Friday, January 04, 2008

Being a BT means never saying sorry.


It would appear the culture of “accountability” is only for thee and not for me when it comes to the Blogging Tories. Yes, I know, I was completely surprised, too. First a little background.

Raphael Alexander dropped by and made the following comment:

It's a shame Red Tory deleted his blogs [both]. He's an interesting character, but he appears to have gone off the deep end lately...

He was then soundly kicked to the curb by both KEvron and myself.

His comment was later referenced on this thread and quite a bit of discussion took place wholly in support of RT.

Cue Raphael who tried, and failed, to spin his way out of it with this:

The feminism stuff... yes quite fascinating that.

As for RT, I have no idea what led to his decline of interest in politics and blogging, and his little johnnytard act was most entertaining.

I hadn't realized my comment was mean-spirited. It was meant in to jest, as in "first the guy quite his blogs, then he creates johnnytard, then he deletes his blogs, what next?"

I like RT, and I always gave him a voice on my blog and I welcomed his comments. I hope he returns, and I wish him all the best. Any slight was entirely unintentional.

Christ Jesus, where to begin? RA implies that someone has mental issues and then is surprised when people take offence. He promptly attempts to justify this by saying he wasn’t being “mean-spirited” and it was “unintentional”. This, my dears, is a classic non-apology apology which is no fucking apology at all.

Notice the lack of an actual “I’m sorry” which would force him to take responsibility for his words? And the implication that the person or persons taking offence are, in fact, the ones with the problem? Yeah, me too.

And let’s not overlook his oh-so-magnanimous statement about “giving RT a voice on his blog”. Well, aren’t you just a stand-up guy, Raph? If by stand-up guy, I actually mean, you know, a completely insensitive prick. In case you’re wondering, it’s a blog with an open comments section ... not the Algonquin Round Table. Anyone can “have a voice” on it as long as you don’t ban them.

Please forgive my little rant. As I said, I’m having a bad day and I’ve been seething about this since last night. And it doesn't help that for purely selfish reasons, I really miss RT and wish he was still blogging. This calls for some serious shoe shopping.

And furthermore. I give Mr. Alexander a couple of hours before he shows up in this comment thread and takes issue with the fact that I called him a prick, completely ignoring the whole point of this discussion. Anyone want to start a pool?

Credit where credit is due.

11 comments:

David Webb said...

Aw heck Lulu, I was trying to calm RA down with some Bob Ross videos, and now you are going to undo all that and get him riled up again. Maybe I can find something more soothing than Bob Ross painting a sunset...but I doubt it.

Pale said...

I have met many people who are simply socially inept. Often they have some sort of disorder, and words simply pop out before they think on the gravity of them. (I have sympathy usually for this type.)

There are also the Shit disturbers who just like to stir the pot.

Then there are those, who when the gaze is leveled at them because what they have said is simply too stoopid; they try to deflect. LOOK OVER THERE! ( a favoured Harper tactic)

After watching the amazing verbal twists and turns of the amazing Rubberman trying to extricate himself from his own noose, I think its a combo of the last two.

Like another blogger recently...That hole is getting Deep! Time to put in an outhouse.

Raphael Alexander said...

Again, I don't really know what personal issues Red Tory is going through, but I didn't mean to imply he's insane in serious way. I think Red Tory would understand that if he were around. He and I had a little understanding, or at least I would like to think.

If not, Martin, I'm sorry for insinuating you were going crazy. I intended no serious offense, and I hope that whatever personal problems you are dealing with will see you through to full recovery and happiness.

Raphael Alexander said...

I have met many people who are simply socially inept. Often they have some sort of disorder, and words simply pop out before they think on the gravity of them.

That could tend to describe me. I have Aspergers. But I won't use that as an excuse for being insensitive at times. I admit I can be a prick. But so can the authors of this blog, and foot-in-mouth comments aren't foreign to CC in any way, shape, or form.

LuLu said...

Bob Ross ... that 'fro would scare the crap out of the average BT. It's so large.

JJ said...

RA - As I mentioned to you earlier, you seem to spend a lot of time saying "But but but... I didn't mean..." That indicates there's a discrepancy between what you think your words mean, and what those words actually do mean out in the larger universe.

This could be solved by giving a little more thought to what you've written and how it might be received before clicking the "Publish" button.

