggles and sponsor-money. No doubt they draw the obvious conclusion, that dovetails with many other experiences of life as an immigrant: there are different rules for white faces.

Um….is this a parody? Did the Staggers inadvertently republish something from the Onion?

I’m told not. I’m told it’s not, repeat not, a joke.

Further, the inclusivity of Movember deserves examination. For one, only men (and even then, only some men) can grow a moustache. The decision to focus on the moustache to raise awareness of men’s health issues might seem like an apposite one (though there’s no obvious relationship between moustaches and cancers), but it reinforces the regressive idea that masculinity is about body chemistry rather than gender identity, and marginalises groups of men who may struggle to grow facial hair, such as trans-men. Ironically, Movember also excludes the very men it is supposed to uplift; many men who have undergone radiotherapy or surgery to treat testicular cancer are rendered “hypogonadal” and are therefore unable to grow facial hair.

And you know what else? Eating lunch marginalizes people who get up too late to eat lunch. Riding a bike marginalizes people whose bums are too skinny to tolerate bicycle seats. Watching birds marginalizes people who prefer to watch tv.

So watch it, chum.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Tattycoram’s rage

Nov 30th, 2013 3:48 pm | By

A passage from Little Dorrit that particularly struck me is in chapter 2. (LD is public domain, so we can quote as much as we like. Ima quote a lot.)

The Meagles adopted a girl from the “foundling home” in Coram’s Fields in London, to be a maid for their beloved pampered daughter. (There’s a very funny but touching section where Mr Meagle narrates the story to Arthur, and he keeps saying, “as practical people, we” etcetera – it’s his story about them that they’re immensely practical – and then going on to describe compassionate generous behavior that’s not at all practical.) The daughter and maid are grown now, just barely.

A character named Miss Wade goes upstairs in the hotel where this set of characters have happened to meet each other.

Quoting now:

Now, there were many stairs and passages that she had to traverse
in passing from that part of the spacious house to the chamber she
had secured for her own occupation. When she had almost completed
the journey, and was passing along the gallery in which her room
was, she heard an angry sound of muttering and sobbing. A door
stood open, and within she saw the attendant upon the girl she had
just left; the maid with the curious name.

She stood still, to look at this maid. A sullen, passionate girl!
Her rich black hair was all about her face, her face was flushed
and hot, and as she sobbed and raged, she plucked at her lips with
an unsparing hand. 

‘Selfish brutes!’ said the girl, sobbing and heaving between
whiles. ‘Not caring what becomes of me! Leaving me here hungry
and thirsty and tired, to starve, for anything they care! Beasts!
Devils! Wretches!’

‘My poor girl, what is the matter?’

She looked up suddenly, with reddened eyes, and with her hands
suspended, in the act of pinching her neck, freshly disfigured with
great scarlet blots. ‘It’s nothing to you what’s the matter. It
don’t signify to any one.’

‘O yes it does; I am sorry to see you so.’

‘You are not sorry,’ said the girl. ‘You are glad. You know you
are glad. I never was like this but twice over in the quarantine
yonder; and both times you found me. I am afraid of you.’

‘Afraid of me?’

‘Yes. You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own–
whatever it is–I don’t know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am
ill-used, I am ill-used!’ Here the sobs and the tears, and the
tearing hand, which had all been suspended together since the first
surprise, went on together anew.

The visitor stood looking at her with a strange attentive smile.
It was wonderful to see the fury of the contest in the girl, and
the bodily struggle she made as if she were rent by the Demons of
old.

‘I am younger than she is by two or three years, and yet it’s me
that looks after her, as if I was old, and it’s she that’s always
petted and called Baby! I detest the name. I hate her! They make
a fool of her, they spoil her. She thinks of nothing but herself,
she thinks no more of me than if I was a stock and a stone!’ So
the girl went on.

‘You must have patience.’

‘I WON’T have patience!’

‘If they take much care of themselves, and little or none of you,
you must not mind it.’

I WILL mind it.’

‘Hush! Be more prudent. You forget your dependent position.’

‘I don’t care for that. I’ll run away. I’ll do some mischief. I
won’t bear it; I can’t bear it; I shall die if I try to bear it!’

The observer stood with her hand upon her own bosom, looking at the
girl, as one afflicted with a diseased part might curiously watch
the dissection and exposition of an analogous case.

The girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and
fulness of life, until by little and little her passionate
exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs as if she were in
pain. By corresponding degrees she sank into a chair, then upon
her knees, then upon the ground beside the bed, drawing the
coverlet with her, half to hide her shamed head and wet hair in it,
and half, as it seemed, to embrace it, rather than have nothing to
take to her repentant breast.

‘Go away from me, go away from me! When my temper comes upon me,
I am mad. I know I might keep it off if I only tried hard enough,
and sometimes I do try hard enough, and at other times I don’t and
won’t. What have I said! I knew when I said it, it was all lies.
They think I am being taken care of somewhere, and have all I want.

They are nothing but good to me. I love them dearly; no people
could ever be kinder to a thankless creature than they always are
to me. Do, do go away, for I am afraid of you. I am afraid of
myself when I feel my temper coming, and I am as much afraid of
you. Go away from me, and let me pray and cry myself better!’

And then the chapter ends. Dickens was quite a psychologist, along with his other talents.

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Those parts of the brain were completely switched off

Nov 30th, 2013 10:58 am | By

Imagine being a neuroscientist, and studying brain scans of murderers to look for psychopathic traits. Imagine doing that and looking at scans of family members for comparison purposes, and then finding one that is way at the extreme edge of what you’re finding in the murderers’ scans. Whoops, the scans got mixed up. The techs check and re-check; nope, no mix. So you peel off the code – and the scan is yours.

That’s what the neuroscientist James Fallon found.

He told his wife and she said, “I’m not surprised.”

He laughed at that. Which is kind of psychopathic itself.

The BBC discussion is slightly odd, because they simply talk about murderer or not murderer. He’s not a murderer, despite having all the alleles for being a psychopath, so what gives? (The answer is environment.)

But murder isn’t all there is, for cryin out loud. There’s cruelty, there’s bullying, there’s manipulation, there’s chronic lying. Professor Fallon isn’t a murderer, good, splendid, but it would have been interesting if the BBC person had asked him why his wife said that, or if he himself in fact thought he was deficient in the empathy department.

I once knew someone who ticked a lot of the psychopathy boxes. I never thought “murderer?” But I thought a lot of things short of that.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Thankful Dinesh

Nov 30th, 2013 10:26 am | By

And then there’s Dinesh D’Souza, with a festive Thanksgiving tweet.

Image preview

I am thankful this week when I remember that American is big enough and great enough to survive Grown-Up Trayvon in the White House!

Great god almighty. What is wrong with people?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Reading Dickens

Nov 30th, 2013 10:03 am | By

I’ve started reading Little Dorrit for the third or fourth time…skim-reading it in places, because I long ago decided that the only way to read Dickens is to jump when you start to get bored, because there’s no denying he gave a wealth of detail and sometimes it’s about something you just don’t need a wealth of detail about. That prison in Marseilles at the beginning for instance – I never will know what that’s there for, because I invariably get bored before I find out so I skip it.

But don’t go thinking it’s inherently boring, or that all of it’s boring, or that it’s boring in proportion to its quantity, or anything like that. The truth is that he was a god damn genius, and he really is doing something with all those words. It’s not slack, it’s not verbiage for the sake of verbiage. It’s detail.

Like, there’s the bit in chapter 3 where Affery takes Arthur up to the garret room where he’ll sleep for the night, and there’s a very detailed description of what’s in the room and what the room is like. I skipped some, because there was a lot, but I knew if I’d read it it would have been good stuff. That’s how Dickens is. You sort of have to skip in order to keep going, but you know you’re skipping rich writing. But I didn’t skip it all and I was rewarded with a real yell of laughter because at the end of the list of furniture was

…a washing-stand that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers who might prefer to impale themselves.

That’s Dickens for you.

Anybody read it? Anybody want to read it along with me?

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Bullying at 35 thousand feet

Nov 30th, 2013 9:04 am | By

One of the hot social media items this morning is a woman who made a big fuss about a delayed flight because Thanksgiving and a guy who retaliated. The point of the item seems to be that the guy did a great job of schooling the woman. I beg to differ.

Elan Gale Live-Tweets his Feud with Asshole Woman on Flight

This note war on a plane is hilarious. I have no idea who he is but I want to be his friend.

Hmm, yeah, I don’t.

He tweeted about her. Fine. The tweets are funny, and she’s anonymous. But then he sent her a note, and she replied to say his note was not cool, and he sent another.

