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So earlier today, A Voice for Men’s head honcho, the neither lovely nor talented Paul Elam, threatened “yellow journalists” who allegedly lie about his so-called Men’s Human Rights Movement with, well, something pretty dire-sounding. I just can’t tell you exactly what.
[UPDATE: An archived version of Elam’s deleted post has been found; see here for a post on what it contains.]
In an angry and ungrammatical tweet (archived here), Elam warned:
Elam spelled out what he had in mind in a “bulletin” on his site with the ominous title “The cost of libeling MHRAs is about to go up.”
But whatever was in this post was evidently so extreme (and possibly unethical) that even some of Elam’s followers were a bit concerned by it.
Elam thought better of the post himself, taking it down and issuing a rare apology. In the place where the post originally appeared, one now finds this:
What you are reading here now is not what was posted under this title earlier. What was here was a mistake on my part.
Afer several years of being attacked, quite unfairly, by media ideologues the most recent incident was published in my home town. After working all night, as I sometimes do, I was tired and obviously not at my best. I lost my cool and posted and tweeted something that was inconsistant with my own values, with the ethics we adhere to at this website and damaging to the efforts we undertake to serve men and boys.
Presumably the “incident … published in my home town” that Elam has in mind is a recent piece in the Houston Press that put Elam in tenth place on a list of “The 10 Most Embarrassing Houstonians.”
Elam responded to the piece a few days ago with a post of his own, declaring it a pack of lies and mocking the author for dressing up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Show. But apparently it was still eating at him. Maybe one of his neighbors said something to him about it.
Elam also seems to have been set off by a little Twitter battle with radio host Nicole Sandler, who at some point had GQ writer and Dartmouth professor Jeff Sharlet on her show. Elam has been gunning for Sharlet ever since he wrote an absolutely devastating account of AVFM’s first-and-probably-only conference last summer. Earlier today, Elam Tweeted:
https://twitter.com/AVoiceForMen/status/635418614275792896
(Here’s an archived version of the entire exchange.)
So what exactly did Elam threaten to do to those he thinks have “libelled” him?
The Tweets of some of his concerned followers may give us a few clues. Here’s one highly suggestive Twitter conversation (archived here). It starts with former AVFMer Dean Esmay, apparently an enthusiastic supporter of whatever it was Elam had proposed.
In another Tweet, TheMen’sFront compared Elam’s proposed strategy to Register-Her.com, AVFM’s notorious fake “offenders registry” that posted profiles of feminists alongside those of convicted murderers and pedophiles and suggested that they too deserved to be jailed.
If anyone has a screenshot or otherwise archived version of Elam’s original post, please send it along to me.
Even though he’s taken the offending post offline, it’s clear he was planning something sketchy enough to make even some of his followers worry. Given that Elam and his cultish followers already libel and harass AVFM’s assorted enemies with abandon, while claiming to be warriors of Truth, it seems clear to me that whatever he had in mind was fairly dire.
I don’t think Elam fully recognizes what a giant gift he has just given anyone who ever decides to sue him for libel.
Man, now I really want to know.
I’m very interested in a copy of the original post as well, seeing as apparently I was to be a target of some plan.
“Better hope there is [sic] no skeletons in your closet.”
Why do I see this backfiring on Mr. Elam spectacularly, assuming he has his own skeletons?
I don’t have a subscription so I can’t check, but the Wayback Machine archive might have it.
http://archive.org/web/
Anyway, it’s telling, how he leaps straight for some over-the-top, unethical response, then when even HIS supporters are queasy, backs down, hides the evidence, and pleads stress.
Poor baby. I personally know feminists who’ve received online harassment for years. None of them behaved like deranged, vindictive assholes in response.
Welp, I’m sure that it is a very cunning plan, so cunning that if you put a tail and whiskers on it, you could call it a weasel.
David, I found it on Google cache. Elam might have tried to erase the original, but Google cache got it.
Google cache
archive.is of the cache
*checks closet*
Do ichthyosaur skeletons count?
” something sketchy enough to make even some of his followers worry” -now that’s saying something!
@Alice Sanguinaria
So his plan was to harass anyone even remotely connected to his targets. Color me not surprised.
The relevant bit of that archived post:
tov01 – Elam also wanted to publicize all of that “dirt” that they “dig up” — so basically like that register-her site.
Considering that all of that is pretty much the daily routine at AVFM, I wonder why they spoke out against it. Maybe they had a flash of self-awareness and realised that “Direct quotes, full context and enough proof to enshrine it into the fucking Constitution” isn’t exactly “Libel.”
They actually believe that Sharlet planted a guy to make them look bad? That is seriously rich.
Maybe Sharlet planted Paul Elam.
I kind of wish Paulie hadn’t turned back on this plan, because his followers were right – it would have backfired completely. Mind you I don’t want what he was threatening to do to actually happen to all those he named.
‘we are going to dig it up and spread it around like gonorrhea in a whorehouse’
Good ole Paul, classy as ever.
You know, he may not have abandoned the plan, maybe he just realized how monumentally stupid it was to crow about such a plan in advance?
Doing what?
I remember the good old days when AVFM just wrote about beer.
And dried up chicken followed by industrial gelatin, the food of champions.
Well, this is gonna be great.
So, since the original post is archived, are ” Mother Jones, GQ, Buzzfeed, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Houston Press, Maclean’s Magazine, and many more” aware of what was written?
I’ve just read the Houston article that got Paul’s boxers in a bunch. I notice none of the other nine people on the list have turned up in the comments section accompanied by their flying monkeys, could it be that Paul is just a little bit insecure?
Out of sheer morbid curiosity I took a look at Paulie ‘s rebuttal.
The most facepalmy moment has to be ‘I didn’t say the Cosby accusers were drug whoring star fuckers I merely asked if they were’
… apparently framing virulent victim blaming in the form of a question is suddenly not victim blaming. In other news, is Paul Elam a raving misogynist who promotes hate speech? Hey, I’m just begging the question.
Playtime is OVER?!!! When did it START?!!!
I’d guess Elam abandoned this plan because he has no way to follow through. AVfM has made indistinguishable threats for as long as I can remember.
When a local feminist/environmental group circulated info about AVfM prior to their conference, Esmay repeatedly promised there was a story in the works with all their dirty laundry.
Or just check the top of the threat, where Elam pretends his opponents are planting pedos and using honey pots. Those are all familiar claims from his earlier responses, when he’s promised to prove dirt on his enemies and failed to find anything real.
There’s nothing they can say that is new, let alone believable about these people. They’ve shot all the ammo they have already.