The Idiots Got to Him
At the end of the day, it wasn’t the lefty/socialist/Marxist world domination cabal that got to Jeff Id:
The idiots pushed me over the edge tonight.
So Jeff’s turning his blog spurs in. I will miss him. Really. I need good foils.
Seriously, I’ve read Jeff’s blog enough to know he has a young family, so here’s my parting advice: Don’t follow Ben Stern’s parenting example:
UPDATE: So much for transparency. Jeff Id deleted the thread that evidently pushed him over the edge. He claims he did this because of technical issues. Anthony Watts tells Jeff no explanation required, and that, besides, it’s “his house, his rules, his right to do so.” A WUWT reader sees through both Jeff’s and Anthony’s hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, a commenter of my post recalls what was perhaps the exchange on the thread that led Jeff to disappear it.
So, what exactly was the ‘SOP thread’ that caused Id to flip his lid, and where can one find it? Cursory paging through the his site doesn’t turn up an obvious answer, and more effort would mean one has to read through tinfoil hattery like:
“… anyone who has payed attention understands that Mann’s emails are probably so full of advocacy and underhanded dealings…”
and one doesn’t really want to have to do that, if one can help it.
“”¦ anyone who has payed attention understands that Mann’s emails are probably so full of advocacy and underhanded dealings”¦”
Oh, is that where the real emails are, with the requests for further orders from Greenpeace.
On Watts Up With That, Jeff says the thread was taken down for technical difficulties, not because of the thread. Given that, I feel comfortable in posting my heavily summarized recollection of the gist of the interchange. Jeff clearly is ok with his comments in the thread as he continues to call his sparring partners idiots”.
Two Jewish commentators: Kevin Trenberth called climate skeptics “deniers.” That has allusions of the holocaust and is insulting and offensive
Jeff: You need a thicker skin. I am tired of people playing the victim card on the basis of their religion. Jews are not the only people to suffer genocide. Some others, including my ancestors, also were massacred without the benefit of happy gas chambers.
Commentator: WTF? Did you say “happy gas chambers”?
Jeff: Yes I did. Life is tough. Get over yourself. (This is close to verbatim)
Mark T: Something obnoxious about the commentators needing cheese with their whine.
Commentator to Jeff: You’re an idiot. I’ll show you. I’ll stop reading your blog.
Jeff: You’re an idiot. I’ll show you. I’ll stop writing my blog
collide a scape is at it’s best, when it was about issues and ideas, recently there is a bit more about other blogs vs blogor personalities.
As some one who commented at the Air Vent and at CaS, I don’t recognise the characterisarion of Jeff that is apparent by some people here, I imagine it would be easy to characterise CaS in a similar cliched manner. There is an international audience that cares not at all for petty Amerian politics.
Jeff has taken some ideas of green authoritism to it’s logically conclusion.. Given the state of minsd of ‘some’ green groups and some politicians it actually seems less funny, or less unlikely in Europe than in the UK.. In the UK the the elected politicians are seriuolsy discussion the need for individual carbon allowances in the UK, penalties for failing to comply, or restrictions if they are exceeeded are unknown.
I wish Jeff and his family well and hope he continues to contribute.
From the google cache
<i>
YOU SUBPOENA THE EMAILS!! And if you don’t hand them over, guess what?!!!
sorry for the caps “” not really ““ but wake up people, this is what lawyers do “” every single day!! This is SOP. The real question should be ““ why are academics IMMUNE!
Welcome to Earth, people who believe in massive government”“”¦ spank!! Breathe baby, breathe.
</i>
It looks like he only has himself to blame. It starts of as a rant with CAPS, then it’s all downhill from there. As for academics being immune, just imagine if a climate scientist had said what Id said. Here he is getting called a hero, if it had been a climate scientist, Bishop Hill and Mosher would have been halfway to publishing their next books already.
That’s really sweet, Barry. I’m sure Jeff will appreciate your defense of him.
Jeff, as far as I’ve heard, is a really nice guy. I also wish him well. But I also call it the way I see it. On both sides. You provide yet more evidence that some people place a higher premium on ideology and tribalism than anything else.
