Michelle Malkin on those death threats to Kathy Sierra
"I sympathize and empathize greatly with Sierra. Death threats and misogynistic epithets and comments suck. But I find the response of the tech blogging elite rather underwhelming and unbecoming.
"First, where have y'all been? (...) The death threats Sierra received are no worse than I've received since starting this blog.
(...)
"My response to this and other endless slurs and threats -- most empty, some serious -- has been two-fold:
1) Report the serious threats to law enforcement.
2) Keep blogging.
"As I have said before: 'There is a time to be tolerant and there is a time to draw lines. If you don't draw those lines, bullies will be emboldened.'
"That is my unsolicited advice to those now cowering in the face of anonymous commenters and assorted nutballs who will never go away.
"Keep blogging. Don't cut and run.
(...)
"The left-wing tech kings and the MSM are in denial about how unhinged their fellow travelers are. They don't want to 'politicize' the problem by acknowledging an ideological imbalance. But owning up to the moral equivalence would be healthy thing."
***
I don't get death threats so much as rape threats, and the joke is they always come from guys who've written again and again how ugly I am. (Please don't tell me that rape is a crime of "power"; it's sexual and you know it. First clue? Well, there's a PENIS in it!)
See, according to them, my trouble is "I need to get laid" -- and they're just the one's to make the ultimate sacrifice. Honestly, I'd rather be a racist, homophobic, religious fanatic warmonger anyday than a lefty guy capable of that kind of "logic."
The last time I endured one of these incidents/exchanges/I don't know what to call them, and was literally shaking with rage, I was overwhelmed by the idea that I should make a donation to the guy in question. He was (when he wasn't libeling me and some of my friends) blegging for donations to help out a family member.
I didn't want to give this guy money, obviously. In the first place, I hate to part with money even for something I really want or need. This idea had all the hallmarks of a, shall we say, supernatural prompting*; our cute little Protestant friends sometimes call it a "burden on the heart."
So I sent some cash to the guy's PayPal account, along with a note that said, in part: "I think you're insane, but..." I didn't want his relative to go without.
I won't go into what happened next, except to say that the entire mess fell away like an old scab. Not because I "bribed" the guy; his reaction wasn't that of a successful extortionist...
Oh, and somebody else threatened to sue the guy, so.
Come on: Jesus can only do so much...
* The best interpretation of "heaping burning coals" I've read yet came from, of all people, lefty peacenik Jim Wallis. In his book Making Friends of Enemies (which I read when I was a lefty peacenik myself), Wallis explains that this is a mystical way of saying, "...cuz it will REALLY piss them off." I.E., your enemy will be left helpless and humbled by your jujitsu or something. And that actually does sound like something St. Paul would come up with...