Just my 2cents.

Ti-Guy said...

If not, Martin, I'm sorry for insinuating you were going crazy. I intended no serious offense, and I hope that whatever personal problems you are dealing with will see you through to full recovery and happiness.

Well, that works for me (although I'm not presuming it works for anyone else).

Look, whatever substantive issues are in play here, we should all remember that we were all much younger once.

Red Tory said...

Hmmm. I really wish you wouldn’t make a big deal over this.

Just for the record, although Raphael’s remarks did come to my attention, I really thought nothing much of them, or for that matter even took the slightest bit of offense. It’s certainly nothing new for it to be suggested that I’m bonkers or may have lost my marbles. Indeed, much worse charges have been leveled at me over the years. Being pretty free with the “namecalling” and colourful epithets myself, not to mention questioning the sanity of others for many of the highly dubious and not infrequently reprehensibly ignorant things they propound on their blogs or elsewhere, it would be a little rich to get indignant over a relatively harmless remark speculating that I’d gone off the deep end.

In some respects, may be I had; at least in terms of being completely fed up on the one hand and on the other feeling the almost irresistible urge to lash out in response to what often strike me as appalling cases of idiocy or, as some prefer to call it “Teh Stupid” (the kind that burns, you know). As I’ve said elsewhere, the frenzied and quite madly insane “Johnnytard” parody blog was really a final expurgation of sorts, but in the end not really one that served much purpose other than a bit of personal catharsis from having put myself in contact with what can only be described as catastrophic idiocy and/or retardation, both on various loathsome blogs I willfully exposed myself to and to a lesser extent in the comments section of the old “Red Tory” blog.

I found it somewhat amusing that Raphael remarked a little plaintively (or maybe quite proudly depending on how one looks at it) the other day about “full frontal invasion by the feminists and the liberal-left intelligentsia” in response to his diatribe about Feminism being “the root of all evil” (at least some perceived it that way). There were twenty-one comments on that thread. Not much of an invasion, I’d say. I suspect the “liberal-left intelligentsia” won’t be maliciously trolling his blog the way they obsessively did my old one and piling up comments into the hundreds sometimes, most filled with venom and hostile, angry invective. I have to say, that really took a lot of the fun and interest out of blogging for me. But then that was their intent, I suppose, other than the fact of them simply being hopelessly demented sociopaths. For some curious reason these appear more to be creatures of the Right, at least in my experience… Odd that.

Anyway, that was certainly one reason for wanting to stop blogging on the political front. Also, it was become an enormous drag, time-wise that was starting to have a really detrimental effect on my work output (the stuff that keeps the lights on and the wolves at bay!). And yet, there was the silly, almost irresistible compulsion to keep going. Even on the newer blog that was meant to be trivial, non-political and fun, it was starting to get darker, focusing on religion and what not, with some of the old politics starting to creep in again. I could see where that was going and didn’t like the turn it was taking…

And so, with a new year at hand, the time seemed right to finally and completely kill off all the blogs and get on with work and deal with more important “real world” concerns. As much as it pained me to wipe out the old place in its entirety (mostly out of respect to regulars like Scotian who had contributed many thoughtful comments over the years, certainly not because of my scribblings), it was unfortunately necessary to eliminate the temptation to resume and get absorbed by it that existed otherwise.

So enough already.

Pale said...

That could tend to describe me. I have Aspergers. But I won't use that as an excuse for being insensitive at times. I admit I can be a prick. But so can the authors of this blog, and foot-in-mouth comments aren't foreign to CC in any way, shape, or form.

See, thats partly what my original thoughts were, but then you had to go and ruin it with the magical...BUT LOOK! He did it too!.
Accept your own mistakes, move on.
Maybe have someone proof read BEFORE you hit the post button.
Ask this of the Proofreader: "Does this sound like I'm an asshole?"

There is no shame in that BTW.
I have my own Real life poison pen letters de-snarked a bit.

But for cryin' out loud, quit pointing that finger. I have seen cc most eloquently apologize and admit when he is wrong too.

Ti-Guy said...

Are we done vilifying Raphael? Is it finished? Can we stop now?

I don't know why some leftists save the best venom for those who are close by, but frankly, I'm starting to think it's because some of you are cobras.

Enough.

KEvron said...

ra's a big boy.

KEvron