Frankenstein was a doctor. And he created a monster. One reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is that the monster he created was himself. Any resemblance to the duelin' docs on OS is purely intentional.
Fast forward past the Hollywood movie to our current sound stage when the masked avenger comes charging forth with the war cry "WHORE" and the townspeople in a feeding frenzy descend on one detested doc. His previous foray had been somewhat less successful when he cried "CUNT" in an attempt to incite the mob against Ric Tresa, a vital member of our community, because of one of his "political" blogs. But even this benighted lot realized that Tresa has more artistic talent in one little finger than our hero peddling purloined porn with salacious titles. The sortie failed. Some rationality had prevailed: OSers, mindful of their own interests, decided one of Ric's banners was worth a thousand of our hero's epithet-laden tirades.
The misogynistic profanity, the hypocritical, leering purveying of porn, the hostility expressed on (mostly but not only) female posters' blogs under shape-shifting camouflage, finding expression as in the baying of hounds is profoundly disturbing.
Ric has since decided to forego making "political" posts, confining himself to the personal and his art.
In nomine..... Spiritus
Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part I introduces Joan la Pucelle:
The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,
Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome
and bids her adieu with:
.....because she is a maid,
Spare for no fagots, let there be enow:
Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake,
That so her torture may be shortened.
George Bernard Shaw in Saint Joan (the Preface is worth the price of admission) writes:
Joan's voices and visions have played many tricks with her reputation. They have been held to prove that she was mad, that she was a liar and impostor, that she was a sorceress (she was burned for this), and finally that she was a saint. They do not prove any of these things.....there are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure. ( Shaw cites as examples Socrates, Luther, Swedenborg, Blake, Saint Francis and Isaac Newton.)
In our world, when a fellow OSer wrote about her spirit voices, the horde pursued her like the Furies of old (or like the Dementors to the kiddie set) till she deleted her posts and withdrew.
She has subsequently returned, but has her spirit? (1)
Stuff Happens: "Frat hazing is worse than this"(2)
Of all the things I'm ashamed of having done in my life, the biggest is hazing. The camaraderie of the crowd and its protection, the showing off, egging on, for yuks, the feeling of generally booze-sodden power: haha, it was just for laughs. I love Greg Thomas for many things, but most of all that he's a 6' 6" guy writing a series against bullying.
Zyskandar Jaimot was (I hope still is) a member of Open Salon. He was not everyone's cup of tea, to put it mildly. Much of the time he was not mine. He comes across as an idiosyncratic, egocentric, erratic, insulting, foul-mouthed, mean old codger. But he was also a brilliant poet, wildly inventive with language, widely knowledgeable and to those who actually took the trouble to read him, deeply humane.
The locusts landed on Saturday. Stung by the rarely encountered triple redundancy in his farewell message to "weak thinkers and self-masturbating wankers", the posse pounced. Led by counter-reformatory zealots ("I haven't read your stuff, but...") who would put Savonarola to shame (the history is wrong, but the metaphor stands), the lynching party celebrated with a post that would make any blogger's heart sing, especially a "blogger that (sic) validates their (sic) existence through reader comments": 79 Rating, 119 Comments at last count.The climax of the orgy was a call asking for Zyskandar to commit suicide.
Zyskandar has not been back.
Notes:
(1) In Jean Anouilh's L'Alouette ( "The Lark", translated by Lillian Hellman), when the Inquisitor asks her if she is in a state of grace right now, Jeanne d'Arc replies: "At what moment my lord? Is it the beginning, when I hear my Voices, or the end, when my King and all my friends have deserted me, when I doubt and recant and the Church receives me again?"
(2) From Media Matters for America, May 3, 2004.
Photo credits: Wikipedia Commons. Purported Abu Ghraib photograph: source unknown.
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Dana Dangerous
Skip Williamson
designanator
Dennis Knight
dharmabummer
Critical Mess
Salon.com
Comments
Kudos
Rated
Witch Hunt by Rush
The night is black
Without a moon.
The air is thick and still.
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torchlit hill.
Features distorted in the flickering light,
The faces are twisted and grotesque.
Silent and stern in the sweltering night,
The mob moves like demons possesed.
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right,
Confident their ways are best.
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will.
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill.
They say there are strangers who threaten us,
are immigrants and infidels.
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves.
Those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves.
Quick to judge,
Quick to anger,
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand..
Here's my latest, and perhaps my most effortlessly poignant remark on OS to date... If you can slog through it... Rob St. Amant PM'd me and told me I'd been libeled in this post by someone also accused of pernicious sock puppetry. My response to her vitriol was a nice piece, I thought; but then she went in for the KO... so I gave her a nice, fat doggie treat.
I apologize for pimping my own posts on someone else's blog, but IMO we could do with a little less idiocy.
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=77750
aloha
p_f: I try not to get involved as much as possible, and if I do, not on the side of the lynchers. But to see other voices get stilled and the whole "tilt" of this place changing is equally disturbing.
Thank you, nanatehay, Rob. And thank you, Greggo, ya big lug, that song says it all.
WOOF
Bow wow ow!!