In the deletion of the thread, I see hypocrisy from both Id and Watts. As to what ever was on it, we really won’t know will we? But like I said, Jeff is welcome to come over here and set the record straight.
“sees through”? Offensively ignorant comment. Not unexpected.
hi Keith..
Haven’t you ever had a bad day at the blog? 😉
sometime the tint of USA politics gets in the way, of some interesting debates. and the personalities and US centric argumnets overwhelm issues. Maybe he had a bad day, (new family and sleep deprivation and al that) and got very grumpy. Has that never happened to you, both individuals are just people with a blog, not some corporation..
Anthony called me a liability once, and removed guest author privledges.. It was a failure of communications, a couple of genuine mistakes on both are parts, and tired people behaving like people. All resolved now… and previoulsy I seriously annoyed AW which I apologised for( my only defence was for similar stressed out reasons), and he was magnaminous to allow me a guest author log on for a while after all that.
perhaps you/we ask/expect to much of bloggers..
If we were all been funded by Exxon, I’m sure you would see much better standards 😉
So he deleted one blog post, does that mean everthing is also debunked.. I have lost count of the number of deleted on non appearing comments at the Guardian of mine, (or RC)all much morer tactful than here.. does that discredit them.
I will miss the Air Vent, even though I read it less than CaS..
What tribe do you think I sit in…. which implies distrust/antipathy towards other tribes.
As I had dinner at an IPCC Working Group 1 co-editors house last night.. someone who just got a million dollars off the rothschilds for climate change research in Africa, yet I am also guest author at Watts Up…
It is not about tribes…
on a lighter note, something perhaps to cheer MT up 😉 some islands really are sinking (man made ones)
I feel a moment of pity to all those footballers that have bought one 😉 ( a very brief moment)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/8271643/The-World-is-sinking-Dubai-islands-falling-into-the-sea.html
“Haven’t you ever had a bad day at the blog?”
Of course. But I never delete anything. If I did that, I think that would erode reader trust.
The fact that you can’t bring yourself to criticize Jeff for this (even gently) is evidence of your tribalism.
I saw the same commenter myself on an earlier thread and wanted to say something similar thing myself. Is it not enough that the consensus guys call skeptics ‘deniers’ all the time, now ‘real jews’ have to join in and feed off the climate skeptics’ victimhood too?
Who knows, maybe Kevin Trenberth is a Jew. Who cares? Is the memory of the Holocaust hurtful only to Jews? I know of atleast one blogger affected directed by the Holocaust, who is skeptical.
The point any skeptic would always make is that the Holocaust or its denial has nothing to do with climate skepticism. Anyone who says a connection exists, whether it be someone from the consensus or Holocaust-affected – is a free-associating idiot.
I think Jeff has every right to do as he pleases on his blog. He doesn’t delete comments or edit them, he has earned that privilege.
Haven’t you ever had a bad day at the blog?
sometime the tint of USA politics gets in the way, of some interesting debates. and the personalities and US centric argumnets overwhelm issues. Maybe he had a bad day, (new family and sleep deprivation and al that) and got very grumpy. Has that never happened to you, both individuals are just people with a blog, not some corporation..
Not at all. We demand the highest standards, for purely ethical reasons. When someone is down, it makes it so much better to get the boot in and make them fully aware of their mistakes, so they do not do so again. Anything less would be a travesty of science and justice, which we hold so dear.
I think Jeff has every right to do as he pleases on his blog. He doesn’t delete comments or edit them, he has earned that privilege.
It seems he does. He deleted a whole posts worth of comments.
Keith you know more about it than I, criticism maybe possible of Jeff. 2 small children to look after this morning.. when get a chance to delve more deeply I will.
Personally, If I was him I would leave all posts up. So it would be interesting to find out why it was taken down?
was this really necessary…
The fact that you can’t bring yourself to criticize Jeff for this (even gently) is evidence of your tribalism.
What tribe am I , see my earlier comment.
