Dear Peter Vidala,

You’re homophobic.  And that’s okay, it takes all kinds to make the world go round.  You don’t have to have the buttsex with men – although God totally put that prostate gland there for a reason and there are no accidents in “his design” are there.  Maybe you should be looking into that?  There’s a whole damn industry (probably NSFW) out there for a little gender-bending fun in the bedroom.*  But enough of the witty banter, let’s get down to the real reason I’m writing you this letter you’ll never read.

Colleagues talk about personal lives at work.  It’s a rare nonexistant? company indeed that feels that no personal conversations can go on.  We’re human, we like to talk about what we’ve done and what other people are doing.  This is why gossiping is such a fabulous past time.  Graphic sex talk or descriptions of who put what where is absolutely inappropriate for work, and everyone’s protected from hearing about Crazy Norma’s latest sexcapade with the possibly syphilis-ridden mail carrier who works in the basement.  Legal system will totally back you up for fucking flipping out about this.  But, and know that I say this in a totally loving way, you’re dead fucking wrong in thinking that going on a religious diatribe at work is protected speech because you made a shitty heteronormative assumption about a colleague’s marriage and got your ass called on it.

Dude, the proper response when a colleague is talking about something that skeeves you out (for whatever reason) is “That conversation topic X makes me uncomfortable.  Let’s talk about something else.”  This then means that if the other person pursues it, ze’s the aggressor.  The incorrect response that gets your bigoted ass rightfully fired is saying “homosexuality is bad stuff” because my religion says so.

So here’s to my support in Brookstone for firing you.  And you’re young.  You’ll learn.  I hope you figure out a way to reconcile this hatred with reality and have a bit of compassion for those not quite as privileged as yourself.

Much love

Michelle

*Something up your butt doesn’t make you gay.  Sex with the same gender makes you gay (or at least a little queer).  This applies to both men and women.  Straight men, you might actually like it, see if your woman’s interested.

I’m getting sick of all this Sunsara Taylor/Ethical Humanist Society crap.

Sunsara and her minions are really grating on my nerves and annoying me almost to the point of pulling out my wallet and donating all of the money contained within it to Chicago’s Ethical Humanist Society for the legal fees they’ll inevitably have to pay to get this woman to shut up.

I have some really good communist friends who are highly intelligent and wonderfully entertaining.  And this isn’t just another, “I have black friends,” argument:  I’ve actually had friendly, intelligent, political debates over Thai food with them and engaged in oral sex with about half of them.  (Let’s see Palin say that about her “gay friends”!)  However, this obnoxious attention whore is giving all American communists a bad name as being loud, disruptive punks with victim mentality complexes.

One of these minions is now peddling Sunsara’s blog posts in my own comment threads:

Author : DianeKeen (IP: 166.84.167.40 , 167-40.nyc.dsl.access.net)

 

For the critical thinkers who read this blog:
please see this:

http://sunsara.blogspot.com/2009/11/truth-about-sunsara-taylor-and-ethical.html

Okay… I read it.  It gave a very enlightening view of Sunsara, who, in her blog titles and often in the posts themselves, refers to herself in third person.  So, because any person who sends minions after me is considered an unfriendly foe* on principle, J. Reed Braden shall continue this post, and the dissection of Sunsara’s self-congratulatory one-woman circle-jerk.

The post itself is pretty unimpressive.  It’s the same three articles that I’ve been spammed with by multiple people abusing the contact form, just put together in one long blog post.

The first two things Braden noticed when he followed that link is, one: “Goddammit… Braden just increased Sunsara’s hit count by one,” and, two: “This is essentially Sunsara writing a blog carnival about herself!  Carnival of Sunsara: Sunsara Edition!”

Braden then looked down and saw that Sunsara doesn’t allow any comments on her blog at all!  What’s the point of putting your ideas online without the opportunity for open discussion?

The first article (Obviously the one Sunsara found to be the most important, given its position) was written by Sunsara!  How believable!  When the plaintiff says she’s innocent, case closed!  Right?

In other words, if we want a world where the needs of humanity are valued above individual gain, where women are fully liberated, where all people and a diversity of cultures are respected and valued, and where critical thinking, the unfettered search for the truth, and individuality are fostered – then we must begin to live this morality now and we must struggle to bring that world into being.

Braden is not going to diss the original ideas behind the economic philosophy of communism, but how many communist countries can you name, “where the needs of humanity are valued above individual gain, where women are fully liberated, where all people and a diversity of cultures are respected and valued, and where critical thinking, the unfettered search for the truth, and individuality are fostered”?  Apparently, trespassing, disrupting the peace and resisting arrest are part of the struggle to value humanity, liberate women, diversify something or another, suck a unicorn’s golden teat and provide Snuggies for African children… or whatever warm fuzzy shit she was waxing on about.  Braden really stopped paying attention right after the stuff about—Braden guesses—diversifying other’s culture(?).

I speak publicly on these and other matters not, as some now claim, out of a desire to “be in the spotlight.” I do this because I understand that even people who today often close their eyes to truths that seem too difficult, too big, too disturbing to confront, can be won to open their eyes, to think, and to act.

The fact that using a podium in a privately-owned building, where you were asked to be respectful, to speak ill about the organisation who owns the building (and, more importantly, the podium) is an ethical thing to do is a truth  that’s too difficult, too disturbing and too big to confront.  I know that hundreds of district attorneys around the nation are quivering in fear over the prospect of wrestling with that inconvenient truth.

The second article was by Sunsara’s friend who is apparently Sunsara’s private tour guide or something like that.

