146 comments

  1. Two in 10 used to be 20% back in the day.  I guess times have changed.  But, I hope you’re just kidding about quitting.

  2. I don’t know who this Tabitha Hale person you keep mentioning is, but I hope you won’t quit blogging. You clearly haven’t yet said all there is for you to say.

  4. I’ll take your post at face value.  Which leads to the question: is BlogCon really that important to quit over???

    I don’t agree with everything you post, but I do appreciate a variety of voices in the blogosphere, particularly the conservative side of it.  I’ll miss your posts.

  12. What are you talking about, did you resign from American Spectator? WTF! Whether you’re serious or not, this kind of shit is exactly what I was talking about when I said in an earlier post that you need to have yourself checked for clinical depression. I have it, and I recognize the signs. And you my friend are displaying full blown symptoms of it.

  13. Well, it would be a shame if you were to quit — hey, I don’t really have anywhere else to go and argue with people.

    But…I would understand.
    Your blog, you call the ball…buy the ticket, take the ride.  Just wish I’d stumbled on this place earlier — it’s a fun blog.

  15. This ain’t a tip jar rattle. He ain’t that good an actor.

    Stacy, if you quit because of Tabitha Hale, that’s like quitting because  Trekkies didn’t like your last movie.  They ain’t the market.

    I’ve been in publishing, genre publishing, for the last 30+ years.  There are all kinds of genre awards.   I haven’t won any.  Doesn’t matter.  I got read, I sold, and I’ll read  and sell again.  Hell, 99% of bloggers would kill for the readership and exposure you have.  This would be like quitting SF because Adam Malin took over the convention circuit (inside baseball you won’t get, which only proves my point.  Twenty years from now no one will remember Tabitha Hale.  They’ll remember the mad bastard crashing through Iowa cornfields to get stories everyone else missed).

    The most-read SF authors today never come near winning awards.  That’s a deliberate choice on the part of the cliques that hand them out.  This is no different.

    You can’t fix Tabitha Hale. You can’t profitably engage her.  It has NOTHING to do with what you do best.  She’s inconsequential, worse, she’s irrelevant to your work.  That would be like me never writing again because Joy Behar never reviewed my books.

    Don’t quit.  Fire Hale.  Fire the assholes in your email; fire the assholes in your comments who are determined to convince you that what you do is futile and meaningless because you’re not a product of the cookie cutter.

    You’re doing stuff no one else out there is doing and people are reading you as you do it.

    You’re down; I get that, but there’s ‘down’ you ain’t even gotten close to yet and you’re not going to get there.  There’s too many of us who won’t let you fall that far.

  16. Tabitha Hale has been an “expert” on conservative politics for over three years.  Before that she was thinking “what should I do now I am out of schooll?”  Does Ms. Hale blog?  Does she write?  Is she some TV pundit?  No.  She basically books blocks of hotel rooms, gets the guest speakers lined up, and collects the fees from participants.  

    She is fun to make fun of, because of her zaftig pretentiousness.  

  20. …but let me just add one more thing:

    Mr. McCain, with all due respect for your personal decisions,
    What would Hunter S. do when faced with a bunch of people who wanted him to ‘just shut up’?

    If you’ve determined to let your blog go over the cliff…at least let it ride with a vengeance one more time 😉

  25.  Stacy’s problem is, as a Suthern Gennelman, he can’t just call Tabitha Hale a ‘Snot Nosed Punk’ like he does wet behind the ears young male pundits.

    Feel free, however, to think that she will make a couple of men a great ex-wife in the years to come.

  26. The only thing to quit is the glorification of Tabitha Who over an irrelevant conference. Jeez, over just that one thing, you whine like Santorum before his surge started.
    When it comes to news, go where the action is – welcome or not.
    When it comes to conferences, go where you will have fun.
    If you really want to have fun at blogcon, go under an assumed name as an attendee, and blog about it!

  29. “One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.”
    Don’t take the last part of that sentence so seriously.

  31.  If I don’t give up even after Ann Barnhardt sends an email to everyone telling them to never link to my articles, to never re-post my articles, to never have anything to do with me, you shouldn’t give up either. I’m a nobody with a micro-blog that in it’s entire existence has had slightly over 7K pageviews. I’ve been linked to by your blog once.
    I haven’t given up! In fact, I started a series called Prison Stories and have written about racism in Saint Petersburg as well as the gang rape of my wife. I’m not quitting because I’m being actively blacklisted, why should you quit because one idiot dislikes you? Hundreds of thousands hate me. So what, KEEP WRITING!

  32. Start your own BlogCon?

    Might I suggest people hanging out, playing poker, drinking beverages, and smoking cigars — each person gets a turn at an uninterrupted 5 minute monologue (as long as they don’t hold up the game while doing so — which would mean being able to deal cards and talk at the same time, your own vetting of the speakers as it were), after which people get to have a loosely moderated discussion of the topic presented (only rule: don’t say something that’ll get your ear sliced off by the gent, or lady, across the table).

    And then rub Hale’s face in it — that your BlogCon is way more exclusive, entertaining, and overall stimulating than her BlogCon.

    If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.

  33. Have a BBQ with a keg as well…sell tickets to both.  Support the American Way while America is still around!

  34.  Your education may have taught you the basics of reading, but apparently glossed over reading-between-the-lines.

  39. I could not agree more with everything Richard wrote.  I know you have to make a living and your first responsibility is to your family.  It’s what a man does.  But if your failure to get the attention or approval of Tabitha Hale – who I am about to unfollow on Twitter, by the way – is driving this despair, then you need to think twice or twenty-plus-one times about this.

    Stacy, you are not just a blogger, or just a journalist.  You are patriot fighting for everything that is right and good about your country.  And if you country slides into lefty hell and all the disasters that go with it, my country is not going to be far behind.

    The entire weight of the Western world rests on your shoulders.

    Kidding aside, please listen to those who know you better than I do. But if you have to bail because of your responsibilities to your family, I hope your absence from the blogosphere is temporary.

  44. Peter Schickele on his work, PDQ Bach’s “Unbegun Symphony” : “When it first premiered, my friends were all critical of the work.  Well, I have some new friends now…” *audience applause*

  47. How many of these damn BlogCon scams has Tabitha Hale ran just over the last year? How much money has she pocketed out of them? And what in the hell exactly has any blogger ever really gotten out of it? Did it ever occur to you, RSM- being the “ace gonzo shoe leather journalist” that you are- that just maybe she’s worried that you’ll uncover just what a big damn scam it is? Hell, I’ve just about figured it out and I’m not a professional journalist, nor have I been within two hundred miles of one of the damn things.

  50.  Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that. If I can offer you just a little unsolicited advice, you might want to consider putting your posts on your home page, and putting what’s on your home page now on an “About” page. A lot of people might not notice the “Posts” link at the top and that’s what most people will want to read. But I will link you here in a bit.

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