I really, at some point, hope that I gain the self-restraint not to visit Dizzy’s blog every time Doug links to it. Unfortunately for me (probably fortunately for certain others), I don’t yet have that restraint. So here are some quick thoughts on some posts.
In her cutting the crap post, Dizzy spends a post insinuating that my comment on the occasional and limited benefits of anonymously commenting was somehow “cover” for my own anonymous commenting. Of course, she then disclaims that she was intending to insinuate anything like that.
Sort of reminds me of the old, southern saying “Bless [his/her] heart”. You can say any nasty thing about someone, and as long as you say “Bless [his/her] heart” afterwards, it’s all good. “She’s such a bitch… bless her heart!”
Of course, veiled insinuations and disclaimers are much easier to defend than actual accusations… gotta love all that plausible deniability. In the future, “dear”, if you have an accusation to make, why not just “man up” (pardon the phrase) and make it? If you don’t, then why not just have a discussion on the actual point that was made? The half-way point is used so often because it neither requires an articulable viewpoint on the real point that was made nor does it actually require the defense of an accusation… it’s a natural fit for a coward, and though that’s not a word I usually associate with Dizzy… hey… if the shoe fits…
Then there were a nice selection of posts which bash any number of people and/or encourage everyone to just be nice. If it were art, I’d say it was a “thoughtful contrast.”
After that comes the post Doug linked to which talks about the Britney bashing epidemic. I agree with Dizzy more than I disagree here, but I just think we should have more important things in the world than Britney’s hair. Like, for example, Anna Nicole Smith’s remains. To me it has nothing to do with the trials and tribulations of the super-rich.
A post or so later, Dizzy talks respect. More specifically, she talks about why people shouldn’t give some people more respect than others. I really, really hope that her post is simply an illustration of a failure to grasp the point that’s being made, and not an accurate representation of what she actually thinks. To put some math to it, here’s my method of respecting people. Everyone starts out with some reasonable level of respect… let’s call it X… from there, their actions cause me to respect them more or less… so someone I don’t know at all would be at X… someone I know a little bit and have had some experiences that cause me to question their honesty and/or character might be at Y and someone I have had a lot of experiences with that have demonstrated to me that he or she is not to be trusted and is generally a bad person might be at Z… on the flip side… there’s a mirror image for people that do things that make me respect them more… say some B for folks who I know a little bit and I respect more than I respect the average Joe and some C for people I respect a lot more… all where Z < Y < X < B < C.
To respond to Dizzy’s assertion that “IT’S NOT UP TO YOU TO EVALUATE THEM,” (excessive capitalization in original): it is up to me to determine how much I respect someone. Virtually everyone deserves some, but some deserve more than others… and the only person who can say how much respect a person deserves is the person giving it out. It’s no more my place to say how much someone should respect Dizzy than it is Dizzy’s place to tell me that I should respect someone else more. Now, respecting someone and treating them decently are two different things, and I think in most cases the the latter should be unaffected by the former, but to say that nobody can evaluate other people’s behavior? Please.
This coming from the girl who, not a week earlier, wrote (of me) “Anyway, I think you’re a bad person. The end.” Sounds like an evaluation to me. I’m sure she will argue that she still respects me, despite all evidence to the contrary, and it doesn’t really matter to me whether she does or doesn’t… it’s just interesting to see the diverging standards that are employed, in Dizzy’s world, for “All people who are Dizzy” versus “All people who are not Dizzy.”
Then we get back to the everyone in law school is sooooo mean horse that Dizzy loves to kick so much. It’s the same old song and dance, though. Sometimes I wonder if we even go to the same law school, because I haven’t met many people I would consider “mean”. Or, at least, meaner than the average person.
There were also more posts, but I got bored of reading and decided to do some writing instead. It’s really a shame that she works so hard to disparage such a great group of people. That’s easy to do with basically any group, though, if you find the worst elements of the group and then judge the many by the few.
Oh well.
Tomorrow it’s off to Atlanta to meet with a handful of prospective 1Ls… Sunday’s trip to NC was great… although getting stranded there thanks to some bizarre weather in DC was not. Hopefully tomorrow’s travels go off without a hitch.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Oh… and a specific question asked on Dizzy’s blog… why do I moderate comments:
The answer is that I don’t. I have Wordpress setup so that the first comment from a particular email address is moderated. I have it setup that way to avoid spam, which I get a fair amount of. After that, a comment is only moderated if Wordpress thinks it’s spam… I have never taken the time to look into how that’s decided…
I’ve noticed that a few people, of whom Dizzy is one, get their comments moderated every time they post… I’m too lazy to try to figure out why this is and try to fix it. I also, to be perfectly honest, don’t particularly care if Dizzy’s posts get moderated. She has a blog that she is not shy to use to bad-mouth me, so I don’t really feel like I’m causing her any sort of loss in the time between when she posts a comment and when I get around to approving it (which, I admit, is sometimes not until I have time to respond… but that’s a personal flaw/preference of mine).
February 28th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Can I be a “B”?
February 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Re: the spam filter
I’ve tried to post links to comment before, those are getting cut as spam. Maybe if I have another link I can cheat my way around it though… ; )
February 28th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Sigh. Ooh-kay. So you’re saying that I am one of “a few people” whose comments are moderated every time. For no particular reason. But it never happened before. Until halfway through a discussion where, you know, I said you were like, wrong (about your argument’s premises and stuff like that). Right?
