At 5 p.m. today, I’m closing comments on the original Goeglein post, and maybe on the second one, as well. Keeping up with the moderation queue is making it tough to get anything else done, and I think all that needs to be said has been said. The more recent poo-flinging is starting to get on my nerves as well. As many of our regulars have noted, this is a blog that keeps things fairly friendly, even when we’re fighting. I’m putting pretty much everything through in the interest of letting everyone have a say, but it’s really unwieldy now.
I have some real (i.e., paying) work to do today, and after that I think we need a big palate cleanser. I shot some video at the Detroit Kennel Club dog shows Sunday, so stand by for Napoleon mastiffs, eventually.
michaelj said on March 3, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Funny you should say that, Nancy. I wrote this Saturday, when the blizzard had still not reached it’s height:
Palate Cleanser:This is fascinating and, I think, very well-written. To me, Wikipedia
is sort of a guilty pleasure and the lazy way out if you’re trying to find out about something. But it’s a hoot, and I figure I’m well-informed enough to take some of it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, some vestige of some sort of intelligence.
They should probably make this the official Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia.
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Connie said on March 3, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Wasn’t that an interesting experience? I saw your name everywhere on the net over the weekend. At some point at blognetnews aggregator forindiana http://www.blognetnews.com/Indiana/ , you were mentioned in every single entry on the page.
Some seriously nasty stuff showed up in comments. Did it make you think of Jane, you ignorant slut? Does that date me?
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nancy said on March 3, 2008 at 12:27 pm
No, Connie, it mainly made me wonder how long before my home address and phone number appeared in some crazy-right blog, along with “CHARGE!!!!!”
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trick said on March 3, 2008 at 12:30 pm
You’re the proverbial trouper, Nancy — thanks for deftly and gracefully handling all this stuff. For what it’s worth, you elicited a far higher standard of comments these past four days, even from the nutjobs, than the drooling-mouth-breather grunts that pass as comment on so many other blogs. This episode has been enlightening, entertaining and sobering all at the same time.
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Connie said on March 3, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Nancy that is a scary thought.
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Sue said on March 3, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hopefully, all you’ll have to do is change your phone number, because most of the trolls will be charging around Indiana looking for you, and the rest will be afraid to come to – what was the phrase that one poster used? – the hell hole city where you actually live.
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John said on March 3, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Just back from Jamaica. Did I miss anything?
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LAMary said on March 3, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I still keep wondering why he did it. How could he possibly think he could get away with it? Once, maybe.
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Suzi said on March 3, 2008 at 1:25 pm
If the trolls show up in Fort Wayne, we can send them down to the imploding Republican HQ or if it rains enough we’ll have another flood and they’ll get swept away in the mud or at least get really irritated trying to navigate around all the closed streets.
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Laura said on March 3, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Hang in there, Nancy. Maybe it’s time for another iPod review. Or movies. I saw “In Bruges” last night–it was both funny and tragic. I doubt the Bruges Travel and Tourism Board will be promoting it, though.
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virgotex said on March 3, 2008 at 2:00 pm
so stand by for Napoleon mastiffs, eventually.
There is nothing that cannot be diverted by excessive drooling.
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Connie said on March 3, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hey LAURA! *(the rest of you can ignore this?) Did I just see your name on the prelim program for the meeting I am attending in Minneapolis later this month? Any other librarians heading off that way?
Not that Laura is a librarian……
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brian stouder said on March 3, 2008 at 2:32 pm
At 5 p.m. today, I’m closing comments on the original Goeglein post, and maybe on the second one, as well.
Well you know, it’s GOTTA be 5 o’clock somewhere, as they say!!
These last few days in NN.c-land have been astounding, really; and the proprietress has been very much more accomodating to all of her visitors (sorta like the food fight scene touched off by John Belushi in Animal House) than anyone had a right to expect.
Surely, the onset and aftermath of this cyber-cyclone is good for a chapter or two in the novel that Nancy will write
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Jean said on March 3, 2008 at 2:36 pm
yes, let’s see some 4-legged dogs around here… (and as for the 2-legged variety, what’s Bob Greene up to, anyway?)
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I’ve been out of commission since Saturday night with a 102 fever. I think I am turning the corner now and ready to live and love again.
Wow. some of those hateful comments were …. awful. I’m sorry you had to endure that, Nance. It was an interesting ride, though. When do you plan on splitting the atom again?
And I do not think we are minions. More like droogies ala Clockwork Orange.
