Not MY Kind of Left

You've gotta take a stance...

Greg Tinti at Outside The Beltway has a post about a leftwing Professor in Arizona who has issued a public apology to Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom after making threats towards Goldstein's kid on his blog and in emails. She has also resigned her position at the University of Arizona.

Can I just say that this kind of sickness has nothing to do with my kind of Left? I suspect the woman needs medication and probably a court appointed medical examiner at her trial for threatening behaviour would be a good person to adjudge that. I've zero tolerance for that kind of troll, no matter what politics they espouse.

In fact, my tolerance for this kind of behaviour is even lower - and would include such as the posting of real-world addresses and phone numbers for private individuals in response to a newspaper real estate puff piece as Rocco DiPippo and Dan Reihl recently did. (What Goldstein experienced in this case is a quantum leap above even that reprehensible behaviour, though.)

I condemn all such behaviour. I will continue to do so. As Glenn Greenwald says, "it is not only those who engage in the tactics themselves who bear responsibility for the consequences, but also those who offer coldly bureaucratic indifference towards these tactics, or even an implicit defense of them."

Needless to say, anyone I had inadvertently blogrolled who behaved in such a way would be instantly delinked. I would never knowingly directly link to such a person in a post. Any commenter doing such at my blog would be banned and their ISP details handed to the aggrieved party so they could contact the cops etc.

I've a theory, though - it has nothing to do with the politics. To accuse the "wingnuts" or "moonbats" of being the only offenders is to deliberately ignore way too much evidence to the contrary. The mentally instable are not party-specific.