View image on Twitter

 No. That has tipped way over into bullying, and sexist bullying at that. Not cool. And that’s before you even see what was posted to the Storify later:

“Diane is my cousin. I want to thank you for not pressing charges against her for slapping you. She would have been arrested for that, and spending a few days in jail would have been a particularly cruel irony under the circumstances. I am a bit surprised you said you could hear her breathing, because Diane has stage IV small cell lung cancer. This would have been her last Thanksgiving with us. I say “would have” because she did miss her connecting flight. She arrived this morning, having spent the night in a hotel in Phoenix. Admittedly, Diane hasn’t been handling her imminent death very well, but she really was looking forward to being with us and the rest of her family- all of whom were flying in for one last Thanksgiving with her. In her defense, she was very contrite and upset about her behavior on the plane. Certainly everybody wanted to get where they were going, but perhaps she can be forgiven for thinking that her need was more pressing than most. Thanksgiving has always been Diane’s favorite holiday, and her comment about the stuffing is true- she was the “keeper of the family recipe” and all of her nieces were planning to be instructed (one more time) in the mysterious ways of Auntie Diane’s stuffing. Since she missed her connecting flight, this did not occur. We are going to try to get as many of the family together as we can tomorrow, but that is up in the air. The plans were all for yesterday. I wish you had known her before she got cancer. You would have loved her. She was bright, funny, and compassionate, and had a self-deprecating sense of humor. She taught elementary music. She loved kids. She loved to laugh. She was everybody’s favorite aunt. Actually, she still is”

Not amusing.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



I get comments

Nov 30th, 2013 8:24 am | By

franc

Author

franc

0 approved

your@cuntsmellslikegrave.com

In Response To

Dayna Morales may have made it up

Comment

“Why do people do this?”

Same reason people accuse Shermer of rape. Human degradation masked as social justice. Duh.

The comment doesn’t amount to much. It’s clearly just a pretext for the real point, which is to tell me that my cunt smells like grave.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



He usually let the football coach take care of that sort of thing

Nov 29th, 2013 5:18 pm | By

Meanwhile, back in Steubenville, Ohio

A year ago this week, Michael McVey, the superintendent of schools in Steubenville, Ohio, sat in a conference room down the hall from his office and said he knew none of the details of Aug. 11, 2012, the night a 16-year-old girl was raped by two Steubenville High football players at a series of parties on a hot summer night.

Nope, he said, he didn’t know much, aside from the rumors that had been swirling around the football-crazy town for months. He told me and a colleague that he had not spoken with any of the students thought to be involved in the event because it hadn’t taken place on school grounds or during the school year. Besides, he said, he usually let the football coach take care of that sort of thing.

That all changed drastically Monday, when Ohio’s attorney general, Mike DeWine, made it McVey’s business.

McVey was one of four adults charged with crimes this week as a result of an investigation into the Steubenville rape case…

Well good.

Even if the latest indictments do not produce convictions, DeWine’s aggressive stance is an important moment. By holding adults accountable, prosecutors might persuade school administrators and coaches to make it their business to tell the police when they hear students or athletes have done something illegal. And maybe the police will be more diligent about investigating such complaints.

And maybe, just maybe, school administrators and coaches will even start to do a better job of telling their athletes, “No, really, we mean it: do not rape, and that includes fucking girls who’ve gotten shitfaced and are falling down. We’re not kidding around. We are deadly serious.”

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



85% versus zero

Nov 29th, 2013 4:09 pm | By

Orac, as he indicated in a comment, has been following the Sarah Hershberger case. He has a very informative post from October 28; very informative and very sad.

A couple of weeks ago, I commented on the story of 10 year old Amish girl in northeast Ohio with cancer whose parents, alarmed by the side effects of chemotherapy, had decided to stop the chemotherapy and treat their daughter with folk medicine instead. As a result, alarmed at the likelihood that Sarah Hershberger would suffer and die unnecessarily at a young age, the hospital treating her, Akron Children’s Hospital, went to court. It lost the first round, but earlier this month the original ruling was overturned, and it was ordered that Hershberger undergo chemotherapy to save her life. The odds of her survival with chemotherapy were estimated to be on the order of 85%. Her odds without chemotherapy? About as close to zero as you can imagine.

Given those odds, I take back what I said about their decision being – though wrong – not totally irrational. I didn’t realize her odds with chemo were that good.

Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, the Hershbergers have apparently taken their daughter out of the country to avoid chemotherapy. The longer they do that, the more likely it is that their daughter will die a horrible death, and it will be her father Andy Hershberger’s fault. I realize that he has nothing but the best intentions and believes he is doing the best thing for his daughter, but he is wrong, so very wrong. If his decision is not reversed, his daughter will almost certainly pay a very unpleasant price.

