Insert Trite Metaphor about a Corral

Posted on April 9, 2004 in Roundup

It’s politics Friday!

It was a strange week on the web, especially for Kathryn Cramer who found herself the target of death threats and spam attacks by a faceless group of wRongist renegades after she noticed the similarity between the names of one of the mercenaries killed in Iraq and a mouthpiece for the Aryan Nations.

Her mistake is far more understandable and excusable than what followed.

michelle of a small victory is widely seen as playing a role in this though I cannot myself find either the inflammatory comment or the original post which Kathryn retracted. The whirlwind from the wRong of email spamming was countered by a reprisal from the Left. It got messy all around. michelle now says that failing to refill her Paxil earlier this week had skewed her mood. Suffering from major depression myself, I can understand how this can happen.

This explains michelle’s behavior, but it does not excuse it. Again, I am speaking as a fellow sufferer of depression. The Beast deceives and we are responsible for managing it. We do not entirely lose our minds. I do wish michelle well in turning things around: I’ve been there and know how painful it is when the meds just don’t work anymore or we fail to take them.

michelle’s role in all this reduces to a minor irritant compared with the death threats that Kathryn Cramer received for raising a question. michelle is only culpable for the bad example she set. The same holds true for Kathryn Cramer. I must say that Kathryn took the high ground when, after hearing the counter-attack on michelle, she called for an end to such actions by her allies. michelle could have done this more explicitly and with less defensiveness than she did here. I commend to her her own words:

Here’s the thing about apologies: they very often aren’t what they appear to be. Too often, they are excuses cloaked in the word sorry….I prefer an apology that says, I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. There’s nothing more that’s needed.

I think that’s what’s missing here. michelle needs to say just that. So do every single one of her supporters and others on the wRong who made Kathryn’s life hell this week. It’s time for michelle and her crowd to admit that they acted out of hand, to police those who still don’t get the message, and to drop the subject. Kathryn’s supporters should follow Kathryn’s meritorius lead and apologize for any spamming that they did.

See today’s web links for more material on apologies.

Politics

• Beerzie pointed out this article by Jim Lewis:

  So what the photographs tell us, most clearly, is what the press thinks its audience can stand, and hence, how, in general, the war is going. On a literal level they show almost nothing of any value whatsoever, except perhaps that something gruesome happened; and any reporter could tell you that, as indeed many of them have. The pictures may seem to make the death of those Americans more vivid, but in the end, they make it a little harder to see.

• marie considered this and the issue of blacking out web pages in memory of the Rwandan genocide victims.
  
• Jack Balkin watched as fighting spread to six Iraq cities:

  The predicament in which the U.S. now finds itself is a direct result of colossal hubris, short-sighted policies, and lack of preparation for the period following the fall of Baghdad. Members of the Bush Administration foolishly assumed that wars of preemption would be easy to win and could be fought on the cheap. How wrong they were.

• Randy Paul has a few suggestions for pResident Bush.
  
• Joan d’Arc exposes a shocking war photo brought to you by Bush’s private military.
  
• Brian Kane shows me why I am glad to live in the Orange County highlands.
  
• Andrew wants someone to call Antonin Scalia’s bluff. So does the Lizard Queen. So do I.
  
• Deborama fumes about the latest strike in the offensive U.S. offensive against the Iraqi people:

  Yes, bombing mosques, that’s a brilliant strategy and a logical next step in the War on Terra. Gen. Kimmit says it is permissible to attack a “holy site” if “there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds.” So I guess that’s why they timed the air strike to coincide with afternoon prayers?

• BottleofBlog had a great summary of Rice’s testimony before the 9-11 Commission:

  Rice: Bush Knew Everything, Nothing, And Can Now Prevent Attacks Which Are Unpreventable

• Jeremy contemplated the similarities between Rwanda and Iraq.
  
• George was just about the only blogger who noticed this peaceful demonstration in Bagdhad.
  
• Andrea talked about how Democrats can help Bush win.
  
• Chari catches the wRong attempting an end run around the Constitution.

Culture

• Awake at Dawn had fits (good fits) over a poem by Annette Murrell.
  
