There have been a couple topics of discussion deleted from the HJ site recently.
One, the Peterson USU BJ in the steam room thang,
Two, the funeral respecting a family's sacrifice in Iraq.
My take is that neither dialogue should have been deleted though the dialogue got "out of hand". There is a balance of argument there. No one should go there while grieving yet if they do they should be prepared to take the good with the bad. I can see how the Alleman family could stand tall with clenched fists whilst the rest of us beat up on Desertique who believes funerals are appropriate venues for protest. That said, the only problem I really have with her comments is the venue she chose for expressing this view. I didn't catch the entire dialogue but I do remember going through it just before deletion and thinking there was an extreme view pushing her over the edge.
Let's talk right here.
These are the proving grounds. This is where we separate the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the strong from the weak ..................... Surf this!!
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20 comments:
Bluto great to talk to you today. man i miss those concerts and i still am laughing about the prince thing i dont hang out on the hj site so what happend i didnt think there was a protest at allmans funreal i must have missed it and to bad i am usualy the one biker that breaks off from the group and beats the hell out of those protesters
inform me more
Naa PK,
There were rumors of protestors but there apparently were none. The protests emerged on the HJ comment section beneath the story covering the event sweetened by an outstanding photo by Eli of the wife weeping while her son was given a flag on behalf of his heroic dead father. Some found it an opportunity to voice things like "I have no sympathy for this family, my concern is for the orphans and widows in Iraq." (paraphrased)
I'm sure 7 will share what went down in greater detail.
Sure was nice chatting with you. Don't knock Prince until you see the performance. Pretty cool. It would have to be or I would NEVER admit to having seen it! :)
Your right Bluto, there was no protest at the funeral. But, by invitation of the family, we were ther to drowned out the chants and block the view from the family through strictly non-violent means.
As far as the thread on HJ goes. Desertick was being her same old annoying self. She pick the most sensational, emotional topics to try and spew her vile hate filled crap.
Just to back track a little. Desert tick wrote a letter to the editor a while back and, of couse, ahe had to sign her real name to it. I did some research and confirmed that it was in fact her. I made a comment like, "Hi Desertique, nice of you to rear your ugly hate filled head in the form of a letter to the editor.
Unfortunatly some asshole of a person dug deeper and posted her email address and encourages others to email her their own form of hatred. I commented at the time that posting her email was not cool.
Now we get back to the Alleman post. She once again disrespects an innocent person and his family. Someone calls Desert tick a man to which I replied that he was a she and I posted her name.
Now a new asshole posts her sons name and uses a racial term to describe him.
Hears the problem, Ido not agree with any of these hate filled attacks on Desert tick. But she has now made a post that states the I was the one who did all of these things.
desertique wrote:"In my recent letter to the editor Se7en posted both my name and email address at USU. It is a matter of public record there. He posted it and invited others to send their hostile comments to it."
In the post in question:
1) I did not give her name, she did when she signed her letter to the editor.
2) I did not give out her email address.
3) I did not encourage others to email her.
So what she has posted constitutes libel. I have notified the Herald Journel.
If the post doesn't get remove or it Deserttick doesn't ammend her statement, she will get her wish and see my real name under Plaintiff in a lawsuit.
Se7en,
Don't be in too big of a hurry to sue desertique. You will lose this battle. And it will probably be very costly.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=21317
You can say just about anything you want on blogs without fear of repercussion.
This isn't the first case where the courts have ruled in favor of bloggers.
With regard to Desertique and the Alleman thing...
"I am a real person, I do write letters to the editor, I realize others have made connections and have used those to try and suppress me." (06 Mar 2009 0940)
She has a martyr mentality that I just don't understand. The first amendment to the Constitution was never what was in question. It wasn't the nature of her comments in and of themselves that was offensive, but the time and place that they were used.
My father still has his parents' obituaries bookmarked on his computer, and I assume he looks at them from time to time. There is a reserved space for comments not unlike what's allowed on hjnews.com.
My grandpa smoked a pipe nearly the entirety of his adult life, and drank a lot of hard liquor. The doctors suggest that this combination caused the throat cancer that ultimately claimed his life.
Picture some person that doesn't know my family personally, but knows of my grandpa's bad habits. Taking the time to post on the obituary of the evils of drinking and smoking is completely inappropriate. It's not about "suppression", but respect and decency.
I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.
Hey, Bluto, hopefully I've got my Google password issue resolved, and I can now post. I'm sending this as a "test run."
Hey, Se7en,
I'm sure what you witnessed was Desert tick short circuiting when the idiot made the racist comment about her son. I have some grip as to your make-up, and have no doubt it wasn't you that made public her personal information.