I have defended Thomas Fuller, at Watts Up, I’ve defended Richard Black, who I criticise (he is supposed to be an impartial BBC journo)
I have also recommended CaS as an interesting plae with a good host at other blogs, and seen you criticised at many AGW consensus blog, for daringto allow ‘sceptical’ commentors.
What tribe am I, please leave any political pre-conceptions at the door. I am not a USA citizen. I am not intending to annoy anyone just tryingto describe where I am coming from.
I merely disagree with some catastrophic interpretations of a scientific theory, no tribe required.
All the best
Barry
Keith,
Something happened to wordpress which wouldn’t allow me to turn on/off the sticky flag for posts which places them at the top of the cue. The SOP thread was the most recent, since my closed post was up for 30 minutes but way down the blog – nobody could tell it was there.
I tried everything but the wordpress dashboard didn’t respond until I hit the trash button on the SOP post. Everything started working and you can see that closed is now the first post. Sorry for all the excitement – not – but calling me a hypocrite simply means you haven’t read tAV very often.
Isn’t there some chicken little progressive alarmism for you guys to talk about rather than a thread on Cucci. I find Verheggens recent thread on sea level rise fairly interesting. Perhaps you can work with that.
Jeff,
Given that this particular thread seemed to put you over the edge, I think it was reasonable of people to want to see it and then be suspicious after learning it was deleted. The similarities to a certain recent infamous event where all sorts of dastardly motives were suggested were too obvious not to point out.
That said, I’ll take you at your word and withdraw the charge of hypocrisy and apologize for the insinuation.
It’s not remotely reasonable to need to see the post. IF Jeff had deleted the post, rather than it vanishing into the ether, that would be entirely reasonable, and he explained his decision to shut tAV down by saying he was pushed over the edge, which presumably means he lost it, which might easily mean he said things he wished he hadn’t. But he’s neither a journalist practising his trade nor an establishment blog like RC, so if he said that a particular thread got out of hand so he’s deleted it, then fair enough. No hypocrisy there in my book. I think his blog, his rules applies pretty well here. No-one pays him, no-one elects him, no-one relies on anything he says – he’s unimportant, in the sense that he can do what he wants without comeback.
Yes, stereo, Jeff has earned that privilege. He does not butcher comments or nix them arbitrarily. Unlike so many others we know very well about.
On the other hand, it does not look like he used that privilege.
Thanks Keith. I went back to the blog and found that when you trash a post it goes into a bucket which allows a restore. I didn’t know that because I don’t delete posts. I removed the way off topic comments paraphrased above and put the post back up.
Thanks, Jeff, for the notification that SOP thread is back up.
Now I understand why Barry’s lack of interest in US politics is relative to closing down tAV.
The reason why climate change is hopelessly politicized in the US, is Al Gore. AIT was a sour-grapes slam on President GW Bush for not signing on to Kyoto. The warmists always fail to provide this crucial piece of context when they demonize Republicans as anti-science. Then leftist Hollywood gave him an Oscar. Next, the UN gives him the Nobel Peace Prize. The gross misrepresentation of scientific evidence to spite his political opponent has not concerned the HockeyTeam or IPCC scientists in the slightest. RC still whole-heartedly endorses the film.
Gee, is it really the Republicans who decided to politicize the science? Funny how opposed to the war in Iraq these Progressives were because they distrusted Bush. But Republicans are expected to trust Al Gore. The financial investment and hypocritical lifestyle only erode his credibility all the more.
I guess I’m going off-topic and boring the readers across the pond.
I hope you’ll be back online soon, Jeff!
I thought it was de rigueur to hound someone till they were suicidal, publish a book about it all, and feel that warm inner glow of superiority and a job well done.
Frankly, Keith, this is in very poor taste.
…If voyeurism is your “thing”…
Jeff Id has made a massive contribution, furthering understanding
about the climate.
…unlike you, who just enjoys stirring the pot and, obviously, given
the paucity of readers, to no avail. Try something more constructive
and less inflammatory. Or, join another blog and do something
useful. I sense talent hidden there, somewhere.
