I'd like to take some time to offer an apology, and make a simple proposal.
First of all, I wrote a bit of satire a few days ago titled Obama praises success of War On People With Funny Names at annual dinner, which became popular for the wrong reasons. I read another popular diary myself just yesterday titled Have You No Shame, Greenwald? that (rightly) took Glenn Greenwald to the woodshed by implying that, since it was legally justified for US Special Ops to kill Osama bin Laden, that it was ok for a Libyan or Pakistani to do the same to President Obama. I agreed with the diarist that making this kind of reference to assassinate our president, even as part of an reductum ad absurdum argument, was beyond the pale and had no place in any rational argument.
In so doing, I was reminded that I had done something similar in my satire.
I'm referring specifically to this paragraph:
After the President's remarks, he took the first gunshot in the dinner's traditional shooting, in which a person whose name exceeded the required number of syllables was brought up on stage to be fired upon by all the dinner's guests, while the West Point Military choir sung their own rendition of Toby Keith's latest country hit, "America Fuck Yeah". Obama's shot missed the man's vital organs and hit him in the arm instead, prompting the president to quip, "I may be even better at bowling than this," which drew a round of laughter from the crowd before an aide came up to finish the job with a machine gun. The crowd then broke into spontaneous chants of "USA! USA!", along with other words that were easy to pronounce.
I realize there were some important differences between Greenwald's tweet and my piece above: first of all, my diary was clearly satire. I got to use a snark tag, which you can't do on Twitter. Secondly, my joke was about President Obama shooting someone else, not someone else shooting President Obama. Still, getting executed isn't something to laugh about or even remotely condone, whether you're a president or someone else with a "funny name," and especially when so many people with funny sounding names are getting killed senselessly today in Lybia, Syria, Yemen, and other places around the world. So, after prayer and reflection, I've decided to edit this paragraph out of my diary. I sincerely apologize for anyone who may have been offended by this part of my diary, and I promise to try and hold myself to higher standards in the future.
Now for my proposal. It seems that, for well after my diary was published on Saturday, people were commenting well afterwards, as recently as this afternoon, about stuff that had nothing to do with my little joke. Among other things, certain users who had been harassed in the past carried this harrassment forward into the comments section of my diary. Of course, there were the expected counter-accusations, righteous indignation, and defensiveness that we've all come to expect from pie fights at Daily Kos. But at least in one instance, someone who was harrassed was actually made physically ill by the abuse, helping to cause a relapse of that person's illness. Considering that person had made clear that the harassment should stop well before my diary, there was no need for things to get that far. And this wasn't the first time this sort of behavior had gone too far.
Can we agree that harassment of other users that goes beyond disagreement with their political views has no place here? I hope so. And in light of this, I have a simple proposal I hope we can all agree to honor. Quite simply,
If someone replies to you that they want you to stop responding to their diaries and comments, then stop responding to them.
The motivations for this kind of a request shouldn't matter - it's just a matter of the most basic level of respect for them as a person. Whether you think they're an Obot, Ohater, or whatever other kind of label; whether you think they're doing it for valid or stupid reasons; whether they come back the next day and write the biggest turd of a diary or manna from heaven -- just stop responding. Go find another diary or comment to reply to, or write your own elsewhere. Other people can always HR their worst comments, and behavior that's truly over the line can always be reported to the site admins.
But honestly, if we can all strive to do this, I believe it would improve the site and its community tremendously. I hope we can all take this moment to make ourselves, and by extension this site, a little bit better.
Thanks for reading.