• Raven storms about getting decent tech support from MovableType.
  
• Rob is excited that baseball season has begun.
  
• Francis laments the Bau Wau Haus architecture of Stockholm.
  
• Robert considers the eccentricities of Japanese television ads.
  
• zhaf is reading a quintessentially boring book on rhetoric.

Religion

• Blaugustine interviews God and He gives her a pat on the head. (Up to Part Five)
  
• Coup de Vent shares her Passover experiences.
  
• Yule comments on the culture of confession and Mike Golby thinks she’s only covering for the fact that her vice principal saw the recent nude photos on her site.

Personal

• Help Stu Get a Job!
  
• Artichoke Heart revisits some photos taken of her during the 1950s:

  What seems somewhat apparent, at least to me, as I think about all of these photographs, is the underlying sense of strain . . . the feeling that making these images had been terribly hard work, that they were a product of trying too hard, and that the deliberation that went behind all the costuming, choreographing and posing, rather than capturing the 1950’s wholesome Americana my mother had been striving for, instead revealed the oddities and occasionally destructive eccentricities of our household.

• Bittersweet resonance gets a little cryptic:

  I used to think we could be friends at some point. now…. I don’t know. I’m a million miles away from knowing who she is. she looks like a stranger to me, someone I don’t recognize. and it feels strange that that no longer hurts. that it’s no longer important to me to wonder what our relationship may be, in time. to no longer wonder who she is or what she is doing. I realized today I don’t even know her name. how strange is that?

• Crazy Tracy rediscovered how family ties can help save her money.
  
• Elkit showed off her new house.
  
• Kimber faces toilet training her daughter not entirely bravely:

  She is absolutely unphased by being wet. When she does wet herself, she had no interest in getting changed! She prefers to run around in wet clothes! UGH! I often despair that I will EVER understand this child. She is more and more getting into the “girly” things. She wants to wear dresses all the time, seems to prefer her denim jumpers to anything else. She likes kitties and princesses and all her dolls and animals.

• Teresa shares what she discovered while managing several estates.
  
• Victoria shared her experiences from going to a martial arts gathering.
  
• Mary Lou shows what she wants for Easter.
  
• Irene thinks she is suffering from Burnout:

  I…feel tired all the time, although maybe my weird sleep hours would account for that. I never seem to get enough sleep; every day I tell myself I’ll be going to bed early, but I never actually do it. Because I always read before sleeping, and once I start a book I can’t put it down till I’ve finished it. Even if I have to force my eyes to stay open and my brain to concentrate, I’ll stubbornly soldier on until I turn the last page.

• Billy suffers from a mild case of Road Rage.
  
• Pam remembers a former office mate who sounds a bit like me:

  This new neighbor was a guy about 10 or 15 years older than me. He came into my office, introduced himself and proceeded somehow to tell me a whole lot more about himself in a very short period of time than most people ever would. He had an attitude and a chip on his shoulder the size of his home state of California. We became fast friends….

• Bill keeps tormenting me with pictures of his garden.
  
• Rae spun off about and listed the types of annoying people.
  
• Andrea recounts an encounter with a pair of shar pei puppies.
  
• Desert Viking is grateful for TurboTax. So are we.
  
• Nancy went out to pay the water tax:

  Since there’s no water coming through the pipes, and hasn’t been for most of the time we have lived here, I asked once what would happen if we didn’t pay. Immediately the answer came: we’ll cut off your sewage line. Very clever of them, to combine the two departments.

Web Links

• Rules for Flame Wars — written by me in 1993 and still pertinent
  
• Apologies and Comments
  
• Apologies: Clearing the Slate
  
• Accepting Apologies
  
• Actors whip Easter Bunny
  
• Installing Linux on a dead badger

Missing Bloggers

• A Clever Sheep (since March 29)
  
• Give Love: Get Love (since March 18)
  
• Naked Writing (since March 31)
  
• Nurse Ratched (since March 11)
  
• Song of the Trees (since March 30)

Recent Reading

• The Midnight Disease : The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty
  
• Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
  
• Grendel by John Gardner
  
• The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems by Frances Mayes