….Lady in Red
I’ll second what Jeff says. We both run on wordpress.com so I use exactly the same web based software.
I took have had this problem with WP. Every once in awhile, for no apparent reason, I loose the ability to control the post and/or it’s comments. I think the reason might be related to the sticky flag or it might be related to cut/paste of certain HTML from elsewhere into the body or comments of that post.
What I do know for certain is that WP.com strips out things it deems a “risk” flash, objects, embeds, links to certain file types, certain type of tags. They do this so that their broad cloud based system can’t be compromised with code exploits. The code stripper isn’t perfect. For example it leaves all the [div] tags in place, and some font tags like [span], which then make the resulting text/images display all wonky.
Sometimes, the stripping out of code has unpredictable results, and leaves a mangled mess.
There have been times when I’ve been so frustrated trying to get a post into the right format, and the WP.com visual editor fails, that I just delete and start over.
Keith runs wordpress, but uses the full version from wordpress.org, which is a different animal without such restrictions when on a privately hosted server. So I can see how he couldn’t imagine how something like this occurred.
Frustrated and unable to get control of a post/thread, I would have hit the delete button too.
Keith,
have a look at #3.
If you look at Jeff’s blog you will see a “concerned jew”
The same person has been making comments at my site and at judiths site.
Lady in Red Says:
January 22nd, 2011 at 7:55 pm Frankly, Keith, this is in very poor taste.
“¦If voyeurism is your “thing””¦
Jeff Id has made a massive contribution, furthering understanding
about the climate.
Since Jones has made a much greater contribution to the understanding of the climate than Jeff ever will, I guess that buys him a free pass too.
Jeff,
I see you have restored the SOP thread, which is great.
Look, not to beat a dead horse here, but it still feels like we’re missing a piece of the story, related to comment #3 upthread here. Is the exchange reproduced accurate? If so, it seems you deleted the unseemly part of your response to “Concerned Jew” (whose original comment there, BTW, I found ridiculous). And Ironically, I agree with the thrust of your response to him, that we all need to get a thicker skin.
Anyway, this doesn’t mean that I don’t accept your explanation for how the deletion of the post happened. I wonder if it happened, though, because you were trying to excise some of that exchange between you and “concerned jew.”
Do you feel like clarifying this last part? And did that apparently unpleasant exchange between you both play into your decision to stop blogging?
Oops, I just reread Jeff’s comment in #19 here. Looks like he’s not disputing the accuracy of the exchange.
So was it remorse and guilt at using a term such as ‘happy gas chambers’ that led to that section of the blog being deleted?
If so, a statement saying so and possibly apologising would help folk to recognise that perhaps Jeff Id was pushed too far in this case and wouldn’t ordinarily use such language (assuming that is the case).
Oh yes, lets try and understand that people are human and we have to give them understanding for the intemperate statements they make from time to time. The hypocrisy is thick here you could cut it with a knife.
Keith,
I don’t think you understand fully what “concerned jew” is up to.
I agree with Lady in Red. Keith’s repeated goading and stirring, asking for more detail (26), after Jeff has made his decision, is inappropriate and in poor taste.
steven mosher Says:
January 24th, 2011 at 2:20 am
Keith,
I don’t think you understand fully what “concerned jew” is up to.
He’s trolling, perhaps. Once again, the hyprocrisy is thick in the air. Being goaded by trolls is also no excuse, I am reliably informed.
Yes, I fully recognize that “concerned jew” is likely trolling, in an attempt to goad. Looks like he succeeded. Is that the point here?
Stereo’s charges of hypocrisy are worth addressing.
Has Jeff been trolling?
“I’ll take you at your word and withdraw the charge of hypocrisy and apologize for the insinuation.”
Flip
“Stereo’s charges of hypocrisy are worth addressing.”
Flop
“But I never delete anything. If I did that, I think that would erode reader trust.”