She's a real piece of work. I've met others like her that think it's perfectly within their 1st amendment rights to be insensitive and invade a public cemetery or funeral of a fallen hero to protest a war. Thank God for the patriots on bikes who insert themselves between the loudmouth's and the grieving family and friends.
I'm a Vietnam veteran (and not just a Vietnam veteran -- but a combat veteran) who knows like few others how little respect American soldiers can be given when they were part of an unpopular war.
About a year ago, Desert tick wrote in one of her vitriolic comments that "I was complicit to murder" by choosing to serve in Vietnam, rather than expatriate to Canada to avoid serving.
Luckily, I came out of Vietnam unscathed in terms of physical damage, but have suffered from PTSD to the point that I am awarded a disability for such, and have undergone many hundreds of hours of therapy. As you can imagine, given my condition, the last thing I needed to hear was that I was "complicit to murder" by choosing to serve rather than running away from my patriotic duty. Just another example of her insensitivity to the U.S. combat soldiers and war veterans.
Glad to have you around finally Denver Doug. Thankyou for your service to our country.
As for that commentary on the funeral, there is not question that an obituary would be the wrong place for such debate. i hope she didn't go there.
I've argued before that those who've lost a loved one should not explore stories about the incident (lamb, the girl who hung herself) at all and certainly not subsequent commentary. However, in this case it was a story of tribute to a fallen soldier. It was very close to an obit and absolutely a bad place to bring up her crap. That said, we were doing Alleman and his family proud by putting her in her place. I'd bet if they picked through the commentary they'd shrug her idiocy off while thanking the rest of us for speaking with voices of reason.
Bluto,
Great to be on your blog site.
I've found that circumstances behind someones death is not an easy thing to talk about, and I'm personally surprised at how little editing the HJ staff does on some of their threads.
I'm unfamiliar with the Lamb girl, but several thread do come to mind for me. Remember all the dialog about the motorcyclist who ran into the vehicle that was doing the illegal U-Turn in Sardine Canyon. There was so much discussion about the fact he wasn't wearing a helmet, and would he have survived had he been wearing one.
Recently, I went to a funeral of a former work colleague of mine who died at the age of 78 of a heart attack. He was a smoker, and everyone was talking about how smoking was the cause of the heart attack (even though his family claimed his doctor said smoking might have expedited his death but that wasn't certain). I could see the unease of the family members over the discussion.
I've learned that when it comes to death, it's best to give your condolences to the family and loved ones, and keep your personal opinions to yourself.
And an anti-war protest at a soldier's funeral is just plain rude and insensitive.
DD,
I appreciate your candor and must admit to perpetuating a lot of the HJ dialogue you're talking about.
The way I see it, we NEED to talk about death and its causes in order to prevent future 'mistakes'.
So we have to ask ourselves where reason becomes rude.
Do we say if someone in NY dying while not wearing a helmet is fair game since no one around here probably knew him? How about 500 miles away? 90 miles? They talk this stuff up down in SLC.
To me the issue isn't whether or not we offer enough sympathy to the families of those who've made mistakes, but that we talk about it.
Now if I lose a loved one I'm not coming here or the the HJ comment section for support. I'd probably come here but not for support.
I'll use my Dad as an example and you might remember me posting about it.
Last Spring he was held up in his own office by a 60 -year-old former cop/realtor. (My ol' man is also a realtor/broker and those were this schmucks targets)
He enters my Dad's office, walks right up to him and as my Dad politely stands up and asks, 'Can I help you bud?" he pulls a pistol and sticks it right into my ol' man's gut.
He told my Dad to give him all his cash, he didn't want credit cards. When that part was over he told my Dad to sit on the floor facing the wall and count to 100 or some number I can't remember.
When that came out in the paper, the comment section was a bunch of crap about 'ya right, this ain't the movies mister...' mixed with various sympathies. Point is, my Mom was shocked and had trouble picking the good from the bad and learned to not go there. Why should she? The sympathy was there among the family and our circle of friends. I OF COURSE went there and enjoyed a few exchanges.
That's the point. Obituaries and Funerals are meant for mourning. Stories about crimes and 'accidents' deserve dialogue.
Too often accountability gets shoved aside so sympathy can ooze. When is it appropriate to mention that your buddy would be alive today had he worn a helmet even if someone pulled a boner move right in front of him? When is it appropriate to talk about people you don't even know who did something that might have led to their own death?
BTW,
My Dad wasn't physically harmed in the ordeal but it brought him, a very hard and tough vet, to tears.
Here's a link to a news piece about the foo getting what amounts to a life sentence at this stage of his life. My Dad is the last interview. He wasn't named in the complaint as he is half blind and they had enough evidence and testimony from a number of this foos victims though my Dad easily picked him out of a photo line up.
http://www.ksby.com/global/story.asp?s=9947614
Oh yeah,
And DD,
Greg Lamb was the guy shot by our local SWAT last summer.