I was perusing the last thread and saw Ashley say:
In any case, I’m clicking the fucking ads. If somebody can explain to me why they got scammed 27 times or how my member can get bigger, I’m there, babes.
And that made me wonder how that excruciatingly painful ejaculation problem was going. (ED: And think how I wish I did not know about that).
Oh and Sue was willing to let me fall into the ocean but save Mary. Hmmph. Makes me want to take a lot of phone calls next interview. In fact, I just took a call while I was typing this to Sue. See how important and disinterested I am?
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Connie said on March 3, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Nancy, looks like as of today you are now an entry in Wikipedia! Should we all say WOW?
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ashley said on March 3, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for the inquiry, Danny.
The SFW update: the antibiotic barrage didn’t work, so now they have to get invasive…from multiple directions.
Now, I have to go sing the “happy happy joy joy” song over and over and over.
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nancy said on March 3, 2008 at 2:46 pm
But I don’t WANT to be in Wikipedia! Now I’m afraid to look.
I’m so glad we’re back to discussing Ashley’s painful ejaculation problems. Welcome back, normal.
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Sue said on March 3, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I see the nonsense continues at the previous post. Can’t wait for tomorrow; sure hope they’re gone by that time. And Danny, I’m sorry that you are sick. I was wondering where you were – your point of view was needed. And as for the ocean, you remember it was because of a topic that gets all nancynallers’ knickers in a twist – the weather. As I recall, not only was I willing to watch you fall into the ocean, I was going to have a drinking party on the precipice. And since we’ve had 40 degree weather with rain that turned to sheet ice yesterday, I suggest you behave yourself because I am seriously crabby about it. I spare you only because you are feverish and can’t defend yourself.
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Laura said on March 3, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Connie:
No meetings in Minn for me. I’m just a little ol’ freelancer in Ohio. But all the cool kids I know are librarians.
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Connie said on March 3, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Sorry Laura, I was after Laura the author who visits here occasionally.
Nancy, editing notes on Wiki have you tagged for um one event wonder. And the entry is all about Goeglein.
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I went to the Wikipedia. Pretty sweet. We need a photo.
Has anyone here ever posted a Wikipedia article? I often wondered about it, but never have gotten around to investigating. I was reading the editing history of Nancy’s entry and someone named Orangemike had made a comment that the entry needed changing because Nancy represented a non-notable journalist and a one-event wonder.
At first, I thought he was just being mean, but then I clicked on some links that indicated “One-event wonder” is a criterion for whether an article is worthy.
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Oh, yeah, what Connie said. So I’m not sure if the guy was being a crank or not. Anyone know if this is normal on Wikipedia?
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Ashley. Ouch. Sorry to hear that.
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derwood said on March 3, 2008 at 3:01 pm
waiting for dog video………..
daron
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Harl Delos said on March 3, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Ms. Derringer said
It won’t be long before your page is eliminated. You’re a nobody, a one-event wonder, to them and the tinfoil-hat brigade is champing at the bit to shred your entry to pixels.
I’d comment about how champing really oughta be spelled chomping, but my tongue is still trying to wrap its way around “nancynallers’ knickers”, so I’m preoccupied.
Marie, my long-haired black-and-red German Shepherd can’t wait to see your dog show pics.
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Laura said on March 3, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Harl:
Why so harsh?
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Harl, I was ecstatic to see you correctly use “champ,” thinking how bright and informed you must be. A man (or woman) of letters, no doubt.
But then you pulled the rug out from under me with “chomp.” I don’t know if we shall ever be able to bridge this chasm of misunderstanding, the two of us.
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Danny said on March 3, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Laura, reread Harl’s post. I do not think Harl meant what you think. And I am not talking about champ/chomp.
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Laura said on March 3, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Got it, Danny. Thanks. I can’t devote all my time to a careful read of these posts, lol.
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Wally Wilson said on March 3, 2008 at 3:42 pm
To Nancy and all the Regulars here:
This is a great find, and I hope you won’t mind if I hang around.
I also would like to apologize if anything I said came across too harshly in the last few days.
The weather on Tuesday is supposed to be nice somewhere. Hopefully some of you will find it.
Bestest,
Wally Wilson
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Dorothy said on March 3, 2008 at 3:52 pm
The weather today here in Gambier is just FINE and lovely. I walked over to the bookstore without a jacket, in short sleeves! However we are being punished with the arrival of freezing rain tomorrow. SIGH At least all the crud from the last 2-3 weeks is now melted and running into the storm drains.
