November 21st, 2007
I wandered over to Chet Zarko’s blog today and found his article on the latest round of Zarko v Lessenberry. I check Zarko every day, but I didn’t follow the Lessenberry stuff, so I wasn’t familiar with the history of the issue. So I followed the links in his diary, and eventually, I came to this:
I hate self-hating Ukrainians most of all. Obviously you were a follower of Petlura, who has transferred his/her allegiance to a gay imitation fascist with a pink pig as a last resort. I understand you now.
That’s Jack Lessenberry, on Chet’s defense of Leon Drolet.
Admittedly, that seems to come from private email, not from Lessenberry’s published articles. (The relevant published article is here). People tend to speak differently in private, and I don’t think the responsibility for private speech is as great as it is for public speech. And as much as I’m willing to scold Chet right now for publishing private correspondence, I find it hard to believe that Jack Lessenberry didn’t expect his email to be published. Especially since Chet appears to have been publishing the emails as they came in, and there were several hours between them.
So the fact is, Jack used the word “gay” as a slur. What’s worse than an “imitation fascist?” Apparently, a “gay imitation fascist”.
Nice.
And over on Michigan Liberal, we have the comments in this thread, to which Leon responds:
Enjoy the homophobic attacks, and join the Rev Fred Phelps “church”…sounds like some michiganliberal posters would be a perfect fit.
I don’t want it to appear that those comments are representative of the Mich Lib community as a whole. That was just the comments of a couple of people. But out of the hundreds of MichLib users, only 3 people complained.
I didn’t complain either, and I should have. It’s just that, I’ve complained about so many things at Michigan Liberal that it just doesn’t matter what I have to say over there. I didn’t see the point in getting into another fight. It would just be Christine bitching about something again. Although unlike the fights over Saul Anuzis or sock puppets, this fight would have had some value. Ah. Hindsight.
So, in light of Pastor John’s article, and after seeing Lessenberry’s stuff (which I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t see until today), I feel that I should say something. Better late than never, I guess.
First of all, back to Chet’s article; I agree with Chet that the editor of the Metro Times should condemn the use of the word ‘gay’ as a slur. I’m not thrilled with the idea of an editor getting involved in a writer’s personal correspondence, but an employer certainly has an interest in how an employee’s conduct reflects on the business. (assuming Jack is an employee(?))
Second, adding “gay” to the long list of names that Leon legitimately deserves to be called (for abusing our democracy), is wrong. If you’ve done that in the past, please don’t do that again.
Third, to Leon, I apologize. Not for what anyone else has said, but for what I haven’t said. If I see something like that in the future, I’ll speak up. I would rip you apart if you were doing that to someone else, and it’s wrong for me to be silent when it’s being done to you.
Posted in Politics | 5 Comments »
we have the welcome menu, that addresses all things Christine. This is for credibility purposes: I want people to know who I am and how to contact me. The media page is just a matter of bragging. I have no excuse for this.