Blocked but not Shocked
This morning J-Carp alerted me to this laughable post with the short and apropos quip "This is rich." I noticed this post was being pimped on Twitter, so I decided to weigh in.
First this happened:
@roddreher sort of like those who gleefully & relentlessly chronicle the scandals in the #Catholic #Church. #WhoseOxIsGored #CircleTheWagons
— Ⓔⓢⓣ⋅Ⓠⓤⓞⓓ⋅Ⓔⓢⓣ (@estquodest) February 9, 2015
Then this happened:
So I've been "blocked from following @roddreher and viewing @roddreher's tweets." Oh, misery. Too bad I don't have more than one email and more than one Twitter account ever again. That way I'd be able to see and respond to his wonderful Tweets. Oh, wait....
I'll let others find and post links to Dreher's gleeful bashing of Rush Limbaugh for his scandals and high-horse posing about Dan Rather and Memo-gate. We get "now-now-but-for-the-grace-of-God-there-go-we" whenever a journalist is caught with his pants around his ankles telling outright lies and "Ha! What a horrible hypocrite!" when a Catholic bishop or mainstream conservative blunders in any way, shape or form.
But I want to point out two things. First, there is a lot of projection going on here with this accusation of envy being the big explanation as to why people are goofing all over Brian Williams. I'm a sinful man who is by no means immune to the sin of envy, but I'm sorry—the objects of my covetousness are people who are wayyy cooler than some news guy named Brian Williams. I mean, I can imagine that if my calling in life was to be a second rate blogger for a paleocon rag with a small cult following I might be envious of the smooth talking, good looking anchorman with an enormous megaphone, national name recognition and a matching salary.
The second thing is that it would appear that Mr. Dreher is in somewhat of a quandary with regard to using Twitter. He needs to use it in order to pimp posts and be a part of the modern media universe, but he has to relinquish his normal control in order to do so. Yes, he blocked me and I can't comment anymore under my normal email/Twitter account, too bad so sad. On the other hand, it doesn't appear that he can delete (de-Tweet?) my Tweet which is still there for anyone who wants to see the replies.
The obvious solution for this would be a Benedict Option version of Twitter.com where you could pimp your worthy commentary but there would be a central moderator—a Benedictator—who would delete unworthy Tweets so as not to harsh the mellow of your brilliance. Or point out obvious inconsistencies.
UPDATE: Check this out. I can still comment/reply on @roddreher tweets. I simply just pull them up under a different account in a different browser then cut-and-paste the address to the browser where my @estquodest account is logged in. Twitter allows me to reply to posts that way. Security hole? Maybe. Next move for OWB: report @estquodest for "cyber-stalking".





