{"id":1460,"date":"2007-10-17T17:09:11","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T22:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2011-11-21T11:49:35","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T17:49:35","slug":"unpleasant-civility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1460","title":{"rendered":"Unpleasant Civility"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a pretty normal guy. I’m 44, I live in an old house in Saint Paul with a couple kids, two cats and a dog. I drive a four-door but I’d rather bike. I like good beer, play guitar and a slew of other instruments, have the odd date, meet my friends at Keegans’<\/a> when I can – you know. Pretty normal stuff.<\/p>\n

Of course, when I was 16 I started working in radio. Now, working part-time at a station in North Dakota is the laxest possible definition of “public figure” that can exist in nature – but even then and there (and over my next years, as my career took me to the Twin Cities), some of the wierdness that attends “public” life caught up with me. The anti-semitic calls and threats (although I’m not remotely Jewish, the “Berg” name irks some); the occasional lonely person with weird ideas, the people who can’t take disagreement in stride – I’ve been through ’em all. And I’ve pretty much ignored them. Because they’re pretty much idiots.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, I’ve duked it out with the people who run the “Dump Bachmann” blog. I don’t pay ’em a lot of attention – with their fevered tone and breathless conspiracy-mongering and seeing spies in the bushes, they’re like a homegrown Democrat Underground, and pretty much a laughingstock among real bloggers and media. They’re the kinds of thing best ignored (except for Michele Bachmann; knowing that such a bunch of tinfoil-hatted whoopdidoos were stalking her, I’m fairly convinced, was worth at least a point in Bachmann’s victory last November – the best showing by a Republican on the top rail of results.<\/p>\n

So at worst, they’re a mixed blessing. As a rule.<\/p>\n

I’ve also pretty much dismissed<\/a> Ken Weiner, AKA “Ken Avidor”. I dismiss him because he’s pretty dismissable. A former art director<\/a> at a pr0n mag even other pr0n merchants giggle at with derision, it’s not hard to see why even Tom Swift has better cartooning chops.<\/p>\n

A while ago – before the September 15 counterprotest I helped organize with the folks at True North – I got an anonymous email from someone at a Google IP address:<\/p>\n

Crazy Ken Avidor is planning upon coming to your counter protest with his cameras, specifically to get pictures of you. I know this on a first hand basis. He’s a f*cking moron, don’t give him any fodder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I responded at the time<\/a> – if you want to talk to me, just ask<\/em>. I’ll take on all comers, because – depending on who you are and what your motivations are – I either have no trouble talking across ideological divides (hence I had a great time talking on MPR<\/a> and with Chuck Olson<\/a> in the past few months), or I’m just plain smarter than you and dealing with your arguments is child’s play (certain other adversaries<\/a> that shall remain nameless), which is kinda sad considering I’m really no great shakes in the “brain” department myself.<\/p>\n

But no matter; Avidor showed up, camera in hand (I’d left), and posted this little brain fart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, nobody’s under any obligation to ask “hey, mind if I film you”, although it’s generally considered good form by reputable videographers and journalists. Which Avidor, of course, is not.<\/p>\n

Last week, Avidor posted the “big scoop” – that I have been known to edit Wikipedia entries<\/em>. This is, of course, something that’s pretty publicly available<\/a>. Avidor leapt about like a poo-flinging monkey yapping about the fact that I’ve written, in the past, about the likes of Ed Morrissey, Hugh Hewitt, and the Northern Alliance – without bothering to actually note if anything I wrote was wrong <\/em>or anything, of course, or whether any of that Wiki editing took place in a men’s room at the airport.<\/p>\n

I’m always inclined to ignore this kind of obsessive niggling; I let it go the way of the rantings of the dissociative guy at the back of the bus who skipped his meds.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Learned Foot at Kool Aid Report has not <\/em>been so inclined. He’s showed, so far this week, that Avidor observe a curious double-standard<\/a> about his Wiki obsessions<\/a>, that he handles criticism with all the grace of Marie Antoinette<\/a>, he lied about the responses<\/a> (one needn’t “have a cow” to crush a target as trivially simple as Avidor) and tried to ignore it all when Foot busted him<\/a>, and concluded with some advice<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I wonder if Blogger Berg and Blogger Swiftee are considering swearing out a restraining order yet. This guy is obviously unstable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This last was over this bit<\/a> – in which Avidor crosses the line from “demented idiot” to “borderline stalker”, apparently hiding in the bushes and (unlike Michele Bachmann) actually <\/em>spying and taking pictures of people.<\/p>\n

The obvious response is – nothing. Let him slither through the bushes with his little camera. I’ve done nothing in my life that I can’t take in front of the whole world (like, say, work at a pr0n magazine and participate in the victimization of women). I’ve run into people like Avidor before, and they’re nothing to worry about – they don’t have the balls or <\/em>the brains to do anything but <\/em>slither about and heckle impotently (just check out the traffic on the DU post. I doubt Avidor has the capacity to be embarassed).<\/p>\n

So let me know when he does something that rises to the level of “would matter to vertebrates”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a pretty normal guy. I’m 44, I live in an old house in Saint Paul with a couple kids, two cats and a dog. I drive a four-door but I’d rather bike. I like good beer, play guitar and a slew of other instruments, have the odd date, meet my friends at Keegans’ when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,44],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-stupid","tag-stalkers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24500,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/24500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}