CORRECTION: New evidence suggests that the screenshot discussed in this post and elsewhere was not a forgery but the result of a glitch. I offer a correction, and an apology, and a discussion of the implications, here.
So the mighty Paul Elam has acknowledged — in the comments section of Girl Writes What’s blog, at least –that there might just be some sort of problem going on with regard to, you know, that whole fake screenshot thing. You know, the blatant fraud that A Voice for Men mangling — sorry, managing — editor Dean Esmay seems to have engaged in to cover up a mistake.
But, Paul being Paul, he somehow manages to turn his sort-of acknowledgement of the problem into an attack on me, bizarrely blaming me (the person who actually pointed out this fraud) for him not knowing about it before today:
As much as I hate to say it, Futrelle does have a valid point. I am looking in to it today, and unlike Futrelle, I will address the results of my inquiry in public no matter where they end up.
I don’t mind looking into problems, even when they are pointed out by such a bald faced liar. I would have actually been aware of this sooner if his blog were worth reading. I had to become aware of it in your comments to even know there was a problem.
Well, Paul, I would have happily brought my findings to the comments section of A Voice for Men, rather than the comments section of Girl Writes What’s blog, but you may recall I am banned there. And I wonder if anyone there would have had the courage to stand up and say that, gosh, this Futrelle guy has a point, given how quickly people are censored there for deviating from your site’s perverse “conventional wisdom.”
And gosh, Paul, how unfair it is to expect the publisher of a site to be aware of what’s, you know, published on it. Concerns about the story were brought up by your own commenters shortly after it first ran. Esmay referred in an article and an editorial note to my alleged “lies” about the story; it didn’t occur to you to even go look at what I had said? And even aside from the phony screenshot, or anything I’ve written, did you really think that Esmay’s bizarre explanations for the original mistake made any kind of sense?
In other words, are you incompetent, or are you lying about being unaware of the problem until now?
In any case, I await the results of your “investigation.” I am especially eager to see how you will manage to spin things so it becomes someone else’s fault. Will it be some evil conspiracy that “set you up?”
And when exactly have I lied, Paul? Could you offer a citation? When I point out the lies on your site, I fucking back up each claim.
[EDIT: Added some stuff in the “gosh, Paul” paragraph and made a few other changes.]
How about €sob-bro? 😀
@ j
There’s tons of legitimate criticism that can be said about PZ Myers, he regularly spouts bullshit (and so do I, and so do you). The problem is, what you wrote doesn’t make any sense. You’re doing the equivalent of people coming here saying “I know you want men to die! You’re all disciples of Valerie Solanas!” We don’t like straw feminists, there’s no need to add to the straw.
We’re loaded with bales from MRAs already. (they think they struck a /nerve/ too btw)
I spout catshit. Less cleaning up afterward.
Oh wow… I 1: completely forgot about The Naïf, and 2:that necroing the CrackEmcee thread was his debut.
That metal book looks all kinds of awesome.
It reminds me of something I haven’t thought about in a long time, back in the 80’s I had a Ronnie James Dio album (vinyl), and on the inside sleeve was a group shot of some fans, maybe they were the official fan club, I don’t know. Anyway as you can imagine the group was mostly white and male, but right in the front row center there was a black girl, and I always used to wonder who she was and how she felt in that crowd. I was intrigued by her.
1) I should’ve googled that quote ages ago, that song’s awesome
2) please don’t summon the boring one
2b) our glossary troll, the one we spent a week+ on, stuck to the glossary but damned did I have fun having a go at him (someone explain how “Assange isn’t a rapist but an activist” and “corsets make one less likely to feel being stabbed” can possibly be part of the same argument?)
2b.1) he’s the cause of Spot That Fallacy!!!
3) …what’s the “I struck a /nerve/” dude’s nym? I forgot already
And I missed an atheism fight! Man, I miss all the good stuff.
I feel… WEIRD about spirituality. In my mind, power corrupts, and relations with high power differentials are something to be avoided, so getting involved with gods would be like, the most dangerous thing ever, unless I was absolutely, positively sure they didn’t actually exist.
So the only gods I’d be interested in doing business with are the ones I’m POSITIVE don’t exist or have any power. Like, I dunno, Twiddledoo of the Kitchen Sink, patron of cooks, dishwashers, and those annoying bits that get caught in the drain. (To appease, clean sink every day.)
@Argenti
“3) …what’s the “I struck a /nerve/” dude’s nym? I forgot already”
It’s “j” – just as forgettable as his contributions.
