Category: Blogging

Harassment Is Not Journalism

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Bill Schmalfeldt of Elk Ridge, Maryland, a.k.a. “Liberal Grouch”

“If you’re so concerned about your safety, don’t come to Maryland.”
— Jim Brewer, Howard County (Md.) Assistant State’s Attorney

People who don’t use Twitter may not understand what it’s like when someone starts sending to your “handle” unsolicited messages full of accusations and obscenities. This is what Bill Schmalfeldt does to people he targets for harassment: He monitors their Twitter account and sends harassing messages to them, as well as to people he sees associating on Twitter with his targets. It is the persistence of Schmalfeldt’s obsessions with his targets that qualifies what he does as cyberstalking.

I have previously described how Schmalfeldt began cyberstalking Aaron Walker in June, when he sent these messages to Walker:

2670. Sun Jun 03 19:55:53 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209372854213558273,
@catsrimportant can someone point me to something written about this Aaron Walker case that was NOT written by some right wing shithead?

2669. Sun Jun 03 20:30:58 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209381683034722305,
@AaronWorthing Are you really comparing yourself with MLK?

2668. Sun Jun 03 20:42:09 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209384499425976320,
@AaronWorthing I know next to nothing about this case. What did Kimberlin say you allegedly said/tweeted/google that proved threating?

2667. Sun Jun 03 20:42:39 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209384626899255296,
@AaronWorthing Forgive me for asking, but I have some strong views about the First Amendment and I’m researching this story for my blog.

2666. Sun Jun 03 20:42:54 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209384689511841792,
@AaronWorthing I promise. No one will come to get you. 😉

2665. Sun Jun 03 21:10:29 +0000 2012, liberalgrouch, 209391629881192448,
@AaronWorthing Well, certainly a new Twitter chum can recommend to another new Twitter chum a website he might find interesting, say wot?

The nature of Schmalfeldt’s obsession became obvious when he began to escalate his campaign of harassment, expanding his target list to include myself and other of Walker’s friends. The situation gradually got bad enough that, on the Sunday before Election Day — while I was in Ohio covering the final push of the presidential campaign — I felt the need to call attention to what Schmalfeldt was doing: “Monsters on the Internet: Sociopathic Sadism and Bill Schmalfeldt’s Madness.” Three weeks later, during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Schmalfeldt sent me more than 200 harassing Twitter messages in the span of 48 hours, including a message in which he threatened to contact my wife.

Schmalfeldt’s motives for this weird behavior have been a subject of speculation. There are those who say that Schmalfeldt is being paid by convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin, or by persons associated with Kimberlin, and that what Schmalfeldt is doing is part of a deliberate effort to intimidate or discredit those who write about Kimberlin’s criminal past as Indiana’s notorious “Speedway Bomber.”

I remain agnostic about these theories because (a) there is no firm evidence of any such payment, and (b) crazy people don’t need rational motives to do crazy things. So whether Schmalfeldt’s harassment is hired thuggery or amateur insanity is ultimately irrelevant to this fact: It is evil.

Evil, however, is not necessarily criminal. And describing the evil that Bill Schmalfeldt does cannot stop him from doing what he does.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, stalkers gotta stalk.

John Hoge and others have attempted to have Maryland authorities prosecute Schmalfeldt for his harassment, with no success so far. This illustrates a problem with law enforcement that has become increasingly apparent since I began covering the Brett Kimberlin story last May, namely the tendency to dismiss such harassment as “just a bunch of crazy people arguing on the Internet.” Which would be true, except:

  • Many of the people targeted as enemies by Kimberlin (and Kimberlin’s avowed associate, Neal Rauhauser) are being harassed for no other reason than the fact that they wrote about Kimberlin’s criminal past, or defended those who did;
  • The harassment is, to an extent, demonstrably an attempt to silence political opponents of Kimberlin, whose 501(c) organizations have been funded with more than $2 million in contributions under the pretext of pursuing various progressive “social justice” issues, including election-fraud claims and crusades against high-profile individuals and organizations including Karl Rove, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce;
  • To intimidate Kimberlin’s opponents, people have had their employment situations jeopardized and their reputations attacked with unsubstantiated accusations of criminal wrongdoing; and
  • Because many of the targets of this harassment are citizen-journalists who use Twitter as a vital tool for gathering news, communicating with sources, and promoting their work to readers, the constant barrage of unsolicited hostile Twitter messages from persons like Schmalfeldt hinders their ability to do their jobs.

