The troll known as Josh / Don Digby / Kirkie / etc. keeps re-appearing.  We ban him, but he signs up with a new name and IP address, like a zombie that just keeps reanimating.

I’ve banned him again and sent him an email letting him know.  If anyone detects that he’s re-appeared again, please email me immediately and I’ll ban him again.

Below the jump is the email he sent to me in response to being banned, followed by my reply.  Normally, I’d strip out his real name and real email address.  But then again, normally a troll would get the hint and leave after the third ban, so all my “normal” rules go out the window.

On 7/16/07, Rico Tyler wrote:
I thought you got rid of Josh the first time.  Seems your IP theory has a little glitch, doesn’t it? LMAO.

When I read you started calling Josh “Rico”,  I spit the milk I was drinking out my nose, I was laughing so hard. I could believe anybody could be so damn dumb.  And your droids followed right in line. But then again, nobody said Lefties were brain surgeons, did they?

You can’t stop sucking up to the people on this site, trying to be more gay than they are,  trying to be more atheist than they are.  If only you could diet with the same zeal.

I am so sorry your group can’t take comments that disagree with their views.  Then they start with personal attacks, then cry when they get them back better than they get them.  But that’s what liberals do.  They can never compete in the arena of ideas.  So just like in the fairness doctrine, they try to shut down the voices of truth.  Oh, I guess I shouldn’t bash the fairness doctrine, should I, Porkchop? You’re banking on that baby, ain’t ya? Coz nobody would fucking pay for your two-bit leftist rants.

So I’ll be back. Unless of course you want to shut down access from all the University sites on the East Coast, but well, who would that be hurting? But oh well. Anything I can do for the haters of the world.

Ric

Mr. Tyler,

Return all you like.  I’ll keep banning you.  I only wish the milk that went through your nose would’ve accidentally sucked back down the wrong way and choked you to death.

I don’t quite understand the thrill you’re getting out of all of this.  It seems like you have some point you’re trying to prove, but all you’ve accomplished is displaying to a large portion of the blogosphere what a talentless, thoughtless, insulting idiot you are.

But thanks for the extra clues.  Now we know that you are using university computers on the East Coast.  This suggests to me that you are not the rich “achiever” you claimed to be, but rather some neo-con College Young Republican getting his rocks off taunting liberals.  I’ll bet you and your twenty-something Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-chugging fratmates get a huge laugh every time someone responds to one of your little ad hominem attacks.  Ah, so much easier to type about how much you love George W. Bush’s little Iraquagmire than to get your ass down to the recruiting center and sign up to defend it.

You talk about competing in the “arena of ideas”, yet your posts and comments are so far from legitimate intellectual debate that to frame them as “ideas” stretches the definition to meaninglessness.  For example, in the most recent posts about the Catholic Church, you jump in with comments equating pedophile priests with gay priests.  Now, anyone with a sliver of knowledge of LGBT issues knows that “gay” does not equal “pedophile”.  That was politely pointed out to you.  You respond with more of the same, but add in little insults, digs, and outright attacks against others.

We welcome contrary points of view.  I’ve even been contrary on this blog.  For months, I posted many comments on a few threads dedicated to the topic of “hate crimes”.  I used to oppose hate crime legislation, because I thought that all crimes of violence are hate and to punish someone because of what they feel means you’re punishing a white guy who beats a black guy worse than you’re punishing a black guy who beats a black guy, and that’s racist and wrong.

But when I posted that, I didn’t post it in the tone of “You liberals say you’re for equality between the races, but you want to punish white people more than blacks.”  I didn’t post it in a “gotcha” phrase and I didn’t tell the people who disagreed with me that they were stupid for doing so.  I was interested in legitimate debate.  Some people engaged with me and pointed out their view and how mine was flawed.  I defended my view and pointed out how their view was flawed.  We went around and around until I had an “Aha!” moment (thanks to Sarah in Chicago) when I realized hate crimes aren’t just plain old violence, they are terrorism.  It’s not punishing the white guy for hating a black dude, it’s punishing the white guy who terrorizes the whole black community when they understand that the black dude was killed just for being black and they could be next.

Do others respond with attacks against you?  Sure – poke a bear with a stick and it’s likely to fight back.  But then you use that as justification to say, “see, all those liberals just call names, don’t they!”  You’re not actually debating anything.  You say something outrageous, we call you on it, and you stick to the outrageous and add in insults.  You’re not interested in the other points of view in response, you’re not interested in learning anything new, you’re not intrerested in fostering an intellectually honest discussion.  You’re just here to kick liberals, stir up a bunch of responses, flame back in response, and before we know it, an interesting discussion between peers devolves into 50% comments from you and 35% comments responding to you and threads grow to 100+ comments and no one wants to read them anymore.

In the real world, this would be like going to the newspaper box, putting in fifty cents, then setting all the newspapers therein on fire.  This would be like walking into the meeting of the Black Student Union on campus, screaming “All colored people should go to separate schools”, and continuing to shout it after three dozen black people are yelling at you to knock it off and leave.  This would be like calling in to the Rush Limbaugh show with a special telephone that allows you to keep the line open and shout “Michael Moore is God” every thirty seconds, regardless of what Rush and his callers are trying to discuss.  This would be like spraypainting “God Hates Fags” on every billboard purchased by the HRC.

In other words, free speech has its limits, and your actions sit on the borders between harassment, censorship, and terrorism.  What you’re doing is similar to a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on a website — your continued troll posts and flame wars degrade the quality of service on this blog.  I will not tolerate it.  Please don’t make us go to the point of calling our very-tech-savvy IT friends to track you down to your precise university.  I’m pretty certain most universities have rules regarding the use of university bandwidth and I’m betting posting harassing comments to a blog violates those rules.

As for “sucking up”.  Mr. Tyler, am I only allowed to stick up for the civil rights of straight white men?  Your taunts of “sucking up” put you on the same playground with the taunts of “nigger lover” and “fag hag”.  And as for “sucking up” as an atheist, I dare say there are more theists on this blog than atheists — my atheistic rants here have even earned me a few detractors.

The diet comment, the “porkchop” comment?  More ad hominem from a guy who just can’t compete without it.  Ignorant, too, as I can still run two miles in fifteen minutes, bench press my own body weight (and that’s saying something), squat three times my body weight, and execute six straight blasts, a leg sweep, and a Kimura submission hold in the time it would take you to call me “porkchop” to my face.  Don’t bother tapping; I’d rather dislocate your shoulder.

Sincerely and seriously,

“Radical” Russ Belville
Permanent Guest Barista

P.S.:  Fairness Doctrine?  Gimme a break; you’ve been listening to too much Rush.  Nobody wants the Fairness Doctrine.  And nobody is shutting down your “voice of truth”.  Go to Blogger.com, create an account, build a blog, and shout out your comments to the whole freakin’ world.  Somehow, though, I doubt you’ll get as much traffic as Pam does.

But I think you’re referring to my radio show.  Well, guess what, pumpkin?  I’m getting paid infinitely more money for my “leftist rants” on my radio show than you’re getting paid for your ad hominem attacks on your radio show, even without the Fairness Doctrine.  What’s that?  Oh, you don’t have a radio show?  Hmm, why is that?  Oh, yeah, because I’m a talented and charismatic voice with a keen insight into issues of the day and progressive politics, and you are a shallow, hateful little boy who thinks liberals are everything Rush calls them and sets out to prove it by calling them names.