Contrary to Popular Belief, Good People Still Exist

[I've spent most of my day grading and doing my best Timothy Burke.  Check that first link if you want to see Holbo pull out a can of "whip your ass" on me.  Sorry.  Can't resist the urge to mock Canadians.]

Tonight I put away the snark in order to write about simple human goodness.  That's right.  I said it:

Sometimes the world isn't a cruel place. 

Earlier this evening I returned to the scene of the pain to purchase a salad.  (I've been told to walk around for at least 30 minutes a day to stretch out all the tight and torn little muscles in my back.)  I hadn't even considered that walking through that parking lot would be existential torture until the Little Womedievalist said it was gutsy of me to traverse it again so soon.  And I was gutsy . . . if by "gutsy" you mean "limped through the median's ground-hugging shrubbery."  So I purchased some salad and was hacking my way back through the lot when the owner of the liquor store beckoned me:

Mike:  Dude!  What are you doing?

Scott:  Heading home.

Mike:  I see that.  What's with the gimping?

Scott:  I got hit by a car.

Mike:  Fuck!  That was you?

At which point I exited the medial jungle and looked to my left, then to my right, then both ways, then both ways again, then limped across the lot to talk to him.  Turns out the police are on the case.  They've collected credit card receipts from all the stores in the complex stamped between 7:50 and 8:20 p.m. last Friday night. 

Apparently, they're taking this possible felony hit-and-run seriously.  (When I talked to them all I was told is that they were "still investigating.")  I don't know what they're doing with those receipts, but I hold out hope that they're forwarding them to Vincent D'Onofrio, who will then enter the names of the credit card owners into a DMV database and determine which of them own Honda Civics.

Then he'll put 'em in the box.  After a few moments of professional grilling, they'll break down.  If only.  In the real world, I'm thankful that Mike expressed real sympathy for my plight.  How do I know he did? 

Because he gave me a bottle of my favorite vodka gratis and a lift home.  See what I mean?  Sometimes the world isn't a cruel place.  (cue Jimmy Stewart)  Sometimes people are awful nice.

Comments

[geoduck2]

Hi,

I thought I'd drop by, because after I re-read your original post over at the Valve, I came to the conclusion that you may have misunderstood something. It sounds like you think this sick mess was a debate about literary intentionalism.

This whole nonsense started when Thers put up a post about JG missing a Conrad quote on another blog. It was a unserious post on a blog with a small, friendly readership. (ie - Many pictures on his blog were of his children and about their activities. Many of his posters are also personal friends.)

Anyways, in the last paragraph, in a offhand manner, Thers jokingly referred to JG's "class notes", and said he would decipher them for our amusement if he got drunk this summer.

Surprisingly, JG read this blog post (several days after it was put up) and said that Thers should analyze his class notes immediately as his reputation had been impugned.

So Thers demurs, saying he has three children (an infant) and a lot of stuff to do. A bunch of his commenters come over to Metacomments and pester him to Duel! Duel! with their leader. Immediately! Don't wait! Now! Now!

I feel quite guilty because I went over to PW and engaged with the commenters. (The first of many idiotic mistakes on my part. As you can see, they think I am a very, very bad mollusk. And I certainly did not act with courtesy or take him seriously. Not because I have any thoughts or even any investment into the reputation of various literary theories, but because his commenters were rude and I was not interested in JG's literary analysis. Yes, I am quite immature.)

Thers began to reluctantly engage. But, you seem to think that this "engagement" was some sort of debate about intentionalism. It most definitely was not.

This debate was about JG's class notes. It was not some sort of attack on intentionalism or Michaels. (In fact, JG calls his own approach "radical intentionalism." I have no idea what that is - if you're interested you'll have to ask him.)

Thers, in fact, comes at his work from a historical perspective. We discussed the irony of our conservatism many times on Metacomments & Eschaton - that Jeff wanted to argue with a deconstructionist yet he was stuck with talking to us.

(For about a day things started to get interesting. I regreted my previous rude behavior. I had some good exchanges with a commenter who is writing his dissertation in a Classics department. That was fun. Then the insults started again and stuff went downhill. If for some strange reason you are interested, you can read these discussions over at PW.)

Eventually a statement about the two year old was made at Metacomments by an anonymous commenter and at that point the "debate" jumped the shark.

This weekend an anonymous commenter researched and revealed on PW the personal information about Thers and his wife (who had never commented at PW). This person even revealed the car that they drive. Thers e-mailed him and asked him to remove the information. At first JG deleted this information, but he was angry at commenters on PW who commented about the previous ugly comment. He was also mad that Thers was not grateful enough to him for removing the information. JG got mad and reposted the private information about Thers and his wife.
-----------

This is probably way more information then you wanted to know. For what it's worth - that's what I saw. It sounds like you are utterly uninterested in the sick spectacle that went down. I would say that's a great instinct, and shows that your maturity is much greater then my own.

Anyways, I never thought it was a serious debate about literary theory (New Left/Old Left/ Historicism/whatever). It was always about JG's notes. I didn't want you to get the impression it was a attack on Ben Michael or literary intentionalism.

Please delete this comment if you think it would be disruptive to the debate that you are starting over at the Valve. It looks like that debate will be serious and productive.

[bitchphd]

Yeah, I never paid any attention to that whole brouhaha, but I suspect you've been sadly misled, Scott, just based on my own past interactions with JG. Intellectual honesty is not his hallmark.

I'm really glad the liquor store owner was nice to you. Free booze + painkillers = good....

[Timothy Burke]

Reading threads like those makes me want to delete the entire Internet from my computer.

[Miriam]

Good to hear that the cops are on the case. Sure you don't want Chris Noth, though?