No doubt, Bluto, the trauma your Dad experienced can be devastating. I know a girl (friend of my oldest daughter) who was robbed at gunpoint. Her personality totally changed after the incident, and she's become somewhat of a recluse because of it.
Is your dad the Dave Iverson mentioned in the article?
Sorry I didn't put two plus two together on the Greg Lamb article (you had mentioned the hanging of the Lamb girl). Yeah, that one was really strange, but I side with the cops (SWAT team) in the action they took. The only thing that bothered me was the report that they were giving each other "high fives" after putting twenty some bullets into Lamb. But, then there were also comments that the high fives didn't occur. I'm in Denver so I have no clue who to believe.
DD,
Yes Dave Iverson is my Dad, not to be confused with the robber David Albertson. When Albertson was apprehended, his pistol WAS loaded.
I agree with you on Lamb and can even see room for some emotions while the SWAT team counts their own and each others fingers after something like that.
i don't know if you saw that video made by the Lamb family and the players at Ch. 8 (Of whom one claimed a spiritual visit by Greg lamb and thus inspired the entire so-called documentary) but that was REALLY terrible and makes the cops out to have shot Greg in the back while running away un armed.
The trouble I had with the girl who hanged herself at school was the commentary was full of high-5's from her peers telling her things like 'good for you, you finally did it. You're finally where you want to be. You've made it back to your Heavenly Father' ...etc. These kids knew she was planning it, too as text messages were circulating and none of them stood up to prevent. And we weren't supposed to address that in conversation. I figured these boards make a great venue for such discussion and wouldn't expect her family to be reading articles about her suicide anyway. What would they expect to gain or learn from it? Certainly the comments that followed ought to have been omitted from their readings.
I thought of that is fuel for a copycat incidents as some depressed kids saw all the attention and glory she was receiving for doing something people in many religions believe will send you straight to Hell.
My opinion is that suicide is the most selfish act one can commit (save the Kervorkian style) presence or lack of religious belief aside.
Bluto & DD,
You both have made some great comments directly from your hearts. I wish we could see more open candor like this on HJ topics. So often the topics turn into hate fests where the opposing sides dig in with degrading personal attacks.
In defense of desertique, she was personally attacked with the very first comment in that article by Ruggles1. From there it sadly escalated until it was totally out of hand. We might not agree with desertique, but her posts are usually civil and well thought out. We all have a tendency to become defensive when we are personally attacked. Especially to the degree she was.
I agree the Alleman story was a poor venue to discuss and vet the US role in Iraq.
A suggestion Bluto: Why don't you post some of these hot topics on your website? If invited many of the bloggers on the HJ might participate. Another suggestion. A little moderation to keep the subject on topic and civil couldn't hurt.
Then topics like Iraq, motorcycle helmets, SWAT, economic issues, etc. could hopefully be discussed without it turning into what we commonly see on the HJ. Hate filled diatribes. I believe the HJ wants their topics to turn into hate filled slugfests.
DD, I too would like to thank you for your service to your country. Bluto, thanks for caring enough to have your own blog site. Ultimately, we can all learn from one another if we can listen instead of continually digging in and personally attacking others when we don’t agree with them.
Anon -
Desertique was never personally attacked. The comment he made neither mentioned her by name or handle. I don't remember the word he used; it was of the same connotation as 'liberal', but that wasn't the one.
It'd be like someone posting on the article about the pastor "Good job. You're awesome. Let's see the mormons can even post something bad about you!" and then a member of the LDS faith taking it personally and "defending" themselves when really there wasn't a need in the first place. It was baiting, and she took it hook, line, and sinker.
Personally I think it was an unnecessary addition.
shdware is right. ruggles did not call anyone out with the first comment. Ruggles tossed out the hook and Deserttick stepped up to the proverbial insensitive, hated filled, plate.
Anon, if your going to comment about people, get your facts straight.
Bluto,
The reason I asked about you're Dad's name is I once knew a guy from Tremonton (I believe) named Dave Iverson. Is your Dad originally from there or nearby Tremonton? The Dave Iverson I knew would be about 62 years old (my age).
DD,
There are a bunch of iverson's around here. I don't think I'm related to any of them. My family is from Cali by way of Wisconsin. Dad's 72.
anon,
I'll try to do this more often. Usually when I post my website though I get accused of marketing it though I don't make money off of it nor do I expect to.
As for moderating. I'd rather it moderate itself in a point/counter point fashion. I can't control how one reacts to insult and implication. It's only words and if someone hurts you with theirs, turnabout is fair play.
Thanks for the compliments and I appreciate the dialogue from everyone.
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