Ask anyone who has been subjected to this pattern of harassment — Mandy Nagy, Aaron Walker, Patrick Frey, Lee Stranahan, Ali Akbar, et al. — what it’s like to be besieged by a swarm of Twitter trolls, knowing full well their malicious motives, and then to see friends turn their heads because they don’t want to get involved, or because the trolls have managed, through the repetition of accusations, to cast a shadow of unfair suspicion around their target.

You can call that whatever you want — I call it cyberstalking and harassment — but don’t you dare call it “journalism.”

In an effort to encourage officials to take this online evil seriously, John Hoge has declared Monday — tomorrow, April 8 — “Everyone Blog About the Howard County State’s Attorney Day.”

Do it.




 

 


Bill Schmalfeldt’s Very Bad Idea
UPDATE: Maryland Resident Brandishes AR-15, Recently Banned in Maryland UPDATE: Schmalfeldt’s Gun Is a Toy UPDATE: No, Says Schmalfeldt, He’s Actually Armed; Dangerous? Maybe

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Bill Schmalfeldt never gets any good ideas, so it takes a particularly bad idea for me even to bother noticing. Remember, Schmalfeldt is the guy who got banned from Daily Kos for his grossly offensive writings about anal sex. Schmalfeldt is habitually dishonest, and one of his most heinous lies involved a vicious attack on Andrew Breitbart’s memory:

In July, Schmalfeldt created a Web site called “Big Damnation” which he promoted with a Twitter account called @DeadAndrew that mocked Breitbart as supposedly repenting his conservative “sins” (and denouncing his former colleagues) while suffering in Hell.
Bill Schmalfeldt is a remorseless liar and, after this vile project was exposed, Schmalfeldt deceptively used his phony “Bill Matthews” alias at the Examiner to promote his dishonest (anti-Breitbart) version of this controversy. In doing so, Schmalfeldt (a) defended Brett Kimberlin and (b) pretended that he wasn’t responsible for the “Big Damnation”/@DeadAndrew atrocity, as Lee Stranahan has explained.

As I said, Schmalfeldt never gets any good ideas, but this latest one is particularly bad: “Team Kimberlin” T-shirts!

For obvious reasons, no decent human being would link any site run by Bill Schmalfeldt, and I can’t help but wonder: How much do would-be members of “Team Kimberlin” know about the man with whom they would be associating themselves by buying those T-shirts?

Brett Kimberlin, the “Speedway Bomber” — what do they know about him? Do they know about Vietnam veteran Carl DeLong, whose leg got blown off by one of Kimberlin’s bombs? And do those “Team Kimberlin” members know about the little girl whose grandmother got shot to death in what investigators believed was a murder-for-hire plot?

“For three consecutive summers, 1974 through 1976, they took vacations of a week or longer in Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. Sandi couldn’t get time off from work, so on these summer trips it was just the two of them — Brett and Jessica.
“Eyebrows levitated. A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: ‘We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, “Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?” It made me very uncomfortable.’ Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as ‘my girlfriend,’ and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was ‘grooming Jessica to be his wife.’ To another, Sandi explained that although Kimberlin’s relationship with Jessica was chaste, he intended ‘to wait for her and would marry her.’”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin, Page 78

There’s just so much to learn about Brett Kimberlin:

As thoroughly despicable as Brett Kimberlin is, it takes an especially depraved character to admire Brett Kimberlin.

And few characters are more depraved than Bill Schmalfeldt.

UPDATE: Schmalfeldt would be easier to hate, if he weren’t so hopelessly stupid that you almost feel sorry for him:

Almost, I said . . .

UPDATE II: Well, if Che Guevara gets a T-shirt . . .

UPDATE III: Further scrutiny of the photo in which Schmalfeldt appears to brandish an AR-15 reveals that the gun is, in fact, a toy.

UPDATE IV: OK, so Schmalfeldt’s been all up in my timeline on Twitter this morning, accusing me of “libel” and insisting that indeed he was brandishing a genuine AR-15 rifle in that photo he posted to the Internet. Therefore, I apologize for my mistake in correcting what I previously thought was a mistake, and hereby correct the record by stating that Bill Schmalfeldt is in possession of a semi-automatic weapon with a high-capacity magazine and, probably, lots of ammunition.

Also, he’s crazy as hell. But there’s never been any doubt about that.