No, you PRE-moderate prolific contributors like Fuller. I guess it’s not deleting it if it’s never allowed to appear in the first place, right? I suppose you could argue that you never DO prevent Tom’s posts appearing, but what the hell’s the point in pre-moderation then? Unless of course you want to put a flea in someone’s ear by demoting their contributions while not demoting their direct adversary, thus making the effort of contributing, for the pre-moderated, more than a little unpalatable. That’s a bit like pre-pre-moderation, isn’t it? That episode put me off participating or even reading here, for a week or two. I got over it, but yeah it did have an effect on me.
But hey, at least you can say you never delete anything.
Regarding Jeff’s contribution, I’m afraid I didn’t follow his blog closely. I know that his continuous contributions to the scientific discourse have been extremely valuable and so I know that regardless of the reason for departure – even if temporary – the debate will inevitably suffer from the loss.
You don’t need to justify ending a voluntary pastime. As for criticism of Jeff’s motive (or de-motive) or his handling of his own exit from the arena, I must say that there is no more comical hypocrisy than hypocritical accusations of hypocrisy. The pattern of holding one’s adversaries to higher standards than those to which you hold your allies is marked, here.
Psahw!
…and bravo, Simon Hopkinson!
(Hmmmmm. I used to wonder which of my comments would pass
the “Keith Kloor filter,” too. Annoying to craft something only to get
a message from Keith: “nah, too over-the-top.”)
Regardless, I will miss Jeff’s blog. Leave him in peace, for now.
………….Lady in Red
@35
Only a handful of people are on moderation–usually those that can’t keep their tempers/anger in check. And if I find a comment that I consider offensive or over the top, I always personally email the author and ask them to tone it down.
I don’t like to edit/snip comments so I prefer having the all-or-nothing policy. (occasionally I will snip.)
I’ll leave it up to Tom Fuller to say whether or not he feels his ability to comment here has been constricted. (BTW, Tom is no longer on moderation.)
@36
You are so consistently offensive (like a few of your counterparts on the other side) that it’s a pretty easy call whether or not to let your comments through.
You don’t like this uncomfortable questioning of Jeff Id. Too bad. Go somewhere else, where you can have your worldview comfortably reinforced.
It is indeed up to Tom to say how he feels/felt about being premoderated. I can of course only describe how I saw it, from the sidelines. It seemed to me that Tom was trying to have an open discourse with mt here on your blog, and that mt was saving all his snide nastiness towards Tom for his own personal outlet, iiftg.
I’ve been trying to coach my friend’s son, Jake, through dealing with a particularly devious and manipulative bully who’s been pulling faces and making rude gestures at Jake from behind the teacher’s legs, bursting into tears whenever Jake looks sideways at him. Jake, inevitably, is exasperated with the bully, and I’m exasperated by the teacher. The whole thing’s been terribly reminiscent of the Fuller vs mt.
38
+1 on that fro the sidelines
It just seemed that some ‘tribes’ behaviour was more equal and got away with more things than the other, in that instance.. of course MT knew how to press tom’s buttons, but ‘no pressure’ who is/was most at fault. MT or TF?
1) I believe the Holocaudt happened and we should never forget it.
2) I believe AIDS is caused by HIV and feel deeply sorry for any person with this ailment
3) I believe in evolution and condem any teacher attempting to misrepresent the current state of knowledge in this debate
4) I believe GM food is highly beneficial to the the world in helping eleviate hunger
5) I also believe that current evidence suggest that the global surface temperatures have been increasing over the last ~ 150 years, but the size an accuracy of this increase is not nearly as well understood as some people purport? I guess this means I believe in GW?
6) I believe that C02 levels have increaed markedly over the last 100 years or so and the mankinds burning of fossil fuels is by far the largest contribution to this.
7) I believe C02 is a greenhouse gas and increasing levels will increase the temperature of the plant.
8) I believe that doubling C02 will increase temp of the planet by approximately 1.2C if we ignore feedbacks.
– I guess 6, 7 and 8 mean that I believe in AGW (personally I think it silly to imagine 7 billion people will not warm the plant – If I clap my hands or strike a match I am putting heat into the planet that would not be there if I was not).