[Liz]

Wow! Vodka! It brought a tear to my eye. Get better.

[David R. Block]

Judging from the preceeding comments, I expect a beatdown, but oh well. I find that the whole thing started over the class notes, too, and various and sundry insults from metacomments and others (as our host noted on The Valve) which were, of course, responded to in kind by the commentariat at PW. Including yours truly. That's how most flame wars start. Nothing new there.

Sadly, the P-word comment was made by someone posting on metacomments (and now we may never know by whom, it having been taken down and all). And personal items were posted on PW about Thersites (spelling may vary, I'm having generic trouble with that name). I must say as a long time commenter at PW, that I did not recognize the handle of the person who outed him.

I did find it funny that posts were made demanding the removal of the personal information starting in the wee hours. For some reason the PW server is set to Eastern time, Colorado is Mountain time, so any posts requesting information removal prior to 11 AM (9 AM Mountain) would be fruitless. But enough folks could not figure that out and escalated the problem further. And the obligatory post of hoping Jeff died of cancer was made at PW as well. How sweet. Not. Trolls will be trolls.

I'm not in academia. If this small subset of academia is representative of the politcal culture therein, I likely would not fit. I'm in mainframe computer programming, and I will, as far as I can see, retire in that line of work. Engineers (and computer science was in engineering at that time--yes, I'm getting to be an old fart) generally count on intentionalism in pretty much everything that they do, but they don't know what to call it. That is the general tone of all of the technical tomes that we tend to read. This is reinforced in computer science by the programming languages taking the same things the same way all of the time.

Bash Jeff all you guys want, but I probably would not be the least bit interested in the topic, except superficially, had I not been reading over there.

Scott, feel free to flush this if you so desire.

[Dr. Virago]

Aw, I *heart* the liquor store guy. But yeah, I'm with Miriam -- you want Chris Noth. D'Onofrio has that irritating head tilt thing. He's like George Clooney on steroids or something.

Or maybe Gil Grissom and company will be called in from Vegas and find your partial fingerprints on the grill of one of the Hondas that LAPD runs down. That would be awesome.

[geoduck2]

NTodd and this tena thing (who, despite numerous mentions of the fact still can’t seem to grasp that it was not me who posted Thersites’ info—and this despite her claims she holds a degree in law, which generally presumes on the part of the holder at least some ability to pay attention to important details before opening one’s stupid yap) are responding to my civility by keeping this drama ongoing.

It’s almost as if they are daring me to say fuck it, and just let the info fly!

Thersites should be alerted of this at once. Because his little attack dogs are starting to take up too much of my time. And I have better things to do, like, I dunno, teach a couple of ad hoc comp classes at Front Range Community College, if the mood strikes.
Posted by Jeff Goldstein | permalink
on 05/30 at 02:23 PM

The above comment appeared on Protein Wisdom shortly before Jeff Goldstein reposted the personal information on Thers and his wife.

Thersites and his wife had previously remained anonymous on the web. However, shortly thereafter Jeff Goldstein posted the real name of Thers, his wife (who was not involved in this argument), where they live, and where they work was re-posted by Jeff Goldstein on the web.

I'm sure it's no surprise to anybody that Thers removed his blog from the web.

I would really appreciate it, and be really thankful, if Jeff Goldstein would remove all personal information about Thersites and his family from his website.

Thank you.

[sharon]

Free bottle of vodka, huh? That is a truly good and noble man.

[Adam Kotsko]

This is good news -- nice to have such a positive experience happen in the same place. I don't think I said anything in your original post, but I'm very sorry this happened to you, and it made me feel sick to my stomach to think of the person getting away with it -- I'm glad the police seem to be making some progress.

[David R. Block]

Geoduck2,

I have zero, zip, nada control over what Goldstein does.

Scott,

Cheers. Have one for me. Diabetics aren't supposed to touch the stuff, so you can have another. Get well soon.

[Brian]

Well, glad to hear the police are actually accomplishing something, but I'll put my hopes for a 100% recovery above my hopes for justice. Happy healing, and Na zdorovje!

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Thanks everyone for your kind wishes. I'm still stiff-pillows-stacked-on-the-couch-bound, so I've gotten no work done in five days. So I feel, how do I say it, lazy, lazy, lazy. Too bad I'm not more dependent on online sources, or I'd be able to whip through this chapter during my convalescence. Instead, I'm stuck being unable to work and exploring my inner Benn Michaels. (By which I mean, trying to find structurally interesting connections between distinct bodies of thought. The irony here being that it's Michaelsian thought I'm doing this to.)

Geoduck2, check your email.

(Oh, and Noth over D'Onofrio? I don't think so. I'd rather the genius with the tilted head than the noble, blue-collar guy who works on intuition and, um, stupidity. Don't get me wrong, I love Noth. I even postponed my post-high-school graduation festivities to see his "last" episode on the original L & O, but he's no D'Onofrio.)

[David R. Block]

My closest personal encounter with a vehicle was being pinned to my car with a Ditch Witch blade through the left leg (telephone cable laying equipment). Guy was backing up from getting gas at the gas station, and couldn't see a 1971 Buick LeSabre (how you can miss one of those land yachts, I don't know, but he didn't see it, or me). Nice insurance settlement for back then (1977), so here's hoping they catch the guy.

[Miriam]

Well, better D'Onofrio than the departing Farina, although his character would at least have dunked your errant driver in a toilet. Or something.

[Ancrene Wiseass]

Awww. Nothing warms the heart (or the gullet) like free liquor. That's sweet.

[courtney]

people who buy you alcohol to take away your pain are what make me realize the world is full of nice people.