Stop, Drop and Roll

30 May 2008 | Alameda Community, Alameda Truthiness | John Knox White

The blogs have been heating up again. And I don’t mean breaking stories (though sometimes we do that too! ;-o). It appears to me that the opening of the theater and the across the board glowing over the restoration has opened some wounds that had scabbed over but never healed.

I would imaging that it must be difficult to have been so passionate and so convinced of all the terrible things that were going to happen only to find that the thing opens and people, including some major critics, come out gushing over the project. (Caveat before you jump down my e-throat: this isn’t an in-your-face statement, it’s a thought about what’s happening. And yes, those who are concerned about the financial viability still have a few years to be proven correct, I’m only thinking about the constant “the restoration is only partial and it’s going to be a disaster” and “the traffic will choke downtown and kill our tiny town” and “the size of the project will dwarf all of downtown Alameda.” Aside to the caveat: I too miss seeing Twin Towers church, but I don’t think the new view is bad either, just different.)

Back to the point: I bring up the theater only because all of a sudden some of its major detractors (anonymous and named) have popped back up to start slinging highly ironic accusations against Lauren Do who’s blog has singlehandedly changed public discourse in Alameda over the past three years.

One thing is clear about online discourse, it tends to be slightly more spirited, more emotional, and yes, sometimes more snarky than print media. I’d be a total hypocrite (rather than just the partial one that I am) if I tried and claim that I haven’t added my own brand of snark to the process at times, so I’m not taking the high ground here. What is disappointing is the lack of self-awareness in the attacks that are being lobbed, and the extreme narrow focus within them.

Commenter “AD” wrote in on this post:

Why does Lauren Do start every discussion of a position she disagrees with with a character assassination and a warped summary? Is it because once she’s marked the target it’s easy for the foot soldiers to attack? This targeted flogging of select individuals has got to be transparent enough by now.

…Unfortunately, floggers like Lauren Do have made it a goal to effectively blast any middle ground where sides can meet. To what end, Lauren?

And quickly followed this up by derisively comparing Lauren to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. You can read AD’s rundown of the character assassination s/he alludes to here.

It appears that AD, who has added zero to the conversations taking place on Lauren’s site except to attack Lauren over the last week, can find something negative in just about anything when s/he puts his/her mind to it, apparently critiquing a publicly posted piece in opposition to Measure H is going negative on his character. Puh-lease!

Mr. Smith’s piece was not a “hey, we should look into whether there are redundancies that can save the district money” it was specifically “Hey, the district (admin and BOE) are making stuff up about having to cut core educational pieces and therefore you should vote against Measure H.” It was the point in the Alameda Journal’s Point/Counterpoint last Friday. And as mentioned in Lauren’s critique of it, it made broad statements about the uselessness of Administrators and suggested they were outdated and that we should move into a 21st century model where administrators are gone, just like the horse and buggy.

If Mr. Smith was interested in a discussion of ideas, he might have spent a little time researching his concerns and presented them with information that backed them up. He did not. He decided to ask vague, leading questions that specifically called into question the need for school administrators.

Apparently, in AD’s world, and indeed in the world of a large majority of posters on ADN as well as the overly inquisitive David’s of the internet, asking questions that make accusations without backing them up and then claiming “I’m just inquisitive” is meaningful public dialog. It’s not. Asking questions and expecting others to do the work to prove you right is not only lazy, it’s extremely disingenuous. If you think that there are issues with redundancy in the administration, point to some examples and then back them up with an actual accounting of what work these people do and how it could be done so easily by less people.

Just having a hunch that the administration is bloated and could be cut, thereby eliminating the need for a parcel tax is not meaningful. It’s the follow-through on that hunch that is meaningful.

But what’s even more ridiculous about AD’s attacks on Lauren (and I mean beyond the lack of self-awareness of how the complaints might apply to AD as well) is the silence s/he continues to have when others, whom s/he seems to agree with, engage in similar or worse activities. Heck, I haven’t seen one letter to ADN admonishing the letter writers there (or the head blogmeister for that matter) for the frequent stream of personal attacks on members of the Alameda Community. Apparently, Lauren Do is the only writer in town who is required to hold herself to a saintly level of high minded perfection while AD and the rest of the world are free to sling whatever snark they feel makes their case.

Lastly, AD’s defense of David Howard’s accusations about AEF and Ron Mooney are outrageous in their hypocrisy, not least because s/he admits that s/he doesn’t know whether they were right or wrong or even what they were:

What happened to David Howard when he stated (rightly or wrongly, I really don’t know) that some parents at Washington school had questions about getting money from AEF equally, or representation on the AEF board or something like that? He got eaten. Did we ever find out what the questions were, were the concerns valid, and why the parents were discontented? No.

Doesn’t this sum things up well? “I have no idea what this was all about, but I have a strong opinion about it and I’ll use it to hammer Lauren and anyone else about it.”

The issue for which Mr. Howard was criticized was specifically his continuous vilifying of specific people in town (Ron Mooney, Brooke Briggance, Helen Sause, myself, etc.) and doing so with vague statements and misrepresentations of facts. You know, like when he accused me of defaulting on my mortgage and therefore being open to bribery and kickbacks on the TC. I hate to break it to AD, but if Mr. Howard is the primary case for people who are treated unfairly in this world, s/he has a very weak case. The list of accusations and questions that Mr. Howard has been correct on is very short (I’m sure I could come up with something if I think long enough). A person doesn’t get to run around making false statement, bogus question and unfounded accusations about people and entities and then get to demand credibility in the public discourse. Wait I’ll correct that. Freedom of speech does give them the right to demand it, but if they expect it, well then I question their logic skills.

Credibility also comes from how one handles themselves in the public discourse. AD comes out firing caustic missiles while decrying Lauren (and other’s) rhetorical method, it doesn’t lend itself to a credible critique. Had AD actually been interested in critiquing Lauren’s style, rather than just scoring political points, perhaps a dispassionate defense of Mr. Smith and pointing out of the unfair parts of Lauren’s post would have actually made the point. Instead, we’re left with standard internet flaming…

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