9) I believe that the earths climate has been remarkably stable (with the exception of a few notable events – recent ice ages and PETM etc) which can only mean that the earth is dominated by negative feedbacks and not positive ones?
10) I do NOT believe there is anything like completing evidence that we will suffer “catastrophic” climate change to due AGW – ie. CAGW.
For 9 and 10 apparently I am a denier?
Incidentally – I am more than willing to be convinced I am wrong in 9 and 10 if you will show me the evidence and allow me to debate this. Unfortunately you need two sides to debate something and in this case one side does not want to because “the science is settled” (really? CAGW is dependant on positve feedbacks and this is far from settled!) and “95% of climate scientists agree” (really, in CAGW? Lindzen, Spencer, Peikle – theres 3 who don’t please send me the names of the other 97 who do?)
Have a good one
I can’t believe that Fuller was/is on ‘pre-moderation’.
KK,
Do you have any idea how a handful of individuals have acted towards Fuller at various venues?
NAS – “Cause, effect and sufficient reason” as Candide would say ;o) Nope, that doesn’t mean that you are a denier but I am pretty sure that you are a skeptic in the good old Greek tradition as in “I suspend judgment” (personally I reckon Pyrrho took it a bit too far :o) but if you translate it to: 1) curious enough to ask questions 2) open minded enough to listen to the answers and look at the evidence without prejudice 3) independent enough to make up your own mind but also to change it if the facts change (H/T Keynes) then I reckon you could do a lot worse. Best of luck.
“happy gas chamber’? Does “Id” seriously think the Nazis used nitrous oxide in their murder factories? What on earth could he have been thinking?
“Happy gas chamber”? Wow!
Jeff needs to go for a session with Dr Mosher and work on his tactical skills.
I note that in the comments section at his blog, Jeff Id is still railing at a “selfish idiot” for causing his meltdown. This is really quite pathetic. Some of the comments above defend Jeff by saying anyone can have a bad day. Well, sure, but we can also judge his actions in the days afterward. A person of integrity would take responsibility for his words and would either apologize or publish his comments and stand behind them. He would not hide his words, take no responsibility, but continue to put the blame on “idiots” for pushing him over the edge. Jeff’s playing the victim card is quite ironic. Unless Jeff addresses this, his “happy gas chamber” jibe will probably follow him for a long time to come. To adapt the well known saying: Jeff has met the idiot and it is him.
I was hoping Jeff would have addressed his disappeared comment here. Maybe he’ll do so at some point in the future when he gets over the “idiot” who caused him to utter it.
For all the talk of hypocrisy in this thread, I have yet to see anything pointed out which was actually hypocritical. Did I miss something?
Shub, I was on moderation (rightly, I think) following a series of comments where I lambasted Michael Tobis (rightly, I think), following a particularly bilious post of his slamming Judith Curry. No regrets, either for the post or its consequences.
The difference between being moderated and not is that you abandon the idea of having a discussion. You make your point and then move on, knowing that you won’t know when your post goes up. Not a huge obstacle if you are oriented towards making a point. A pain if what you are looking for is the back-and-forth.
My ancestors were starved by the Brits, and because we owned a huge amount of land in Cork county were attacked for our wealth. Men, women, children and babies were murdered by blade. Over 90% were killed the rest ran. Just stabbed, beheaded and starved yet you don’t hear about that very often do you?
Someone anonymous wrote above:
<b>A person of integrity would take responsibility for his words and would either apologize or publish his comments and stand behind them.</b>
No I’m not going to apologize for any of it. If I did, that would show the same lack of integrity of a politician because I meant it.
Of course if you take it out of context and forget that I wrote — just swords and starvation for my family, no happy gas chambers for them — you can make yourself believe it was something other than what it was, but then you would be playing politics.
Despite the horrors of WWII for Jewish people, gas chambers are horrors, so are swords, bombs, bullets and starvation when applied to your family. The soldiers, and civilians who were killed for other reasons are equally dead.
