Your Schtick Has Gone Too Far

When you are writing angry letters in character:

Meester Kaufman,

When zis affair with Mon General subsides, you vill steel be ze little shit you are.  Dear General needs not your petty schemes attacking his character.  He will stand victorious when nobody reads your shit leetle blog.  Enjoy ze attention of his reflected glory, his sun weel not shine long on you.

Why not write someone a letter in an unconvincing, inconsistent fake French accent?  Unlike other letters posted here, this one has not been redacted, merely edited for length.  No need to read 1,000 unfunny words when the point can be made with 50.  The only thing lost by not printing the whole thing is the schizophrenic effect it produces.  It sounds like a bad actor (circa 1942) auditioning for the part of a Vichy operative while on the cusp of a nervous breakdown.  ("You veel, no, weel, no, vill, you vill be sorry dat, sorry, sorry zat you crossed paths weet, wait, weeth me.")  If this is what passes for cutting online satire, God help us all.

Posting this bit of insanity is the last I'll say on the subject, save one thing: I need no more defending.*  I appreciate the gesture, but the point has been made.  Thoughtful musings inspired by this saga and touching on larger issues are one thing; rehashing the minutiae of these unfortunate events another. 

*I reserve the right to renege as circumstance dictates.

Comments

[brad]

While I don't entirely agree with you, I'm genuinely sorry you've borne the brunt of someone's mental breakdown in the midst of this tribal squabble. But please don't confuse the efforts of Randall Byrd at SN! with a defense of you. He's a concern troll, most likely from Six Meat, trying to continue to stir shit. I've no desire to create any new debates, I just don't want you to credit someone unduly.

[Sisyphus]

Kaufman, I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!

Now go away or I shall taunt you a zecond tihme.

(Seems I need to break out my Pythons videos again.)

[mom]

Scott,
As your mother I guess I failed to tell you - YOU'RE JEWISH and 1/36 Native American - so I guess you can not be the voice of the "White People". I know I have given you this info on several holidays that we celebrated during your youth. I guess you went off to school and forgot!!! I know I am making light of the situation, but, those who know you know what type of person you are and I am VERY, VERY proud of the man you have become. You just need to phone home more often.

[Rich Puchalsky]

I'm glad that this time you put the asterisk and "I reserve the right to renege" in. It seems meaningless -- if circumstances did change then no one would blame you for needing to renege -- but I think that actually writing it makes you feel better if it indeed does happen. (Since you've apparently heard nothing further at this point, I think that it's quite likely that this has blown over except for the blogospheric aftermath.)

[Stephen]

Yes, Scott, you should call your mother more often.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Academic blogging question: why have there been several recent links to the word "writing" that point to Herland?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Everyone, my Mother. Mom, everyone. Despite being Catholic, you'll see that by virtue of raising three Jewish children (one now only nominally so), she has fully embraced the role of the Jewish mother.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Rich, yes, I feel better reneging on promises when I've stated I'd do so in advance. I worried far too much about revealing Casper's name, even though that was obviously the right thing to do.

As for the odd links, it has something to do with some new Amazon/Typepad agreement. I no longer need to link to the books I write about -- Typepad will do that automatically -- but it's also been linking to words, names, phrases, &c. I'm guessing it's a kink they're working out. I hope they do so soon. All these random links make me feel a little spammy.

[onymous]

OK, I feel sort of bad that after reading all these posts this is what makes me overcome my instinctive lurkerdom to comment, but: how can one be "1/36 Native American"? That's a pretty interesting fraction to appear in genealogy!

Of course, now that I'm commenting, I'll also say that all of this craziness you've had to deal with sucks, and your blog gives the impression that you're a class act who deals with such nonsense far better than most. Here's hoping you don't have to deal with such things very often....

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Onymous:

That's a pretty interesting fraction to appear in genealogy!

I know what it means, but I don't know the math. Her grandfather was Native American. (I don't mean that reductively, but it's as specific as I can be. For sound reasons, my mother hasn't communicated with anyone in her family since she was seventeen, so we don't know which tribe he belonged to.)

[R.L.Page]

Your mother is wise, Mr. Kaufman. I have long believed that families should not communicate without a trained mediator present. Myself, I only communicate with my family through depositions.

