There is so much stuff I’m thankful for, honestly<\/p>\n
One of them is that my world isn’t so utterly, pathetically, hatefully\u00a0small that I get off on the kinds of things Steve “Spotty” Timmer seems to<\/a>. Steve is upset because, after years of being able to slime people (including his neighbors<\/a>) from the cover of his precious anonymity, my friend Swiftee outed him in the comment section of this blog last week<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a part of his job (about which more below), Mr. Timmer has the ability to find, and misuse, all sorts of information.\u00a0 And he’s pretty sure he has a bunch of it.<\/p>\n Oh all right. Tings like criminal operation of a motor vehicle, and za probation violation. And ja judgments for unpaid bills! Tings like multiple drunken driving convictions. Tings like driving mit out za license. Za blogging on company time; za trash house chronicles and za failure to support za pups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Timmer refers to “glass houses” in his piece, apparently oblivious to the cheap irony; I’ve always used my real name, <\/em>with all that that’s entailed in terms of “public risk”.\u00a0He’s the one who’s always felt he had stuff to hide.\u00a0 (More cheap irony; I met him earlier this year at Flash’s place.\u00a0 We actually hit it off pretty well.\u00a0 As I noted at the time, when I meet bloggers I disagree with, it’s usually much easier for me to treat them as humans rather than cheap stereotypes; Timmer apparently didn’t feel that way, taking some really cheap shots at me shortly thereafter.\u00a0 I made noises about “outing” “him” at the time – and got a panicky-sounding email from him, all but begging me not <\/em>to “out” his precious identity; he\u00a0 really really preferred to remain anonyous<\/em>.\u00a0 The cheapest irony of all?\u00a0 I hadn’t actually heard his name at Flash’s, and had at that point no idea who he was).<\/p>\n Since I’ve always <\/em>blogged under my real name, every wart on my public record is <\/em>pretty much available for the asking – so kudos to Steve’s awesome investigative chops!\u00a0 And yep – I’ve had a wart or two.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll touch on a couple of ’em in the next day or two, if Timmer really is <\/em>as nekulturnii <\/em>as he says “he’ll” be.<\/p>\n But I can say I’m proud about a couple of things, and do it with a straight face.<\/p>\n Here’s a big one – while I’ve mixed it up the “opposition” pretty gleefully (and for the most part they, like Timmer, deserve the “irony quotes”), I’ve upheld one standard; I’ve left other peoples’ families and livelihoods out of my blog.\u00a0 Nobody – nobody<\/em>, even gutless trolls like Timmer or Diane “Minnesota Observer” Gerth, deserves to have their families or their livelihoods attacked over what is, at the end of the day, a hobby.\u00a0 I’ve upheld the Golden Rule, treating others the way I’d hope to be treated; I have no problem with people mixing it up with my politics,\u00a0my choice in guitars, my taste in baseball – I am more than a match for anyone on any of those topics.\u00a0 And on the other hand, I’ve kept my hands off of other peoples’ families, private lives, jobs and outside-of-blogging lives pretty religiously.<\/p>\n And I’ll continue to.<\/p>\n Because I am <\/em>better than that.<\/p>\n And by “that”, I mean “I’m a better writer and<\/em> a better man than Steve “Spotty”\u00a0Timmer”.<\/p>\n \u00a0And that’ll be true no matter what <\/em>Timmer and his little pack of gutless anonymous trolls think they can pull out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is so much stuff I’m thankful for, honestly One of them is that my world isn’t so utterly, pathetically, hatefully\u00a0small that I get off on the kinds of things Steve “Spotty” Timmer seems to. Steve is upset because, after years of being able to slime people (including his neighbors) from the cover of his […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-3683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683","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=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}