 

 

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Did SiteMeter Commit Suicide?
UPDATE: It’s Working Again, But Unfortunately, My Traffic Sucks

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As of right now, it’s dead. Donald Douglas at American Power and Doug Ross at Director Blue both report that the best, easiest-to-use traffic analytics site failed to renew its domain registration, an error that would require a special kind of stupidity.

Let’s all say a prayer that they can get it fixed, because without SiteMeter, I feel like I’m blogging blind.

People talk about other analytic software as being technologically superior, but here’s the thing: SiteMeter allowed sites to make their traffic data public in real-time. This permitted apples-to-apples comparisons between sites, which was especially helpful information for entry-level bloggers trying to figure out how to grow their traffic.

You could not only know what your own site traffic was at any time, but you could also see who had more or less traffic, and whose links were driving traffic to other sites. Some bloggers (foolishly, IMO) set their SiteMeters to private, as if they were embarrassed to reveal their traffic data, or as if they failed to understand the value of transparency. “No shame in my game” has always been my attitude, and I simply can’t understand why anyone would attempt to conceal their traffic data as if it were a proprietary trade secret.

Constantly checking SiteMeter is a deeply ingrained habit for many of us, an addiction classified as a symptom of Blogger Mood Disorder by Professor William Jacobson,  (See also “Site Meter Envy” and “Sitemeterenfreude.”)

There was a time when Technorati was also useful as an analytic tool for bloggers, but they “improved” it until they ruined it,  and if SiteMeter has now managed to commit online seppuku, this would represent a real loss to the blogging community.

UPDATE: Linked by Ed Driscoll and Charles G. Hill and now — without explanation — SiteMeter is working again, which is depressing, because my traffic sucks so far today.

Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes . . .

 

Late Night Administrivia

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— by Wombat-socho

The death march to April 15 has begun, which means that instead of the previous 46 hour a week schedule I was working, I will be working 54 hours a week until the end of the tax season. Feel free to quote Han Solo on the subject of rewards to me. This is going to force some changes to my blogging around here…first of all, Live at Five will be shifted to Live At Six for the duration. I can’t seem to stay awake late enough to get it done while going to bed early enough to get a decent night’s sleep, and waking up early enough to do it isn’t working any more either. So, an hour’s delay. The FMJRA will still be posting on the nights of the 6th and 13th, and Rule Five Sunday will be back on the 7th with a Super Double-Coverage Illness Makeup Edition, featuring a contribution from the foremost scourge of the Unspeakable Armenian. There will be a return to normalcy on the 14th once the backlog from last week is cleared out.

After tax season is over, I’m taking a few days off to visit family and friends in Minnesota; regular linkagery will resume on Tuesday, April 23, God and Southwest Airlines permitting. In the meantime, aspiring guestbloggers and/or linkmonglers should submit resumes, writing samples, and full-length photographs (Speedos optional) along with your gruel and grog requirements to the proprietor, one R. Stacy McCain, no later than this Friday. Applicants are advised that due to the strictures of the Test Act of 1673, no PopishCatholic individuals can be accepted without an Act of Indemnity and/or a completed I-9 form*. Your cooperation is appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Yes, of course this is a joke. What is WRONG with you people?

Chris Cassone Strikes Again:
‘My Baby Loves Barbecue’

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by Smitty

Hot cars, a cool girl, some rockabilly, and intense eats. How much more American could this song be?

Meanwhile, my baby loves a paycheck, and I must apologize to the loyal readers for my general absence the last week. There is a new job, which is pretty much the same old technology contracting I was always doing. The commute may be slightly worse, and the pressure a little higher. This is going to confine me to popping in on Twitter occasionally, and helping to promote criminally underrated geniuses like Chris Cassone, and maybe the occasional World’s Youngest Blogger update.

The Power of Prejudice

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Rule One of “How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog” is shameless blogwhoring. Think of it as an existential philosophy: In the New Media environment, that which is not promoted does not exist.

“I blogwhore, therefore I am.”

So, after I was the first to report Rick Santorum’s endorsement of Curtis Bostic in South Carolina, I sent out an e-mail promoting the exclusive to several friends and was quite taken aback when one friend replied with a rant informing me that “gay marriage is going to happen,” that opponents “are on the wrong side of history”and that Republicans will “never win again until they move the f–k on.”

It was like the Monty Python “Argument Clinic” sketch. It was shocking because the article I sent hadn’t said a word about same-sex marriage. I was reporting the news, not pushing an opinion. From the standpoint of pure blogwhoring, my friend could hate Rick Santorum’s guts and be voting for Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Just link me, damn it.

