Witch Hunts, Web Punks and 'Editor Report'
What do you do when you've been web-punked by an anonymous, vindictive former employee who's hell bent on witch-hunting your reputation?
I'll tell you my story in a minute -- I'll even reveal who the culprit was. But first, some historical background, which at least reassures me that I'm not alone.
Blacklist victims, of course, knew the feeling big-time during the post-World War II frenzy of anonymous rumor-mongering that we define with what now seems like a somewhat benign, distant catch-all term: McCarthyism.
The web version bit one of my business-school professors a couple of years ago. And it drove him to distraction -- it's one of those things that just gets to you if you can't come to terms with it somehow. Seems a onetime student didn't like his or her final grade one semester and lashed back with egregiously harsh teacher evaluations on an anonymous part of the school's website -- for multiple terms after the student's time with the professor had ended.
My case is a little like that, only it involved the now-defunct (I think, anyway) and anonymous "freelance writer feedback" site, Editor Report, which in 2001 carried a singularly acid-tongued post about me that still shows up among the top Google search results for my name. Friends and coworkers have contributed counter-posts, but for some reason they do not appear.
Whatever the case, I've always had absolutely no doubts who the original Editor Report poster was. This person was one of those once-in-a-lifetimes.
So that part was easy. The hard part was keeping it from getting under my skin.
Which I didn't do so well for a while. When I saw the first post, I fired an email to Editor Report, noting that it was from a disgruntled hack and chronic deadline scofflaw who was canned by unanimous staff consensus at the alt weekly I was editing at the time. I warned that there might be potential defamation exposure for such things.
But I wasn't mad -- yet. In fact, I even asked that my email be kept off-the-record.
Well, when the equally anonymous folks at Editor Report proceeded to post my email anyway, I hit the roof -- only to see my increasingly frustrated and angry subsequent emails posted on the site as well.
This, of course, was not good. And there's a folk parable that applies here -- one that I'd normally be loathe to even mention because of its old-days racial stereotyping, at least in the hands of the culturally lily-white. I'm talking about the "Tar Baby" story in the old "Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox" Uncle Remus fables. I apologize if it offends -- I only resurrect it here because it fits so well.
Here's a wrap-up: Bre'er Fox creates a baby figure out of tar, dresses it up and sets it in the middle of a path that arch-enemy Br'er Rabbit travels every day. Br'er Rabbit greets the figure -- only to be met with sustained stone silence that Br'er Rabbit takes as an insult. Flustered, Br'er Rabbit punches the figure -- still no reaction, only now Br'er Rabbit's fist is stuck. After a succession of increasingly panicked punches, kicks and a head-butt, he's stuck fast from top to toe.
In the story, Br'er Rabbit's guile saves him. Not so in my case, at least at the beginning. I felt violated. I anguished and railed over it, too -- and still the post remained, silently taunting.
And then it hit me, now a few years ago: I knew exactly where the post came from and who the real clown in my fable was. My only recourse was to expose him.
Are you ready? Here he is ...
Yep, it's me -- the bozo who took the bait, then ranted and thrashed and contorted himself into a wretched, squirming knot of thick goo.
And, suddenly, everything was all right again, and it's been all right ever since.
Hey, I even framed that Editor Report post. And it still hangs close to me in my office as my own public admission of a lesson well-learned.
Damn thing still always makes me smile now, too.