In my years of blogging, I haven’t found much I don’t enjoy.\u00a0 I’ve never really been tempted to quit.\u00a0 It’s really no less fun now than it ever was.<\/p>\n
Of course, that doesn’t mean the downsides have changed.\u00a0 For starters,\u00a0I’ve gotten really, really tired of the endless pissing matches between bloggers.<\/p>\n
I’ve had my ups and my downs as a blogger and as a person in the past seven and a half years. But I’ve had a few standards about which I haven’t compromised at all.<\/p>\n
Those have always been my rules. Not everyone sees it the same way, of course.<\/p>\n
There’s a stream of “thought” among some bloggers – mostly but by no means all lefties – that if anyone criticizes the way Percy Leftkowitz approaches an issue, the best response is to toss out “dirt” about the critics.\u00a0 As if the presence of “dirt” in their personal, familyi or work lives invalidates what they had to say.<\/p>\n
JOE SCHMO:\u00a0 “Percy Leftkowitz is wrong”.<\/p>\n
LEFTKOWITZ: “Yeah, but Joe Schmo had a jaywalking ticket, so ignore him!”<\/p>\n
It’s not debate. It’s just a way to try to shut other people up.\u00a0 It’s the mark of the intellectual coward.<\/p>\n
Anyway; a little bird told me that a swarm of leftybloggers have gotten their cute little danders up over\u00a0yet another\u00a0dirt-slinging match.\u00a0 “They wanna fight dirty”, they chant, “we’ll play dirty too!”, and they circulate their little emails, and they grit their teeth and froth impotently.<\/p>\n
Which is, of course, a sign that a squall of stupid is about to descend.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
Speaking of cowards, a number of local leftybloggers have been tittering about some “dirt” they think they have on me for the past year or so.\u00a0 I had a run-in with Saint Paul’s code enforcement division.<\/p>\n
Actually, the tale the leftybloggers are tittering about is Part 2 of a three part story. They don’t know the rest of it.<\/p>\n
Part 1?\u00a0 That’s family stuff.\u00a0 It’s a long, painful story, and – I’ll say this politely – it stays in my family.\u00a0 We’ve been working on it for years.\u00a0 It’s a work in progress.\u00a0 And it’s none of your business.<\/p>\n
Part 2?\u00a0 Well, that’s the part the titterers – and a “source” who should have known better – are getting their yuks about.\u00a0 Things had, as of a year or so ago,\u00a0gotten pretty out of control around my house; the place was in an awful state.\u00a0 And I wound up having to do a hell of a lot of fix-up work, very very fast. \u00a0 It was ugly, and embarassing, and probably the most difficult week of my life, and my family’s. Worse than getting divorced.\u00a0 Worse than being out of work.\u00a0 The worst.\u00a0 I’m not gonna go into details – it’s nobody’s business, and…well, read Part 3.<\/p>\n
Part 3?\u00a0 This is the part that the poo-flinging monkeys who’ve been tittering about this story either don’t know or don’t think matters.\u00a0 There was a happy ending<\/em>.\u00a0 Everything got done.<\/p>\n I couldn’t have done it myself, of course; at one point, I had over a dozen friends, family, neighbors, even people I’d never met, helping me out around here.\u00a0 And we got the job done, ahead of schedule.\u00a0 But for some eave-painting (and, uh, a new garage, although the fire was completely unrelated), I’ve been done since last fall.\u00a0 (And the eaves, and my third-level dormers, do <\/em>need the paint. I hope to have it done by State Fair time.\u00a0 While we’re on the subject, does anyone have a cherrypicker crane they could lend me for a couple days?). And I had some very unlikely help; the DFL-run city council, at least one of whose members had gone through pretty much the same ordeal.\u00a0 While everyone knows I’m that <\/em>Mitch Berg, they were a ton of help.\u00a0 I owe them my thanks – on this issue, anyway.\u00a0 And so while I differ from all of them on politics, I thank them.<\/p>\n At any rate – while I’m never going to be mistaken for Martha Stewart, my house is no worse than yours, right now.\u00a0 The hard part – working on all that stuff from Part 1 – well, we’ll be working on that one for a while, but again, that’s none of your business.<\/p>\n So.\u00a0 There’s “the dirt” on Mitch Berg.\u00a0<\/p>\n What will<\/em> you titter about now?\u00a0<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n So why did I bring that up?\u00a0 Well, certainly not because it’s anyone’s business.\u00a0 I’m not going to discuss it with anyone<\/em>.\u00a0 The comment section is closed.<\/p>\n But I’m not afraid of the “story”.\u00a0 It happened,\u00a0it was an embarassing, brutal, grinding ordeal (I put in six straight 20 hour days), and it sucked chunks through straws, but\u00a0I dealt with it.\u00a0 It’s in the past.\u00a0 Life has moved on, very much for the better for all concerned.<\/p>\n I’m even less afraid of the people who’ve been doing the tittering.\u00a0 The people who’ve been getting their yuks from it have a lot more to be ashamed about than I do.\u00a0 One area leftyblogger went so far as to put up a fake, anonymous blog on the subject.\u00a0 I know who “he” is, by the way; it was about ten minutes’ work to prove it conclusively.\u00a0 He’s someone with a long history of scuttling around behind anonymity, but whining like a bitch when he’s exposed for the gutless worm he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n And y’know what?\u00a0 I don’t care.\u00a0 Screw ’em.\u00a0 I am <\/em>better than they are.\u00a0\u00a0 Not just because I have the cojones <\/em>to put my real name on what I write, but because even after all this, I’m still <\/em>going to leave your families, your jobs, and your personal lives out of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mostly, though, it’s because most of the “dirt” that lesser bloggers think they can dig up on other bloggers – even the “embarassing” “dirt” –\u00a0is just so unbelieveably mundane it doesn’t deserve comment, much less to be waved around as a\u00a0reason to discount someone’s opinion, or to try to scare someone into silence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Someone posted to a listserve from a government computer; someone had a DWI fifteen years ago; the cops tagged someone after a bar fight; someone else didn’t pay a speeding ticket; someone got busted for shoplifting in college; someone told a bar-room story about themselves that didn’t check out; someone had an ugly divorce, or their kid got busted for burglary, or had plastic surgery, or they had a nasty fight with an ex-spouse that got out of control, or they were hospitalized for depression, or they’ve been out of work for two years…<\/p>\n Who are we talking about, here?<\/p>\n People.\u00a0 Regular people with strengths and weaknesses, whose lives have pasts with wrinkles and ups and downs and twists and turns and warts.\u00a0 People who have done pretty much everything but<\/em> manage to keep their records squeaky, oppo-research-proof clean.\u00a0<\/p>\n Y’know – the kind of people who write blogs and, lest we forget, do pretty much everything else in our society.<\/p>\n Let he who is “without sin” hide behind a cutesy nom-de-plume<\/em>.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n And with that, I’m done with all inter-blog mudslinging bullshit.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my years of blogging, I haven’t found much I don’t enjoy.\u00a0 I’ve never really been tempted to quit.\u00a0 It’s really no less fun now than it ever was. 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