Big Stink In Little China

Yesterday (Tuesday, now that I post this) was kind of a gaggy day, in this little corner of the web. And it is little. I'm not sure some of the well-known bloggers involved really comprehend that. Least of all, the perps of Tuesday's big stink.

I'm not even going to bother to preface this with all the "I identify with you as a woman" crap, because that should be a given. Not that there were many givens—which are, after all, the product of trust—around yesterday.

What showed up instead, en masse, was a lot of ego-underbelly. The dark side of narcissism. Disowned, projected content, with that fabulous mob-mentality willingness to point the finger.

Finger, what am I saying. They named names, numbers, URLs. People, read my lips: this is something healthy adults do not do.

And you could count them on one hand, the adults.

As to the many "friends" who rushed to defend Kathy ... WTF were you thinking? Are people so bloody eager to belong, so profoundly immature ... it disheartens me. That's not support, it's not friendship, and certainly not what a person in trauma needs. Idjits! Get a clue, read a book, something!

Apparently, we must also review basic civil rights: No one is free to accuse a suspected other in public this way, name names, organize vendettas or any other similar damn thing ... unless, of course, you believe in vigilante justice. So crude, so not nice.

No matter how very special you are. No matter, even, if disgusting things have been posted about your wife—outrage, yes. Posses, no. Let me see, also bandied about by some leading lights were: vilification,isolation, shunning ... prison, FCS. Them's some mighty big underbellies. Some mighty brave pajama people.

Now we come to the nub of things. Miss Tara Rogue Hunt's blog, where I had wandered onto the comment thread that fateful afternoon.

"If you are part of the swarm of mean kids that come around to just be disruptive without making a point, you will be deleted. Say what you came to say … you aren’t clever. You are mean."

Talk about riveting. Instantly, the discussion became like one of those accident scenes where everything unfolds in slow-motion, with sirens and flashing lights just around the corner.

And Miss Tara Rogue soon got down to her nub.

"I don't want to sound like Oprah or any of these really slimy things the "guffaw brigade" is indicating below (they remind me of the mean kids in high school who used to draw pictures of me with zits all over and laugh at my expense) ... I guess I want us to get real and human."

A many-headed nub, as nubs so often are, and we ought not to be surprised. That is compassion, not the rush to fawn, but letting people speak for themselves—and listening. Carefully.

Tuesday night's Dan Fost Tech Chronicles column: (revised, small mercies, for Wednesday's paper)

"Tara Hunt, of San Francisco, who had been the original target of Locke's 'Mean Kids' site (she had coined the term after getting flamed for suggesting that companies need to find a 'higher purpose') ..."

Which isn't quite true. Is it. Clearly that's how you felt; the astonishing thing (do I need to say this?) is the latitude you cut for yourself as a result.

"'Chris Locke is a sad soul who blames the world for his lack of success,' Hunt said when I reached her on the phone today. 'He's constantly broke and angry. He calls himself rageboy. All that anger makes him very hard to work with.'"

Without condescension, Tara Rogue, but because this is somewhat within my purview, I offer you one thought: Stop all that fucking Twittering and get your ass into therapy.

No one acts out that dramatically and harmfully to another who has integrated their dark side ... and the dark side is what this is really all about.

N.B. This post actually follows upon this one, unbeknownst at the time.