And THEN you wrote a long post about how no one should EVER be anonymous. But you made a little bit of an exception for making anonymous, and critical, comments on the blogs of people who don’t like you. Right after a couple anonymous posts on how I’m not pretty or nice appeared in my threads. Is that right?
And THEN a photo of yourself posed in front of a flowering bush/tree disappeared, immediately after I laughed at you for posting glamour shots. Right?
Curious. But hey, if you say so, I’m not on your computer. I wouldn’t know…
February 28th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
PS - I think you’re a bad person
February 28th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I think you have a decently interesting and articulate blog, from the one other time I’ve read anything on it. The Dizzy-bashing and post-by-post rebuttal is a little unattractive, even if you disagree with/dislike her. Don’t stoop to that level; it makes you seem petty.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:52 am
“So you’re saying that I am one of “a few people” whose comments are moderated every time. For no particular reason.”
No. I’m saying I don’t know what the reason is, and I don’t care to look it up. I’m quite certain that there is a particular reason because, among other reasons, computers are deterministic systems.
“And THEN you wrote a long post about how no one should EVER be anonymous.”
No. I wrote one post demonstrating why it’s basically impossible, in the long run, to be anonymous and another about why I am not anonymous.
“But you made a little bit of an exception for making anonymous, and critical, comments on the blogs of people who don’t like you.”
Again, no. There’s a big difference between blogging anonymously and commenting anonymously, and I simply said — in response to another comment — that there are sometimes benefits to commenting anonymously that might outweigh the disadvantages. And the issues with anonymous commenting apply whether the comment is positive or negative and whether the recipient is friend or foe. You’re just choosing to look at one example.
“Right after a couple anonymous posts on how I’m not pretty or nice appeared in my threads. Is that right?”
I don’t know — I don’t follow your comment threads — but I’ll assume that it is for the sake of argument.
I have to wonder what motive you think I would have to comment anonymously on either of those two things. It is no secret that I, personally, do not find you attractive (physically or otherwise) and it is no secret that I think you are bitchy and hypocritical.
I have no problem saying those things and attaching my name to them… so why, exactly, would I post them anonymously?
“And THEN a photo of yourself posed in front of a flowering bush/tree disappeared, immediately after I laughed at you for posting glamour shots. Right?”
No, not right. Such a photo does not, and never has, existed. It’s cute that you keep bringing this up though… you must have been hard-up for mean things to say that day to resort to pure fabrication… it’s a good thing you never whined about other people making things up about you. That’d make you an even bigger hypocrite.
…oh wait…
March 1st, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Sure. I’m a hypocrite. Whatever. And the comment I made that’s a joke is still awaiting moderation?
March 1st, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I’ll say one thing, law school’s been great for your writing!
March 6th, 2007 at 8:59 am
I’m gonna have to agree with Dizzy on the part about respect, because I think you’re both confused, or probably more accurately, I think I draw a distinction that both of you might not.
On the one hand, you have the idea of respect, i.e. “I respect Joe.” This seems to be what Pete is talking about, a feeling of “deferential regard” (dictionary definition). This is normally based on a course of dealing with the person where you may not not agree with everything they do, but you might agree with why, etc. It’s highly personal, and it is up to everyone to decide how much respect any other person has.
Dizzy is talking about treating people with respect, which I think is a completely different concept. I would have to agree with her that everyone is entitled to a certain level of respect, which in this case simply means dealing with people politely and with a level of basic human decency.
If Dizzy’s point is “People in law school don’t agree with me and therefore treat me rudely,” she has a point. If the point is “People disagree with me and therefore give less weight to my opinions and don’t have a good view of me”, well I agree with Pete, that no one is entitled to that from anyone.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Which is, if you read what I wrote, exactly what I said.
“Now, respecting someone and treating them decently are two different things, and I think in most cases the the latter should be unaffected by the former,”
So… if you added something to the discussion, I’m pretty sure I missed it.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
My point was that was what Dizzy said too.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
But that’s not what Dizzy said. She may well have meant it, but what she said was
“People deserve respect because they are people. And IT’S NOT UP TO YOU TO EVALUATE THEM.”
She might have meant that people deserve to be treated with respect, but that’s not what she said. And, in fact, the distinction that you claim to have drawn but that Dizzy and I, in your eyes, didn’t is one that I explicity drew and one that you are now saying that Dizzy was drawing…
So, as I mentioned before, I fail to see what you were trying to get at unless, of course, you weren’t really trying to add anything and were just coming here to say you agreed with Dizzy but then agree with everything I wrote.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, I’m just trying ot figure out what (if anything) you were aiming for.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I really see R-E-S-P-E-C-T as an action. So I meant it in the “treat others decently” way. But I didn’t say it explicitly. So Pete’s right when he says I should have explained that much more clearly. And I do think people here sort of seem to feel, “I disagree, so I can be a jerk to her…” But I certainly don’t think disagreeing with me is any way disrespectful. It’s all in how it’s done. (And I don’t think I’m always the best example of respectful behavior either - I do try though..)
March 7th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
To put it another way, a guy has a right to believe my opinons are completely crap. And tell me so. And I won’t mind. But if I catch him looking down my shirt because I’m not one of his girl friends so I don’t “count,” I’m going to be really. Ticked. Off.