@Marie:
Yeah, everyone was really surprised about this turn of events, since they’d announced the strike like a week ago and the employers had, during that week, put up a decidedly stubborn front, so everyone was prepared to have traffic standing still for days or even weeks… and then it turns out their stubbornness was just a bluff all along. When the strike was like eight hours away they caved in.
There are plausible theories as to why that is, but I won’t go into that, that would be a wall of text uninteresting to everyone else.
I will tell you something hilarious though. The bus drivers are in a different sub-union of LO, and they had already begun their strike yesterday by stopping various bus lines. Now, there’s this libertarian youth organization that hates strikes and unions because, well, they’re libertarian asshats. They got hold of a bus that they were gonna run to compensate for the standing ones, and they also gave out a message to the press according to which it’s wrong to use the power of the collective to force employers to give way, everyone ought to negotiate their shifts and their pay as individuals, and this doesn’t mean they take sides in the fight between employers and workers (right, totally not), just that they believe in the individual.
Then they ran their bus for a few hours until they got tired of driving and just dropped the whole thing. And that’s the hilarious part.
::flaps hands excitedly::
@LBT
There’s a Discworld Goddess just for you!
Funny thing is, I guess I’m a deist-y-sort – I believe there’s a creator spirit but I don’t think of it as interventionist or personal* – but it’s so far from my interests/concerns with the afterlife that it really doesn’t figure at all. Spirit for me is just domestic, and what little curiosity I had about all that side of it fizzled out long ago. I asked Louis some questions, got a few answers (and he doesn’t pretend to much knowledge on the matter), and left it at that. Capital H Home is what it’s about for me. 🙂
That infomercial guy probably shouldn’t eat all those Cheetos anyway.
Oh snap.
love you
Actually, he could salvage the ones that hadn’t touched the floor by sliding a manila folder or a takeout menu between the bowl and the spilled pile. Flip the bowl over, and he’d have a sensible portion.
@theladyzombie:
Yikes, and I hope I didn’t tread on any nerves. I got a fairly mild cult-upbringing, and I tend to try to deal with it by being sarcastic and dismissive. (I think when we compared notes a relatively high number of Boobzers had grown up in a fundamentalist atmosphere of one sort or another)
You’ll all be glad to know that AVfM has now acknowledged their error, by hiding the acknowledgement on an old/dead post that no one is reading and by blaming David, the internet, and Google. It’s Update #3 here: http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/moral-turpitude-an-open-letter-to-facebook/
p.s. I really, REALLY want to see Dean Esmay unleash his mighty “knowledge” of how Google works in a separate article, because that shit is hilarious. Please, Dean? Pretty please?
I didn’t mean to come across as cult damaged and embittered! Sorry all! It’s mostly that I take objection when people consider JWs as just harmless kooks. Not that any of you here did.
I used to make ex-JW/anti-Watchtower videos on Youtube and would get all sorts of apologists who tried to say “just get over it” or that I was lying because they personally knew or worked with JWs who were nice. It’s like, yes, I understand that an individual JW may be a nice person, but they belong to a cult and it’s their mission to try and convert you.
Howard, I like to employ satire and sarcasm too when talking about cults. It’s fun!
lol. It’s an artifact caused by searching for “violence against”, then adding “men” to the end of the query before you take a screenshot.
That none of the super geniuses at AVfM thought to turn off search personalization before they made claims about the significance of the top google search results does not inspire confidence in their knowledge of search lore.
I’ve got a new post up dealing with their latest literally unbelievable spin.
@Theladyzombie
Word. I’m pretty sure there’s no God, but this is one of the main reasons I don’t feel comfortable in Atheist spaces online, or even like to call myself an atheist. (The other reasons are rampant Islamophobia, and the fact that I don’t give a fuck if other people think there is a God/gods/something)
@Freemage
One doesn’t have to be an atheist to support any of that, though. I got interested in it via Pagan blogs that focused on church/state separation, and I know some Christians who are into it, too.
@Freemage
But is that a religion problem or a transphobia problem?
@Pecunium: Oyster Band is awesome. June Tabor is a great singer.
Oyster Band x June Tabor is my jam.
@Tracy: I posted the Freethought Blogs link, specifically for the Atheism+ advocacy. I don’t read much Patheos, and I should read more, but it seems like for every Mehta they’ve got an Anchoress.
@Kittehserf I like to refer to my MIL’s kitchen drawers as “shrines to Anoia”.
@Etelka
Bah, too much work. Dry foods spilled on relatively clean floors are totally still edible 😉
Wait, wait, Crack EmCee mistook Ami Angelwing’s Magic remix cards for TAROT?!!
… Could he read?
And now he’s basically admitting that he expects to get his way because he can thump people.
I’ve got the god for you.