Everybody Loves a Good Rhubarb

This feels like Darryl Strawberry acknowledging the Fenway bleacher creatures, but I’ve been asked to reset my feud with, well, someone . . . about, well, something. I’m still trying to figure all this out myself.

It started with someone calling himself Dave Hickman taking umbrage with a RussellPounderStaff post and beginning an email spamathon about it. Hickman is a Stolen Election Guy. I’m not fond of the Stolen Election guys. Another Stolen Election Guy dropped a non sequitur comment under the handle “abdrissa,” echoing much of what Hickman said. I ignored it.

You have to understand Stolen Election Guy. Grassy Knoll Dude thinks these guys are overzealous. Acknowledging them is like Staw tipping his hat to the fans chanting “DA ruhl DA ruhl.”

Sunday I wrote a post going over the BSB post that started all this. I mentioned the substance of the initial emails long enough to give it the hand. So I get angry posts from the aforementioned abdrissa taking issue with me. Fine. Then abdrissa goes somewhere else.

There’s this Central Ohio political consultant named Bryan . Bryan had his moments in the blogosphere last year, engaged in some sharp dealing, mixed it up with some people including myself. Some of it got outed and some got exaggerated. He has moved on, acknowledged mistakes. Bottom line, he’s a tough adversary. He and I patched things up long ago. He’s a frequent reader and occasional commenter. Bryan and I are OK.

Bryan has apparently earned the ire of Stolen Election Guy. Hickman’s rants go after Bryan. After a couple go ‘rounds, and apropos of absolutely nothing, so do abdrissa’s.

To me, this vaults over a line. I’ll put up with any manner of crap dealt at me here. I’ve had comments telling me (and the world) that I’m angry, that I’m frivolous, that I’m stupid, that I'm ignorant, that I’m a lousy father, that I’m a plant for various campaigns, that I have a small penis. (For the record, I do not have a small penis.)

While I have a high tolerance for insults directed at me, I feel differently about scolding on my readers. And hijacking my comments to direct nastygrams toward someone who isn’t even part of the discussion is completely out of pocket. It’s an abuse of my hard work here and it’s unfair to expect people to search comment fields for libel.

I deleted a couple of abdrissa’s anti-Bryan posts and explained why. Ab came right back with another post doing the same shit and I declared him/her banned. First time I’ve done it. I’m not censoring abdrissa in the sense of deleting posts because the content bothers me. The posts have been aimed at me and are occasionally witty. I’m deleting them because abdrissa is banned from my blog.

Unlike Fenway Park, I don’t have a bunch of off-duty cops to escort the crazies out the door. All I have is my ability to delete comments, so I do so. As of now, abdrissa's posts get deleted when I see them, whatever they are. If he/she posts the cure for cancer, better get it fast.

That’s the story. I’m happy to entertain a discussion about the ethics of banning commenters and deleting their comments if they won’t leave. Well, a discussion among people not logging on from abdrissa’s URL. Be forewarned, Kid T's behavior was completely off the hook today, so I've been dealing with tantrums on and offline. I'm a bit testy now.