So who is this "misogynistic profanity, the hypocritical, leering purveying of porn..."?
Don't blame him if you can't name him.
I don't want to add fuel to the fire that I'm writing about. If people don't know the persons involved, they are, hopefully, still moved by the premise of the piece and its essential, dare I say timeless, truth. If they know the persons involved, it adds some currency to the data and perhaps some additional validation, but not that much more, I think.
WOOF
WOOF
Ohh well... it's all water under the bridge now, no harm done.
Thanks again for the mention :)
Woof, good response to this. Look, I'll make it easy – it's me (some of those words I had to look up). I'll take one for the team! There. It's done.
Everyone can relate to this in a way.
I hope Z reconsiders. Some feelings will inevitably get hurt when we post heated opinions. I try to take another Lincoln example:
I paraphrase out the whazoo..........
When you jot out an angry response to something, it has the potential to stay around, within your sphere, darkening your patina. Place it aside 'til morning. The heat of the moment will have faded and the world is more right than it was the day before.
With Z, some of the stuff is rough, but good art is good art......
thanks for such a wildly creative observation CCC
xo,
G
suzy: Thanks. Staying out of it is the wisest course. We all miss the Turtle, another heart-and-soul of the community and another similar casualty.
Ric: You're welcome. You're another heart-and-soul guy and we're richer here for your presence and your art.
Catamite: Somewhat inscrutable. But thanks. I think.
Hyblaean: How were you one of the villagers? Your comment both here and on his post were honest and from the heart: "I loved your book, Thank you for sending it to me. I like your poetry on here too, but find it time consuming to translate your commentary, so stopped doing so. There are many brilliant people on here. Some that are able to take the most deep obscure emotions and make them simple and real in the light of day. I wish that for both you and I." If he comes back, it will be because of that. Peace.
WOOF
There is one nagging question though. If the person in the first part of your essay is to be excoriated for certain epithets, why is Zyskander to be excused for using the same and worse? Why should he not be held to the same standards of civil discourse?
Bob: Thanks for taking one for the team. That mention of polite exchanges with Z., and I think you had mentioned earlier that his non-OS posts were totally different, shows that all of us have different sides and his many sides were different from your and mine. If more people could accept that, obviously this piece would be moot.
Stellaa: Thanks. But as for "I find it hard to continue the feuding, but yet, I cannot stop", please don't stop. Your even-keeled moderation of the debate in the face of even the foulest of antagonists, I can only marvel at, and it is a necessary and welcome contrast to the vigilante brigades in my post.
Gary: Thank you, especially for the observation about style. As I said earlier to Wayne, whether to name names was a crucial decision to make in writing the piece. I'm at peace with it. As to Lincoln, he was a wise man despite his party affiliation -- and that's a hard concession to drag out of a Yellow Dog Democrat!
WOOF
Plus I'm glad to see that someone notices we still burn witches.
The light-speed churn of posts on the cover has everyone on edge. How many more shell-shocked newcomers have to be talked back from the edge? They're not getting read or noticed and figure there must be some magical ho-ha that the rest of us know and aren't sharing.
The cover is a joke, based on ephemeral EPs; ratings and comments are a much better gauge of site worthiness and they get short shrifted to the sidebar.
Soon we supposed to see some "new" software. I suspect they be rolling out the "groups" concept. I have a bad feeling it will have the functionality of the current Search page. I worry that it will be just imposing enough to close off what little dialog we actually have; potters will no longer sit down with poets, nor republicans with democrats, nor the mad with the unenlightened.
The loss of Zyskander diminishes us as a site that appreciates good writing.
The site needs it's own voice. One that can say back off to posters and commentators alike outside of ideology. and, unless I am mistaken, we are the site, newbies and oldbies alike.
If you are interested in seeing how other successful ventures dealt with this issue I recommend you examine how Wikipedia manages conflicts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes
Thanks C3 this was a great post.
My admiration and thanks for this timely and well reasoned post.
As we become more open, civil discourse is getting increasingly harder to come by as those who bring with them the idea current on the internet that flaming and arguing is the norm. I have voiced the opinion that OS culture is strong enough to influence new posters; however, the editorial preference for "social content" is now overwhelming serious content. Makes it difficult for those of us who wish to have civil discourse. I would hope that the new "groups" that are promised can help.
Few realized that Zyskander has a most idealistic view of Amerika or the Amerika that should be. The kind of America that Thomas Paine knew. True diversity was shouted down. The voice that he used was that of a 1930s character--a time when these ideas were current. When the economy is bad, people become involved in their governance. Or, at least, they should be.
The flame war of spirituality versus the scientific method was counterproductive. I tried to intervene in vain. According to my dead pope, Belief and Science belong in two different spheres which do not overlap but are nonetheless both Truths. You cannot convince anyone and trying only frustrates.
When someone uses sarcasm, it indicates to me that this person has run out of intellectual ammunition. The next step down is name calling. The mob mentality is easy to arouse behind the facelssness of the internet.
Stellaa gets high points from me for her current work on the Gazan issue. Name calling is a bad faith method designed to derail discussion. Dennis Loo and Judith Green are both doing an excellent job of elucidating this topic but get little attention.