Come to think of it, I don’t know of too many cultures which haven’t experienced horrors at the hands of others. Jews, Christians, Arabs, Russians WWII, Polish, Chinese, American Indians, American colonists, African slaves. Just which doesn’t have a point in history where mass slaughter didn’t happen at the hands of others.
IMO, concerned Jew just wanted to make fake political points against Trenbreth for calling non-believers ‘deniers’ and claiming some fake offense. So I told him what I thought. Heck, if you don’t believe in the effects of CO2 on warming, why would denier be an offense at all. That’s what you do. Anthony Watts hates the word, to me it is just a word.
In the end, tough for him. It wasn’t fun reading and was way off topic, so I chopped it all and shut down the blog to take a rest. A rest which I have enjoyed so far. More time to concentrate on work and family. I think if I go back to blogging in the future, I will moderate more like CA for topic. That way when someone comes along like CJ, I’ll just snip it and move on. It sounds easier.
If Jeff thinks that this context makes his happy gas chamber comment acceptable (or even gives it a semblance of logic), he is an even bigger idiot than people thought.
He’s obviously not an idiot and I appreciate him making the effort.
I don’t think Jeff is an idiot. He’s just being true to himself.
Jeff Id: ‘My ancestors were starved by the Brits, and because we owned a huge amount of land in Cork county were attacked for our wealth. Men, women, children and babies were murdered by blade. Over 90% were killed the rest ran. Just stabbed, beheaded and starved yet you don’t hear about that very often do you?’
Yes. Very often. This is standard ahistorical Plastic-Paddy guff: the ‘Brits’ massacred and deliberately starved Oirish men, women, children and babies and stole their land, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra aye-ay.
What happened in the case of people called Id/Condon 400 years ago was that Parliamentarian soldiers commanded by a proper Irish earl took several Cork castles held by the Condons, Anglo-Norman gentry who had stolen their land from the proper Irish about 500 years earlier. The proper Irish earl’s forces massacred most of the Condonista defenders of at least two of the captured castles. Nasty. But, while this was happening, the main Condonista forces were taking several Parliamentarian castles and massacring most of their defenders too. Equally nasty.
But that’s how things were.
Which leaves the deliberate starvation thing, which I really can’t be arsed to rehearse right now. Maybe if Jeff Id turned out to be a full-blooded American Indian as well as a full-blooded Plastic Paddy …
Tom and Keith,
I really don’t get your comments. I feel you are being far too generous to Mr. Id. Let’s set aside the question of whether it is copacetic to accuse skeptics of being deniers as this is an issue where reasonable people can disagree. Then the gist of Jeff’s post above is that because other groups have also suffered horrors, it is acceptable to describe the holocaust gas chambers as “happy”. Huh? How does this make any sense whatsoever? How can any reasonable person reading this claim not regard it as idiotic?
Perhaps I am missing something. I would be happy if either of you could enlighten me.
drg,
I don’t think you understood what I was saying when I wrote “Jeff is being true to himself.” Perhaps I was being too cryptic.
Let me see if I can do this politely. That Jeff recognizes his “happy gas chambers” bit was beyond the pale is obvious, in that he removed the offending comment from the thread, nothwithstanding his claims to it being off topic. (Has Jeff gone so far as to remove all other off-topic comments at his blog when they arose. I doubt it. In fact, he always prided himself on being among the least censorious of climate bloggers.)
That Jeff can’t bring himself to admit that it was an offensive comment is what I meant when I said that Jeff was being true to himself. That he can’t even admit that it was a poor choice of words used in haste tells me everything I need to know about Jeff.
drg, I don’t think Jeff should have used that language. I think he should apologise. I also think his keyboard got a bit ahead of his brain and, probably thinking of the term ‘happy horseshit’ or some other choice of phrasing, ‘happy gas chambers’ got out and onto the screen.
I’ve read enough of what he writes and how he writes to be comfortable with that assessment. I don’t for one second believe he is anti-Semitic. I also think he’s a stubborn Irishman who has taken enough guff from the commentosphere that he finds it difficult to walk back from what he said.
No excuses for Jeff. He screwed up and he should apologise. I still like the guy and respect him.