Welcome Wally. We’re weally gwad to have you.
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LAMary said on March 3, 2008 at 3:53 pm
The weather here in LA is spectacular, and the wildflowers are blooming like mad. It isn’t hot and smoggy yet, and you can smell jasmine at night.
My older son wants to major in some tree-hugger science in college and the younger one wants to be a chef. Life is good.
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Harl Delos said on March 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Laura said:
I’m not sure why Wikipedeans are that way. There are pages with glaring errors that you can correct, and they’ll stay corrected for about 90 seconds before they are reverted. The standard for Wikipedia is not that something is true, but that it can be verified with a reliable source – but they ignore their own standards.
A lot of people were participants in one-off events. John Wilkes Booth was a nobody, except that he shot Lincoln. Dr. Mudd was even more of a nobody, except that he set Booth’s leg. I would expect an encyclopedia to explain who John Wilkes Booth is, and explain that “his name is mud around here” is actually “his name is Mudd around here”, but….
Yes, I am a man of letters, those letters being B.S. and M.N.G.S.
American Heritage dictionary says that the origin of the word “champ” is imitative. The Online Etymology Dictionary uses the word “echoic”. Hmmm. That’s an interesting word I’ve not run across before. In any case, if you’d ever heard a horse biting on the bit impatiently, you’d know why the word oughta be chomp.
George Bernard Shaw notwithstanding, it doesn’t take an ocean for people to be separated by a common language.
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brian stouder said on March 3, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Predicted headline for nn.c tomorrow:
Snow job!
or
News Flurries
or
Snow News is Good News
with a very nice graphic of the radar image, and/or her terrier in the snow
(unless the weather terrorists have it wrong this time, which would be nice)
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Jeff said on March 3, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Dorothy — Sorry to hear about your near-campus, non-student tragedy (for those who don’t know, the separation between Gambier and Kenyon College is thismuch).
I’ve done a few wiki-entries, like the one for Warren K. Moorehead (go ahead, you know you want to), and it’s fairly painless; plus, i feel even more secure about saying that * in general * Wikipedia is as good a * starting point * as any place on the internet. Exceptions exist, but John Seigenthaler (for instance) got fixed and locked a long time ago.
You get evil trolls playing vicious games on entries like Frederick Douglass’, but then there’s numberless little i-pixies fixing them just as fast. As one of Nancy’s bosses or some of you have no doubt said, “If your mother posts a wiki-entry saying she loves you, check it out.”
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Michael said on March 3, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I would like to state for the record that here in Puerto Rico the weather is just fine thanks and I’m not missing Indiana right now in the least nosirree bob.
On a sweltering October day, now — yeah. I still miss Indiana.
I’m gonna miss merrimac. He can’t even express himself well enough that I can tell who’s being threatened with a lawsuit, then snaps at me I should get it right. Sheesh. He should learn to string words together.
Well, I’m truly sorry to have missed most of the fun. Maybe next time.
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MonkeyBoy said on March 3, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Come on peeps. Wikipedia has a Timothy Goeglein page up and it needs editing – in particular putting in dates and references.
I know a lot of people here are journalists and the page is open to anonymous editing so anybody can improve it.
Note to the people who are intimidated by the knowledge needed to edit a Wiki entry. Um, it is really easy:
1) Only click on a sub-section to edit.
2) Preview, Preview, Preview, and then only finally commit.
3) If you need some strange Wiki syntax to appropriately reference, footnote, or format something don’t bother to learn it. Just find another Wiki page that that displays something similar to what you want to produce, click edit, search, and then you will find out how the author did it. Just copy and paste something like
[[Ernie Pyle]] [[School of Journalism at Indiana University]]
into your edit, preview, and it should look nice. Of course if you are pasting in some pattern from an irrelevant page, after it looks nice you should go into it and edit its internals to make it relevant.
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Faye Kane said on March 3, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Nancy:
Before you close this topic (and throw away about 10 minutes of your 15), you said you would write about this experience.
I’m a blogger too, and what happened with/to you is every blogger’s dream. You won the blog-jackpot and touched blog-infinity.
Would you PLEASE write about what it was like?
— faye kane, homeless brain
PS
You could publish it in Wired, too BTW
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Mike said on March 4, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Faye, I suspect that Nancy’s experience is far from over at this moment.
Nancy, nice reply to Kevin’s editorial… my jaw about dropped to the floor when I read his convoluted piece this afternoon. Well done.
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norelief said on March 5, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Wow, Nancy, thanks for the drooling hate-fest.