She spends the entire article harping on about how anyone who speaks ill of Sunsara is a vicious liar and about how everyone but Sunsara and herself are liars of the worst kind.

I shit you not, here are some actual quotes that Braden found.

When many respected voices began to disapprove of the EHSC’s dis-invitation of Ms. Taylor, the EHSC shifted their rationale for this to a discussion of “process” and their “right to choose” who their speakers will be.

Scare quotes!  AHHHH!!!  There’s no such thing as a private organisation having “rights”!  Especially the “right” to “choose” who gets to “deliver a speech about communism” to their “members” and “post it on YouTube” where it will be “inevitably viewed” as a “representation” of the “organisation’s” “political” “views”.  “Scare quotes” “are” “frightening”.

Are they really willing to put a man away in jail to justify this and cover their mistake? Just how disposable is a person’s life, their freedom, and their reputation to these “ethical” people?

Newsflash, Susie Q!  The Ethical Humanists Society doesn’t have the power to jail people.  The Chicago Police decided to jail the cameraman.  Why they did so is their own business, but it’s likely to do with the allegation that he beat a police officer.  Just a hunch.

What are the “dishonest and unethical way[s] in which” the decision to dis-invite her was reached?

As documented previously by me [http://sunsara.blogspot.com/2009/10/open-letter-from-chicago-tour.html] and in a separate letter by Sunsara today [http://sunsara.blogspot.com/2009/11/sunsara-taylor-on-ethical-humanist.html], those who initiated the process that led to her cancellation were driven by anti-communism and a belief that Sunsara’s condemnation of globalization was “non-sense.”

It’s not good enough to reference articles, Susie Q.  You have to reference articles that weren’t posted on the same site you’re writing on… and they can’t be written by you or the plaintiff.  If J. Reed Braden wrote an article one day that said, “Zoosmell Pooplord was fired because his boss, Sulu Poopmonster, is a dunderhead,” and then Mr. Pooplord wrote an article on the same blog, agreeing that Mr. Poopmonster is a dunderhead, Braden couldn’t then write a third article stating that it is a proven fact that Poopmonster is a dunderhead, using those two articles as proof.

As Braden understands it, the EHSC dis-invited Sunsara after there were some discrepancies between the original topic of her speech and the actual content of the proposed speech.  (i.e., It was a political diatribe that went far away from the topic of “Ethics Without God”.)  When she was asked to tone it down, she refused and shrieked some mindless psychobabble about censorship.  If that’s not accurate, someone from EHSC should please correct Mr. Braden.

There were no "safety reasons" to move Sunday school off site. There was not “Sunsara Taylor inspired protest” to fear. There was no legitimate reason for police to be called in advance of Sunday morning’s program.

Except… you know… trespassing, disrupting the peace, interrupting an organisation’s scheduled meeting, violence against police officers, etc.

The videographer was not told to leave, did not resist arrest, did NOT assault a police officer. He faces 3 serious charges of criminal trespass, resisting arrest, and battery on a police officer. But it was he who ended up in the hospital being treated for injuries to his head, eyes, and wrists. The police sergeant himself had called an ambulance to the jail out of concern for his injuries.

Well, usually when someone tries to use his fists to fight several guys with Batman utility belts covered in lethal, semi-lethal and non-lethal weapons, the guy with the fists is going to be the one who leaves in the most ambulance-needing condition.  The fact that he got his ass kicked doesn’t mean he didn’t assault a police officer… in fact, it’s pretty compelling evidence that he did assault a police officer.

The third post, Braden didn’t even bother to read.

It begins like this:

3.  a statement from a lawyer providing an eyewitness account attesting to the peacefulness of the videographer and the brutality of the police

I am a lawyer licensed to practice law in the state of Illinois for the last 23 years.

An eyewitness is an eyewitness.  The fact that this guy is a middle-aged lawyer means nothing.  The fact that it was the first sentence means, “Argument from authority.”  Also, Braden wouldn’t trust any eye-witness claim from either side at this point.  When police bust in to arrest an uncooperative person in a crowded room, chaos typically ensues and no one really knows exactly what’s happening.  Even if Lawyerman isn’t intentionally lying, he might not have seen what the cameraman did to the police officer(s).  Braden doubts that, since Sunsara was the most provocative character present, Lawyerman would have been prescient enough to watch the cameraman the entire time from the moment the plainclothes cop identified himself to the moment where he was detained.  Braden would bet that Lawyerman would have been watching Sunsara in the expectation that she would be the one leaving with a shiny, matching pair of bracelets.

So, “argument from authority,” mixed with, “improper trust placed in eyewitness testimony,” means, “J. Reed Braden is not going to waste his time reading your garbage.”

</end ridiculous third-person writing>**

One thing that was ubiquitous in everything I’ve read from Sunsara’s side is the insistence of everyone writing for her to use the word truth over and over and over again, as if trying to convince themselves that they are 100% sure of their stories’ veracity (hence the title of this post).  The folks I’ve talked to at EHSC’s frequently use of phrases like, “the other side of the story,” and words like information, as opposed to truth.  They know that they can’t be 100% sure of anything that happened amid the chaos, but they’re gathering information and balancing out the differing sides of the story.  Sunsara’s folks are just telling the same story over and over again, with no interest in changing it according to evidence.

This will be my last post on Sunsara unless something very newsworthy happens.  Frankly, this woman and her sheep irritate the shit out of me.

* As opposed to a friendly foe.  (Waves enthusiastically at Trey.)

** Braden kept it going longer than he thought possible.