The trial of Hottie Mcnaturepants
Now here’s something I didn’t know – my friend Chris Clarke has been a Thought Criminal too, way back in the distant past of 2006.
Michael Bérubé was on the story.
First and foremost, the Ministry of Justice wishes to thank the brilliant if deeply misguided Chris Clarke for volunteering to be the object of the WAAGNFNP’s first-ever Show Trial. (We certainly hope it’s not the last!) And we send our very best wishes to Chris’s beloved dog Zeke.
Now, for those of you in the WAAGNFNP fringe faction who may not have been following closely for the past few months (shame on you!), here’s a brief review.
This is a genuine bona fide internationally sanctioned Show Trial, and therefore the evidence and testimony against the accused must be merciless and overwhelming.
This is not a capital case. The purpose is to have our Wayward One understand the grave nature of his transgressions and repent his crimes against the Party. Once he has done this, he will gratefully affix his name to the Statement of Guilt, accept his punishment, and be welcomed back into the loving fold of the WAAGNFNP family. Remember: we are always already splitting, and always already fused!
The WAAGNFNP’s ancient two-month-old ritual of Show Trial serves as a form of collective healing for the entire party. We do it this way because if we tried the volcano method, the wingnuts would go batshit crazy on us and have their entire Christianist agenda all up in our grill. I’m sure you know what we mean. (Warning: Language Alert!)
God damn that all sounds familiar – right down to the two months part.
Read the whole damn thing.
of course. . . “collective healing”
I wish I’d thought of that.
I have tried a few times to trace what happened when Chris left FTB but gave up. Was it a specific series of posts?
I cannot stop laughing at this.
Jennifer @ 2 – No it was one post, on which the Horde went into advanced apeshit meltdown. He told me which one just the other day, but naturally I don’t remember.
It was this post that was the final straw, but there had been months of growing feeling like the Horde was not an environment that was good for me.
If I had felt able to ban people from my threads effectively, it might have been different. If I had it to do over again, I would have had an upfront convo with PZ about what I needed to be able to do in order to feel like I was writing in a healthy environment for me. But I never brought it up, so PZ wasn’t aware I was having a problem until it was too much for me to handle.
My not bringing it up earlier was unfair to him, actually, and put him in the position of having to deal with fallout that could maybe have been prevented.
Well, I guess Jason Thibeault’s recent post is long enough to serve as Day 1 and Day 2 of the indictment. Though I think he does a better job of making himself look like a disingenuous, preening schmuck than of making Ophelia look bad.
You see everyone, when Jason put himself up on the cross and offered to leave FtB if he was a source of division, that wasn’t the real reason at all. It was really because he was saving the little bloggers of FtB by trying to get Ophelia to stay and help prop up FtB’s revenue streams. (Note: if Ophelia ever demanded Jason’s departure, or accepted his “offer” to leave, I haven’t seen it.)
Now that Ed has left, Jason simply has to stay at FtB to provide tech support, once again martyring himself for the good of the collective. That, presumably, is how he justifies his snide remark about “Ophelia, despite her pretensions at leaving, has not left yet. Mostly, I’ll note, because PZ begged her to stay.” when — as is obvious — she has in fact left, while he remains there several days after declaring in Ophelia’s comments that he was leaving.
Poor, poor Jason. At least he has his collection of disgruntled Horde members to feed him ally cookies while they plot their campaign against PZ.
What a shame The Trial of Ophelia Benson wasn’t as funny as that.
I first started reading Pharyngula the very week Chris Clarke left. His original trial wasn’t as funny either.
Fancy that.
screechymonkey @ 6
That was the post that led to me deciding my funds were best spent elsewhere. I cancelled my subscription and notifications to FtB. I can check the three blogs that I still read without supporting the others in their quest to sacrifice Ophelia on the altar of ‘ But I’m a good ally’.
I still read FTB and make comments there. I’ll be reading and posting here as well. While I understand why Ophelia left FTB, her reasons don’t mean that FTB has become another slymepit.
I don’t believe I’ve read Jason Thibeault’s blog in over a year so I don’t know nor really care about what he may have said. I’m more concerned with Dana Hunter’s comments because she’s someone I respect.
Al Dente,
I’ll continue to read Pharyngula — if anything, I expect it to be a better place in the future, because even before the fatwa against Ophelia began PZ was already expressing a desire for change. I’m not sure exactly what he has in mind, but I think he’s going to bring it back to more “free-flowing discussion (while still banning blatant trolls)” and away from the “this is a safe space and we will jump all over anyone who makes us uncomfortable” that it’s been veering towards.
As for the rest of FTB, I only sporadically read the non-big-three bloggers, in part because most of them only sporadically post. I’ll probably continue to sporadically read them, but not on these tired topics.
I know that the past few weeks (months?) have been craptacular for you, Ophelia, and maybe your preference would have been that it didn’t come to this, your leaving FtB. I’m not glad in any way about any of it–except I’m happy to see you, back home here.