It’s a wretched story.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Well are you?

Nov 29th, 2013 3:54 pm | By

Want a Friday after Thanksgiving (in the US) quiz? Here, via Dave Silverman on Facebook, is one called Are you smarter than an atheist? (That’s silly. They don’t mean smarter, they mean better-informed-about-religion. Not the same thing at all.)

I scored 100%. Dave got one wrong; Dave Muscato got 100%.

It’s a bit irritating to take because it uses a separate click to tell you whether you got it right each time so that’s twice as many clicks. But I can’t resist easy quizzes.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Everyday sadism

Nov 29th, 2013 1:10 pm | By

Another chapter in the annals of harassment, especially harassment of women. A guy called Hunter Moore posted a photo of a young woman that had been hacked from her computer on his Revenge Porn website. Her mother had worked as a private detective, and she got on his case.

I emailed the site owner, Hunter Moore, and asked him to take down the photo in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He refused.

I was not surprised. By this time, I’d perused Moore’s online TV and newspaper interviews. He called himself a “professional life ruiner” and described his website as “pure evil.” He threw legal letters in the trash, addressed his followers as “my children,” taking a page from the Charles Manson handbook; and regularly taunted victims, encouraging them to commit suicide. People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear of lawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza), and forever link a woman’s name with the image she hoped to hide.

Moore maintained that his victims were sluts, asked to be abused and deserved to lose their jobs, embarrass their families and find themselves forever ruined. Below photos on the site, his followers posted crude and mysogynistic remarks. Victims were taunted as “fat cows,” “creatures with nasty teeth,” “ugly whores,” “white trash sluts” and “whales.” One commenter said, “Jesus, someone call Greenpeace and get her back in the water.” The website was not about pornography; it was about ridiculing and hurting others.

Sound familiar?

Jill was a kindergarten teacher in Kansas. I knew she was going to be posted. Moore had mentioned it on his Twitter feed — which I had been monitoring — and he asked his followers if they thought she’d get fired. They had responded with the typical landslide of loutish and smutty comments.

An hour later, her photos were visible to the world along with identifying information, including the name of the school where she taught. This was the cue for followers of Is Anyone Up? to bombard the principal and school board with Jill’s naked shots and crude remarks, such as “Fire that slut” and “You have a whore teaching your children.”

“Is Jill there?” I said to the school receptionist. “She’s in class right now.”

“I’d like to leave a message. This is urgent. Please tell her to call me when she gets time.”

While I was leaving my message, the principal had marched into Jill’s classroom and interrupted her lesson.

“Please gather your things and go home,” he said while five-year-old students watched in wonder.

Score. Just like that, some random guy and his random fans can trash a woman’s life.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



To seek alternatives to chemotherapy

Nov 29th, 2013 12:27 pm | By

This seems unlikely to end well.

10-year-old Amish girl with leukemia and her parents have left the country to seek alternatives to chemotherapy, according to the family’s attorney.

Sarah Hershberger and her parents oppose chemotherapy, and have been fighting the Akron Children’s Hospital in court after the family stopped Sarah’s treatment. Her parents said the treatments have caused their daughter a great deal of pain, and they’d rather focus on herbal and natural remedies.

It’s odd to make the girl the chief agent by mentioning her first in the first two sentences, as if she left the country and her parents went with her. They took her out of the country. She’s ten.

The Hershbergers left their home in northeast Ohio days before a state appeals court appointed a guardian in October to take over medical decisions from Sarah’s parents. The family members won’t say where they are now, but they have no plans to return to their home anytime soon, according to Thompson.

“Sarah’s condition has gotten a lot better since the family has been pursuing the alternative treatment,” Thompson said.

Sarah had tumors on her neck, chest and kidneys when her parents initially agreed to chemotherapy at Akron Children’s Hospital earlier this year. Her parents said the side effects were terrible, and they wanted to treat Sarah’s leukemia with alternative treatments.

So not straightforward faith healing, but maybe the faith makes the abandonment of arduous treatment seem more reasonable.

“We’ve seen how sick it makes her,” Andy Hershberger, Sarah’s father, told ABC News in August. “Our belief is the natural stuff will do just as much as that stuff if it’s God’s will.”

Yes see that’s where the problem is – it’s not about belief, and it’s not about god’s will. It’s about comparative prognoses, and the hospital clearly thinks the prognosis is better with chemo.

Maybe when she gets worse the parents will think better of it and bring her back.

Update: post on the subject from last August.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)