The opinion-driven way of thinking is another existential reality of the New Media age. Because we all have the “means of production” at our fingertips, there is a tendency to make our engagement with the online world a function of our own personal preferences: We consume only what interests us or what we find agreeable, and our production of online content is geared toward obtaining hegemony for our worldview.

In fact — and if you haven’t noticed this, you’re not paying close enough attention — we increasingly treat sources of information as if we were choosing them as our personal companions. The question that determines our choices is not whether someone reports useful facts or provides pleasurable reading, but whether we like them, whether we view them as “good” people, as being “on our side.”

The correct word for this is prejudice.

Why did my friend react instantaneously to my e-mail about Santorum’s endorsement with a rant about gay marriage? Why did my friend think I was in need of a lecture about this? I don’t know, but it struck me as evidence of a prejudiced attitude.

My own prejudice has always been in favor of underdogs. There is nothing like an upset — David slays Goliath, FGCU makes the “Sweet 16” — to make for a great story. So on the morning after the March 19 South Carolina primary, I took a look at the result and said, “Hey, maybe this Bostic guy could pull off a surprise.” It’s a long-odds proposition, but the thing about a situation like this is that if you thought about the odds against it, you would never bother paying attention at all. And I try to keep in mind that when Whittaker Chambers quit the Communist Party and became a conservative, he thought he was joining the losing side.

Oh, yeah — almost forgot — the latest poll out of South Carolina shows Curtis Bostic doing better than Sanford against the Democrat.

But I’m prejudiced, remember?

UPDATE: This moring, I found myself compelled by circumstance to link the infamous Will Folks. Now? I find myself linked by Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, whose cheerleading for Mitt Romney in the 2012 primary campaign didn’t endear her to many conservatives. This shows the impermanence of political alliances and also human sacrifice! dogs and cats living together! mass hysteria!

 

Excepting only Mardi Gras in New Orleans, there is nothing in this world wilder than a South Carolina Republican primary.

 

Monday Open Thread: The Tax Man Cometh

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— by Wombat-socho


Stacy and Smitty both have new jobs that are sucking up most of the time they used to spend on blogging. Unfortunately. Me, I work a weird schedule in the tax mines, so it leaves me free to contribute linkagery and occasional posts like this. Question for today: if you could eliminate ONE THING in the tax code, what would you get rid of? Answers like “the income tax” or “the Sixteenth Amendment” will be mocked as hopelessly Utopian. We’re looking for small changes that might actually get through Congress. Talk among yourselves, and keep it civil.


The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias

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Friend of the proletariat Matthew Yglesias (Photo: Matt Roth)

The news that left-wing blogger employee of Slate magazine Matthew Yglesias has purchased a $1.2-million townhouse in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood has produced much chortling. Yglesias, after all, mocked property rights as the “myth of ownership.” Andy at AOSHQ says:

So, party at Matty’s this weekend? I mean, I’m sure he won’t mind if we crash the joint, what with that myth of owning private property and all.

Twitchy enjoys the rich irony, but before the “Occupy Yglesias” movement encamps on his patio — “a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio” — let’s observe a couple of key points:

  1. Yglesias is entitled — He is, after all, a graduate of the Upper East Side’s prestigious Dalton School (annual tuition, $38,710) and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University (annual tuition, $54,496), so you don’t expect him to be hustling on the Internet for nickels and dimes, do you? No, he’s a fully-credentialed member of the meritocratic elite and therefore entitled to the prestigious positions he held at The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress before landing at The Washington Post Co.’s online loss-leader, Slate.
  2. He has his progressives defenders — Politics is a team sport, and one of Yglesias’s ideological comrades sniffs that critics are “playing ‘gotcha’ politics” (which thoughtful progressives never do, y’know) and defends the role of the intelligentsia in the struggles of the proletariat: “Yglesias can only be a hypocrite for purchasing an expensive home in a buyer’s market if you believe that class sympathies can only be extended to people in the same class as the sympathizer.”

What. Ever.

Journalism is a job, not a monastic order or a missionary crusade.

It’s ridiculous to expect writers to take a vow of poverty, even if their job requires them to pretend to believe in egalitarianism.

And certainly Yglesias isn’t stupid enough to believe that crap.

Wake the hell up, you people. Continue reading The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias →