CommanderTuvok wrote:On Twitter, Jean Kazez criticises Justin:
Jean Kazez â€@JeanKazez
@justinvacula Could you get my name out of your latest post? I really dislike your campaign against @surlyamy. Going after her art
Strange seeing Jean get so upset over this trivial affair, when there have been far more serious "bullying" episodes in the A/S community in the last year or so.
Don't think Jean Kazez is a neutral party in all this. She has an agenda of her own that is independent of either the FTB crowd or the anti-FTB gnu atheists. She is essentially an accomodationist and as such has a tendency to latch onto whatever argument seems to be most effective in denigrating the overall gnu movement.
To understand it best just remember her role in the Wally Smith affair.
To paraphraze Dhobzansky, nothing in elevatorgate makes sense, except in the light of the Wally Smith affair.
For those who don't know the details, Wally Smith was a Christian troll who targeted the gnu atheist community about three years ago. He set up several blogs and used an enormous number of sockpuppets to create the impression that there was a sizeable group who agreed with his points. He also used sockpuppets to call Ophelia Benson names, notably labelling her a "putrid twat", with the expected result from Ophelia (a complete freak out)
The biggest 'success' for Wally was in convincing Chris Mooney that Wally was a scientist named 'Tom Johnson' who was witness to shocking behavior of gnu atheist supporters who went around insulting every believer they met, including science friendly pastors at events promoting global warming science!
Mooney took this fanciful story at face value and ran with it on absolutely zero evidence.
Ophelia tried to question some aspects of Mooneys behavior and was banned from his blog, which continued to host many Wally Smith sock puppets who made fun of Ophelia, with Mooney taking no action against them.
Many gnu atheists were also banned when they tried to raise the question of Mooneys behavior and Ophelia's banning.
In the end Wally Smith's undoing came about through overreaching himself. He tried the sock puppet trick on one too many blogs and was caught out by someone who found matching IP addresses in their comment section.
In the end the guy, a graduate student in Tennessee(?) admitted it all and promised to never do it again.
Mooney got a hell of a lot of criticism for this as the sock puppetting that been common on his blog all the while Mooney was doing an impression of modern day Ophelia, banning anyone who questioned things.
He didn't admit anything until all the facts had been revealed by others and it seemed apparent that he must have known the truth of the situation for a long time previously.
Jean Kazez was involved in the latter stages, supporting the Tom Johnson story for a while and then, when it was finally exposed, saying that it was nothing to worry about, just move along.
She even labelled Ophelia a moral degenerate, or something along those lines, for her actions during the saga.
The other thing to note is that many of the strongest supporters of Ophelia throughout the Wally Smith affair have been subsequently knifed in the back by her, as she has morphed into someone who has managed to out Mooney Mooney himself, banning people for dissent left right and center and brooking no questions on her own site.