Themes Repeat

Donna is smart. Sometimes I get lucky and Donna visits me and says smart things here too, like for instance:

But you notice something else, almost all these blogwars aren't really about the initial complaint, and neither is this one. The TN bloggers and Brittany herself came in and explained who she is and how she does things. That's when JG started digging.

. . .

This is just like Kos with the pie fight, the ad was just a tiny blip on people's radar, it was attacking and demeaning progressive women that blew up all over the place. That was some nasty crap written by a conservative asswipe for sure, and that writer should have been condemned by all for it, but it is easier to attack and demean progressive women.

Bingo. It's the attitude. The elitist, know-it-all, everything-adjusted-to-my-comfort-zone attitude.

I get accused of having that attitude myself. Like, if I participate in a thread on a feminist blog criticizing a particular thing--oh no, that must mean I'm expecting the world to be tailored to me-me-me all the time.

'Scuse me, pardon me, but NO. That is incorrect.

See, if I thought everything should be tailored to me, I'd be over at the blog that didn't accommodate me, demanding it start accommodating me this instant, I mean right now!

And I didn't go over to Sadly, No! during the fat wars and do that. Sadly, No! is what it is. I didn't expect it to change much.

But I sure as hell expected that feminists could have a body image discussion on a feminist blog, even if it was about content posted elsewhere, without being told to shut the fuck up and quit boring the big liberal boys with our trivial fucking problems.

So some of us said that: "Hey, you don't have to be here getting bored with our trivial fucking problems, you know. You can leave and stuff."

And when that was said, the response was, "But this post is titled 'Go Fuck Yourself'." And then the feminists said, "But that's a reference to something Dick Cheney said, don't you get it?" And then the response to that was, "But this post is titled 'Go Fuck Yourself', that's what I saw in my referrers, 'go fuck yourself', and that's so wrong." And then we said, "Okaaay, I think maybe you don't understand the culture here," and they said "I find it really offensive that you think we need to learn about your stupid culture in the first damn place." And then I threw up.

Is any of this looking at all familiar?

Because the funny thing is, for people who supposedly wanted to dictate what could and could not be said, what jokes could and could not be made--for people who wanted to stamp out free speech!!!--well, I don't mean to insult us, but doesn't it seem as though maybe we were being pretty lazy in the way we set about doing that? Because we were not over there, crashing the gates and demanding the immediate application and enforcement of Our Rules. We were kind of sitting around our own space yakking, you know, how the fat people love to do.

Oh, what else does this remind me of. What else, what else, what else.

This is it, really. Here it is, the secret formula for the prevention of further trivial and boring and stupid blogfeuds that you, as a very important blogger, cannot possibly spend a moment's time weighing the various arguments of, though you can certainly spend days dismissing the idea that there should be any arguments made in the first place: Find out how much a loaf of bread costs. Because that is who you sound like, when you step gingerly out of your big liberal blog environment to see what the niche blogs--the feminist blogs, the Tennessee blogs, the race blogs, the queer blogs--you sound about this dumb. It's not because you are that dumb, or at least that isn't necessarily the reason; it's more because you can't accept that (1) there's stuff out there you don't understand and (2) some of that stuff is important to people, and especially (3) I don't care if you're the fucking Elvis of blogging, you don't have the right to decide what's important, or even how shit works, outside your own virtual Graceland.

So I don't want to hear that Brittney should have done this or should have done that because that's how blogging is done. No, that's how you do blogging, Elvis. And incidentally, "In The Ghetto" really made me almost hate you.

If you don't know how things work outside your own world, then for the love of sweet reason, put a sock in it until you figure it out. And if you cannot do this then will you at LEAST back the fuck off when someone who does know tells you, "Hey, things don't work like that here?" Instead of insisting, insisting, insisting that things work JUST the way you're used to and comfortable with?

When you travel to Europe, do the electrical outlets confound you? Ever tried to force one? I must know.