July 09, 2006

Protein Wisdom is Back Up

Jeff Goldstein has his blog back up in the wake of the DDOS attack, so he might appreciate a visit. Jeff posted the following message to his readers and supporters:

... I’m very touched and humbled by the show of support I’ve received over the past few days. So much so, in fact, that were I the pie king, you’d each wake tomorrow to a nice big slice of key lime, with real whipped topping and a fresh lime wedge garnish.
In that case, Jeff's definitely got my vote for pie king (whatever that is.)

On a related note, Michelle has an excellent run-down on the latest blogging on Deborah Frisch, and Froggy at Blackfive introduces a new verb:

To Frisch: Writing something on the internet so creepy and offensive that you are forced to quit your job before getting canned. Ex. Deb really frisched herself when she threatened that blogger's 2 year old child with death and sexual molestation.

Posted by: Ragnar at 01:52 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Hoist me now, beeyotch, because I 'splained that to the retard who sucks my foam in his update of the post where he and I had that intimate conversation.

Lest I forget, davec is teh RoxErRRzzzzZZZ!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Posted by: Vinnie's Beer Glass at July 09, 2006 02:13 AM (/qy9A)

2 dear mr. beer glass. whatever. protein wisdom is down still. at least it isn't loading on IE or Firefox.

Posted by: Jauhara at July 09, 2006 08:32 AM (Z8kfp)

3 It's not down it's DDOS. I can almost sorta kinda get there and then his server is too busy to complete the request. I feel for him man. Has he said where the DDOS appears to originiate from?


Jeff can be proud. obviously if what you say inspired ohters to take you down you must be doing something right. I go over there now and then. Cool blog.

Posted by: Howie at July 09, 2006 11:12 AM (D3+20)

4 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/10/frisch

Crossing a Line

“I enjoy writing things that inflame, mock and infuriate the right,” Deborah Frisch said in an e-mail interview Sunday in response to a question about her online activities. By any measure, she’s achieving her goals — and she’s also out of a job.

Frisch posted a comment last week on Protein Wisdom, a Web site known for its no holding back conservative commentary, frequently with considerable mocking of liberal academics and ideas. Frisch, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Arizona until this weekend, said in the posting that she would not be sad if the 2-year old child of the site’s founder, Jeff Goldstein, was “Jon Benet Ramseyed,” and she reportedly posted other questions of the sort a Ramsey-inspired attacker might ask. (Goldstein lives in Colorado, where Ramsey was killed.)

Although Frisch apologized for the remark, which she called “nasty,” numerous conservative Web sites over the weekend traded stories about Frisch, saying that she had physically threatened Goldstein and his child (she denies this and says that however inappropriate her comments were, they weren’t threatening); that Frisch is Churchillian, as in Ward, not Winston (she agrees on some counts and has defended the notorious “little Eichmanns” remark); and that Frisch organized an online attack on Protein Wisdom (she denies this). They called on Arizona administrators to fire her (e-mail addresses were provided).

On Saturday, Frisch — a cognitive psychologist who has taught at Arizona since 2003 — quit her adjunct position, and university officials quickly accepted her resignation. “I felt really bad that these right-wing nuts had dragged my boss into it,” she said. “I thought that if I backed down and showed them they’d drawn blood by getting me fired, they’d move on to something else.”

So far, no one is moving on, and Frisch said she continues to receive harassing and threatening e-mail messages, and the conservative blogosphere continues to denounce her. Michelle Malkin, for instance, is now calling Frisch the “unhinged academic of the year.”

In writing on her blog and elsewhere, Frisch is outspoken. For example, after the Ward Churchill controversy broke last year, she published an article in Counterpunch in which she asserted that Churchill’s reference to the “little Eichmanns” who died in the World Trade Center was a legitimate application of the theories of Hannah Arendt.

Unlike many academics who express their political views online largely on Web sites they support, Frisch is known for going on conservative sites she abhors and engaging in debate. On Goldstein’s site, she said, when she posted comments, others made “sexually disparaging and graphic comments about me.”

“I said I found it creepy and inappropriate but it continued,” she said. “I wanted Jeff to understand how disgusting and creepy it felt when people went from arguing about ideas to commenting on your anatomy. So I made extremely distasteful comments about his child, to whom he referred in the original post, in order to make Jeff feel the way I felt when his cronies made sexual references to me. My goal was to hurt Jeff’s feelings, to make him feel disgusted and verbally assaulted the way I felt when his friends made sexual references to me.”

Frisch acknowledged that the tone of her comments — even if they had nothing to do with her teaching — make her a target. “I play a dangerous game by being a professor and also having a very rabid left-wing blog and also posting nasty inflammatory comments on other people’s blogs,” she said. “The issue is how these rabid, crazy, right-wing nutcases have stalked me, told on me, reacted totally out of proportion to a joke in bad taste I posted on a blog. They are treating me the way they treated Ward Churchill — a lunatic lefty in academia who deserves to be verbally attacked, abused and mocked.”

Goldstein could not be reached for comment. But he posted details of Frisch’s comments and his reaction to them on his Web site.

A University of Arizona spokesman said he could confirm Frisch’s resignation, but not comment on the dispute.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/10/frisch

Posted by: Playing the Victim at July 10, 2006 10:54 AM (Gi7oA)

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