Looks like I touched a nerve

No one who matters takes these people seriously. Maybe that's the real problem

Within hours of posting this, I got an email informing me that my work was, based on the input of an unnamed reader or readers, no longer welcome in Podium Runner. While I wasn’t trying to provoke such an outcome, I was neither surprised nor disappointed; in fact, I categorically support this editorial decision. It confirms that the right people are reading the blog’s thus-far public entries, however bedeviled by cowardice they are to engage me or its points. (Like most Internet pandemics, SJW leftism lives, breeds and shits primarily on Twitter.)

It seems that it was a wise move to spend more time growing my beautiful, burgeoning baby of a literary malignancy and less time on work for publications that are rapidly melding into a single estrogen-powered tsunami of personal resentments framed as calls to action. I do, however, regret that someone who’s been a friend as well as a colleague was put in a position by one or more harpies to even deal with this. Otherwise, it’s just another example of “HEAR US ROAR!” types avoiding confrontation and refusing to defend their ignorant, apocalyptic bitching.

The e-mail’s contents:

Your blog was brought to my attention, to my dismay. While you have a right to say anything you want, you can't write this kind of hateful attacks on colleagues and also write for PR. 

Apart from writing for us, in my opinion, you're not helping any cause with your attacks.

I don’t blame him, though I always laugh at people who bring up my right to say what I want, since no one who says that means it. Adult distance running, for good reason, represents a very small world — smaller than the complainers need it to be, and shrinking by the moment if the NCAA is any metric — and it wasn’t going to be long before the guy with the power to act as a forced henchman was going to start getting e-mails he couldn’t ignore.

I disagree, though, that I am helping no cause with my “attacks” on people whose slapstick insecurities and hypocrisies are fueling provably bad things. Indeed, I could unfurl a long list of putative benefits, but it’s not Christmas morning yet. And whoever reported it is a shitweasel, not a colleague. How that person(s) even knows about this blog is a good question, as I haven’t been sharing these posts anywhere; people get them as emails or have to track down the site on their own. I was planning to accumulate a decent stockpile of posts before more aggressively leaving this stuff on people’s virtual doorsteps — today’s version of a ding-dong-ditch and a flaming bag of dogshit, but with a helpful, fireproof note affixed to the turd. Yet I got the above email — which managed, like country music, to be hellishly bland and murderously whiny at the same time — before the post had even reached 100 views.

Imagine going into journalism to be a journalist, but thanks for broadcasting your real motives.

Since SJWs deal strictly in the currency of emotion while yammering proudly about the imperative that we* rely on sound science and reason, almost every element of this battle is emotional to them. (Reminder: Caster Semenya has testes.) Also, in many cases, they clearly don’t care about any cause other than accruing greater status. Therefore, in taking indirect aim at someone’s livelihood, no matter how trivially, they are trading a momentary benefit for a barrage of future losses, because they’ve proven they lack the “oves” to handle what people say about them — even when they have to seek that feedback out. Even as I’m saying that I understand why the editor acted as he did and that in practical terms this is all inconsequential, I’m not thrilled with the idea that someone can say, “Look at what this guy is saying about us on his blog, how can you let him write unrelated material for you” — and I’m only guessing that’s about how it went down, but the possibilities are limited — and be immediately rewarded. It’s not like I’m starting a Nazi or NAMBLA group here. So far, the only responses I’ve seen have been literally sexist, classist or racist keyboard-farts, or complaints about the incomprehensible prose or the fact that blogs aren’t legit outlets.

I didn’t just decide out of the blue to start blasting away at would-be equality advocates, most of whom are women. I started when the level of destructive bullshit being trucked into running by self-interested parties sloppily disguising their noises as pushes for “equality” — noises all too easy to not vet anymore, thanks largely to the monstrosity on its way out of the White House — became too annoying to ignore. I see people unpretentiously trying to shove others out of the sport for refusing to turn their own Internet pages into free-for-alls for people who have already declared war on them. Fuck them all, and if I can help accelerate their inevitable fiery crash into the side of Mount Reality, good.

There are people involved here who have known me for a while and realize that if nothing else, I haven’t lost my mind, even if I’ve lost patience with the nonsense. After all, it’s hard to dismiss observations like this — and I will get to that spectacular essay when I dive into the RW cover fiasco, or lack of fiasco, shortly — as the disillusioned sputtering of a privileged old white male.

(I admit that some the noise is also funny to me, and it probably shows to those of you not in the crosshairs of this and familiar with my dubious style, but fewer and fewer people appreciate Doug Stanhope-y humor these days.)

I’m wondering if the person(s) who did this have any capacity to consider how someone like me might now react. Perhaps some sort of “decision tree” might be in order, or maybe just a few seconds of serious thinking. If I were watching the writing of a filterless blogger who dispenses with certain niceties when assessing bullshit, I’d guess her response to an anonymous ratting-out would be upping the ante somehow. I’d rate the chances of someone discouraging the unwanted blogger-critic’s behavior at somewhere between zero and fuck-all, and I might even think, “Well, if she had any restraint before, they just flash-fried it what’s left of it.”

I want anyone who uses the underhanded tactics that work quick magic on Twitter by tapping into uncritical rage-responses to fail, and in the process, have the systematic flaws in the cancel-boycott approach exposed so that people can see how it consumes not only decency but itself along the way. As long as people exist whose lying, cheating and similar antics are not only not being sanctioned but are resulting in active, tangible rewards, I’ll be here to assure that the strategy is tied to inescapable drawbacks. That includes anything from intentionally bad journalism about Mary Cain or Caster Semenya to simply being a pain in the ass of running, or me.