Thanks again, my good dog, for posting your thoughts on this subject.
I for one wish he would come back. I wonder if perhaps the real problem was that he was slipping off the feed too quickly. I didn't know he was posting until he said goodbye and someone caught it.
Of course, Z also could say some very mean things. His wit was sharp but it could also cut. And certainly there was no need to insult anyone.
But I do wish he would come back. Even though occasionally he behaved a bit like a scoundrel, I liked him. I am a lover of scoundrels of all sorts of course.
And he was honest about himself and his thoughts, mainly. That was rather good.
But then again, he should do what he wants, in the end. Perhaps he really doesn't want to be here. Obviously, then, he shouldn't be.
As for the Dr. well, I'm sorry to say I don't like her much. I find it detestable the way she's labeled much of OS as anti-Semitic without a single backward glance, in all of her new forms, by the way. I mean, really, who does she think she's fooling? So, I now avoid her and all her new personalities. Let her comment and support herself, I say, all ALONE. That's the best I can do there, presently.
Your post is lovely because it calls for all of us to be better people even in the face of difficulty and distress. You're right. I know I'm whining when I say "it's so hard though, especially when someone is mean to you."
But nasty action escalates, as the world has shown us over and over again, if it is met with more nasty action.
Difficult, difficult.
Thank you for this post.
Critical: Thanks for the kudos. The question you raise of distinguishing between the lynch mob's epithets and Zyskandar's is a crucial one. Do you mind if I answer that separately?
HH: As I commented on your blog, your posts are too good and high quality to attract the mob. Now, if you could title them: "F*** YOU, GERIATRIC DEMOCRATIC C***S AND W****S", that might get some action going :-).
Caruso: Thank you. I'll check out the dispute resolution Wiki site. (My daughter had also mentioned that site, and she is almost as learned and wise as the Cat Royale :-)). As for waiting for the Overlords, well the waiting is long, but the time is short (as T. S. Eliot said, before the wait was over with the murder of Becket -- the Archbishop guy, not the Sox pitcher, Heaven forfend!).
WOOF
They have not left, but their voices have been altered through intimidation. As usual, your references get right to the heart. The bit from Anouilh at the end is heart-breaking, with Joan of Arc asking:
"At what moment my lord? Is it the beginning, when I hear my Voices, or the end, when my King and all my friends have deserted me, when I doubt and recant and the Church receives me again?"
Om Shanti.
(a) Z's use of the words were for comic, bombastic effect, especially with his hyper-extended orthography "BERKLEE BYTCHES" "COMMIE C***S" etc. I objected to the occasions when he aimed these at people who, as I said elsewhere, didn't play the game like he did, and he stopped aiming those tirades at them.
(b) Similar words used by the heads of the mob were used to incite hate, their use in all but one case (against Ric) was standard issue filth denigrating specific women. To me this is demagogic hate speech.
(c) To me, as I suspect for you, the context of the text is important. Z's context was a kind of performance art (as Rob has called it), similar to George Carlin's "Seven words you can't say...". This has or ought to have a much higher threshold of acceptability than the irredeemable spewing of hate, especially when militating a call to action.
There's some more, but I suffer from blogorrhea as it is and I await your response.
WOOF
I think criticism is good as long as it is constructive. Z could often be abrasive and I think that turned a lot of people off. He is an interesting duality. I don't wish him ill.
Very kind of you to post this level-headed defense of him.
What I do think is that personal attacks on anyone for any reason should not be tolerated and the attackers should give their energies to another endeavor. I liked your post and your references, What was especially effective was ".there are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure.", (George Bernard Shaw). This has happened to me. By the way, did you know zj had 198 letters to the editor on Salon.com junk1
What you say is well said and important. I think it always worthwhile to suggest that we stop and think before we spout off. We would do well in all arenas to listen as much as talk, to try to hear as much as we'd like to be heard. But I think something has faded here and I don't know that it can be easily reclaimed. Perhaps it was always meant to be ethereal. We have never been privy to the thoughts of the overlords; we are just peasants in this joint. But it's a fine bunch of peasants I find myself amidst, so I will continue to take solace in that ;)
Thanks, Dog.
Susan: Thank you. I think you and I are on the same wavelength on most matters OS. And so far we both seem to be staying here. For the most part. So far.
WOOF
I think you're making an important point here. People need to be able to disagree without going into balls-to-the-wall attack mode (whoops, sorry about that balls reference ;-). That seemed to be more achievable with fewer people who read each other on a more regular basis, and felt they had personal connections and real friendships with other posters.
Like I said to you elsewhere--hell if I remember where--I've learned to avoid certain posters and certain post topics (reading, not writing) because there tends to be too much heat and not enough light. That's working for me. I'm still finding new writers thanks to the activity feed, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on new talent, and it keeps my heart rate a lot lower. :)
The point you make about just visiting certain posters is just what I've started doing. In fact, as I said on that post of Z's which got this whole piece started for me, I don't even "engage" a new poster till I feel I "know" them. Now if the darn Friends List were larger it would make the task simpler, but oh well!
WOOF