[Miriam]

Zis is dee sort of ting up wit which I will not put.

Or, um, something.

Ah, fractional genealogy. I'm 1/8 Mongolian...

I hope that the UCI administration has continued non-responsive...

[R.L.Page]

A university administration non-responsive? Could that happen in America?

[Appalled]

Wow. I must have stumbled upon Princess Something Special. Are you really THE GUY who started the blog rumble in the left hemisphere of Blogistan?

If so, you are a serious dickhead. For crying out loud, do you have no forethought, man?

It's common sense to respect the dead, let alone commenting on race, health and/or physical appearance in ANY SENSE when a man has passed on. WTF where you thinking? Are you 15 years old?

Man o man are you the fucking idiot King of the world. When this all blows over it will more than likely end up as a strong strike against you, ya moron.

I'm an independent and I've been bombarded from the left and the right with email after email on this and you WILL lose in the long run. How could be so damn rash?

Way to rally your enemy's troops. The kind of stuff I'm seeing in the left blogosphere behind the scenes is probably not something you would have been happy to instigate. IDIOT.

[Doctor Slack]

Are you really THE GUY who started the blog rumble in the left hemisphere of Blogistan?

To recap: no, Scott did not start the blog rumble. Brittney at Nashville is Talking began it with the dick move of reposting the racist screed against Gilliard; Scott was originally one of those (pretty cluelessly in the opinions of some of his readers) who tried to defend her based on "context." Scott was hardly the only one of those, however, and a far cry from the most clueless (which particular honour probably goes to piny at Feministe).

The spectacular display of netkookery his involvement occasioned from the unfriendly ghost has been strongly condemned even by his antagonists in that original debate (patriotboy specifically). On another thread on this site, Rich Puchalsky has speculated that people trying to wring more Drama and Acrimony out of the whole thinig five days on are basically (intentionally or not) serving the function of provocateurs. I'm inclined to agree with him.

[Jonathan Dresner]

Actually, "Jewish Mothers" come in an incredible variety of ethnicities: I've known Italian ones, Chinese ones, Japanese ones, French ones, and all kinds of American ones....

[Karl Steel]

That's a pretty interesting fraction to appear in genealogy!

Odd numbers are more interesting. In Candide, you'll recall, Candide's father might be the guy who possesses only 71 quarterings of nobility.

Brave, brave Appalled:

You know what's classy? Showing up on a thread on someone's blog where the blogger's mother is hanging out and calling her son a "moron." Why not just pile on and call him a cripple?

common sense to respect the dead

Why? All dead? Anywhere?

[I. Eaton]

Hey, SEK, first off, I'd just like to say that reading your blog is one of the highlights of my online day. So imagine my dismay, when, after taking time off from the internet for a few days, I find that you've gone and gotten mixed up in with a surreal meta-blog career-threatening disaster of an argument and its real life consequences. I'm hoping that you see the outpouring of support here and in your inbox as a good reason to keep blogging, in spite of your growing awareness of the potential consequences of the existence of nutcases.

There's something about the mob mentality, though, in its power, and I fell under its influence. As I read through the original comment thread at patriotboy's blog that started all of this, I was practically looking around for a mob to join. (the Acephalous mob, not the JG mob). In fact, I was almost disgusting in my glee: your arguments were just too tight, man, and carried off with a lot of class. Honestly, I think you offered a model of academic argumentation, in your civility and perceptiveness. While reading through the thread, I made myself step back for a second, just to make sure that I wasn't unduly offering you my psychic support in potential indifference to the possible weaknesses in your argument. But I can't believe that anyone who would read through that comment thread with even the semblance of an open mind could see you as racist, refined or otherwise. So, (to appropriate a phrase that I'm sure has been used in defense of the General more than a few times), don't let the bastards get you down.

[I. Eaton]

Oh, yeah, something else. If your mother's grandfather was Native American, that makes you 1/16th Native. You're just getting more and more cred in this racism thing.

[Martin GL]

Notice that monsieur Appalled decided to post his Big Block o'Stupid up there before actually determining whether or not SEK is the person to which he is directing his insults. These are the kinds of people we are dealing with here.