I would like to add for the record:
Tim is not a writer, a journalist, or an essayist. He is a political aide.
The items that Tim wrote for your pathetic little small town rag were sentimental musings that had nothing to do with Bush’s White House or any other political wheeling and dealing.
While plagiarism is wrong, the scope of your “scoop” is extremely small. BREAKING NEWS…handful of Ft. Waynians feel ripped off by a couple of guest columns!!! OMG!!!
Writing is not Tim’s job at the White House…oh, I already mentioned that.
HOWEVER….you are THRILLED by the HATE you can generate because of Tim’s religion. WAY TO GO!!!!
Tim is extremely smart (IQ 145), comes from a solidly middle class background, does not have lots of money (lives in modest townhouse with his two little boys), has a wonderful family of very sweet people and a tough/brilliant wife, and does not deserve the HATRED you are spewing. He is not evil or Machiavellian or self-serving or lazy. But then, you hate people who are conservative, nicht wahr? I can’t believe the deeply personal, vicious attacks that I am seeing on your blog and on Huffington, et al. You should be ashamed of yourself. Tim is a human being, and one of the better ones I have known. It is easy to hide behind a few mole of electrons and throw stones at others. May you never screw up, and may your righteousness shine like the sun.
Congrats again on reaching “blog infinity.”
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WhiteBeard said on March 5, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Please, norelief, would you crawl back under your solid, conservative rock instead of spitting your own viscious venom at the messenger who deserves respect, not disrespect.
By the way, it wasn’t just a few columns that were plagiarized, but more than two dozen at last count.
And if he is one of the better human beings you have known, I really think you should get out more. A 145 IQ (wow!) is not a license to steal.
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del said on March 5, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Norelief, neither Nancy nor her regular readers have any ill will towards Mr. Goeglein — to the contrary, thoughts and prayers are focused on him. It might seem different looking at early comments as news unfolded that 20 (now 27) of his 38 columns were misappropriated and he suddenly resigned. It was stunning news.
“The items that Tim wrote . . . were sentimental musings that had nothing to do with Bush’s White House.”
I could not disagree more. What Tim did had everything to do with Bush’s White House. He was acting effectively as a Deputy Minister of Culture, trying to appropriate for the right wing of the Republican party all the contributions of Western civilization. We see something similar occur when Christians (Muslims and others) try to claim the universal values of love, gentleness and kindness to themselves as uniquely Christian values. They are not. Tim Goeglein did something wrong because he thought he was fighting the Good fight. Love is the only religion. Peace.
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norelief said on March 6, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Whitebeard:
Learn to spell. Then, learn to read.
Did I suggest that intelligence is a “license to steal?” No. I was merely countering the several ad hominem attacks on Tim’s intelligence, and indeed, on the intelligence of conservatives in general.
And yes, Tim is one of the better people I have known. I volunteer for an NGO that has struggled to save African lives and bring peace to the Sudan. Tim has played an invaluable role in the Administration’s policy towards Africa. The impact has been huge. Millions of lives have been touched by the 2005 peace treaty of South Sudan alone, not to mention the US Aid funding for treatment of AIDS and development of infrastructure. So, my friend, how many lives have you saved lately?
I understand that Tim symbolizes everything that you hate, but you have erected a straw man.
And before I crawl back under my rock, I might add that I would respect Nancy a great deal more if she had the grace to hide her glee and the decency to moderate her more offensive comments.
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Harl Delos said on March 6, 2008 at 9:22 pm
norelief said:
I didn’t see any ad hominem attacks on the intelligence of conservatives.
I saw attacks on neo-cons, but they always remind me of that line Jack Nicholson gave in the movie with Helen Hunt? The receptionist says, “How do you write women so well?” and Jack’s character says, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” To get a neo-con, you think of a conservative, and take away character, courage, intelligence, and morality.
Didn’t Tim take an oath to protect and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC? I’m pretty sure that Sudan wasn’t mentioned in any oath he was sworn in on, but if you trample the Bill of Rights, that’s about as unamerican as you can get.
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Suzi said on March 12, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Tim has played an invaluable role in the Administration’s policy towards Africa. The impact has been huge. Millions of lives have been touched by the 2005 peace treaty of South Sudan alone, not to mention the US Aid funding for treatment of AIDS and development of infrastructure. So, my friend, how many lives have you saved lately?
I daresay many more lives would have been saved if the administration had given up its churchy abstinence preaching and passed out some condoms.
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