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1. 1 On April 10th, 2007, jeneane said:

   a foundation for internet violins? i want one!

2. 2 On April 11th, 2007, hannah said:

   Yep, Tim appears to have fallen for the KS victim story…and is not looking too wise these days. But, and help me here, what’s been bothering me is that it appears KS called you for comfort and solace re: her public meltdown, when didn’t she believe you were in fact one of the people who might be threatening her life? WTF? And wanted/wants apologies from everyone –even the most tangentially involved, and including you? And you did apologize. I don’t get it. Or maybe I do and it’s kinda awful and I should shut up and get one of those violins.
   (I don’t see a foundation happening as that would be a bit too altruistic on KS’s part–all the expense of setting up a foundation. Well, I guess Tim could foot that bill.) And I’m still waiting for KS to apologize…for something. All of this framed in a truly sympathetic voice for what she did go through. But, damn, I had my own personal stalker who was in jail for some time, got released, and came up to me at the market and whispered in my ear, “I know where you live” then told me my address, etc. I do understand fear–the sweating, fight or flight, sounds in the night and a 5 year old (at the time)autistic child to protect. A few days later he blew up my car. Yeah…but by that time I had a gun and wasn’t running. He eventually lost interest, I guess. No walled gardens, no powerful men to protect me. Not even a women’s shelter at the time. Just me, my child and him. And my gun. Anyway–he would have been the last person I would contact for support. So, WTF?

3. 3 On April 11th, 2007, Frank Paynter said:

   A short answer would probably be — No Hannah, Kathy didn’t think I was threatening her. She was just careless in the way she lumped everyone together in her posting.

   Let me unpack that a little for you:

   I have had a respectful and cordial relationship with Kathy for about a year, since my friend Alan and others mounted a satiric campaign against the “Shiny Happy People.” Some of that criticism was quite pointed, and I said to her then that I was of the glass is half-empty set and thought she saw it as half-full. Not much to base a friendship on, but we were courteous each with other, friendly.

   On March 15 Kathy wrote to me, saying –
   I know y’all are having a great time with the social commentary on meankids… but this is a new low:

   “The only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her own neck size”

   I’ve had three death threat comments now in the last two weeks (throat slitting, mostly), and it’s not actually all that funny.

   She was talking about a comment associated with a post on MeanKids, and conflating that with actual threats she had received on her own blog in comments there. I wrote back –

   I share your concern. Early on I addressed the issue of what should be taboo there, and discovered that the bloggers wanted an anything goes environment. If you want that post deleted, I’ll see that it is pulled, but I would rather not. Like other obscenities, it will move off the screen soon enough.

   Tell me if you can bear it, or if you would rather that I pulled it.

   Kathy’s reply began as follows –

   I don’t mind being a target of the mean kids, and it SHOULD be an anything goes environment, so I definitely don’t want it deleted.

   I just hope you’re watching for consequences…

   Kathy’s “meltdown” involved me and several other people who were not part of that post/comment thread. Reading her post, one could assume that I (and others) at MeanKids had threatened her. Recently in a phone conversation I suggested that maybe an apology from her would be nice, and we tentatively discussed authoring some kind of joint post. That hasn’t gone anywhere yet, but I still think it would clear the air.

   I owned the MeanKids domain. That put me in the middle of Kathy’s concerns. I apologized to her for being part of it. She essentially accepted that apology, but it would take a close reading of a lot of posts and comments to unbundle the public side of my communication with her and to see that yes, she accepted my apology; and, no, she didn’t consider me a threat regardless of how her initial blogpost was structured.

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