Free Range Chicken Out

I don't suppose it's completely inappropriate for a given person to be a little afraid of a given chap who, whether by chance or choice, possesses and uses the nickname Bubba, but one would think that if said person was used to gun shots in the neighborhood and finding the occasional syringe in the driveway then said chap who comments on a blog wouldn't be seen as a threat proximate enough as to be called a stalker by said person.

I think Rod and Bubba have a lot in common, They're both smart. They're both conservatives. And as evidenced by the prolificacy of each in the blogging arena, they both have an enormous capacity for typing. I mean, I'm not even halfway done with this post and I'm getting tired and bored already. Plus I'm clean out of Ritalin.

So when Rod recently called Bubba a "stalker" on his blog, it might have been in good fun among friends. I call my best mates by all kind of invectives and it's all part of the rich and customary ribbing among kindred spirits. For example, when my friend laughs and says "nice hairdo, baldy" I say something like "Hey, get a life, get a date or something." Yes, Rod said something like that to Bubba. He also said something like "I must have arrived..."; I don't exactly remember. The problem is that Rod deleted his own comment to Bubba, Bubba's original comment and a number of subsequent comments by Bubba, Kathleen and I.

What happened was Bubba jabbed Rod for attacking the Da Vinci Code without having read the book and related that to someone not reading Rod's book, then I chimed in with something snarky and inane as usual then Kathleen said....... are you all yawning yet? You really had to be there, I suppose.

Why did Rod delete all those comments on his own blog? My guess is that the main target was his original "get a life, you stalker" comment to Bubba and the rest were all just necessary collateral damage. You see, I think brother Bubba (that's redundant, right?) kind of gets on Rod Dreher's nerves, to say it mildly. Unlike the slovenly snarks of Pauli, and the clever parodic verse of Kathleen, Bubba actually makes some really dangerously valid points, many (most?) of which go unanswered. Epithets like "Stalker", even if meant in a generic sense rather than the criminal, and phrases like "get a life" seem to be over-reactions to a gentle jibe which was clearly tongue in cheek. (I very much doubt that Bubba has the slightest moral problem with condemning a book one hasn't read -- people do that all the time.) Dreher is disgusted with good arguments and critiques being posed contra crunchiness by people like Bubba, Meilaender, Jonah "Does CC exist?" Goldberg, Kevin Holtsberry, Maxwell Goss and some of the newcomers over at Beliefnet like Mike S.

Rod, some advice: hear the criticism, discern what it's worth, revise your thinking if you need to, laugh at the detractors if you decide you're right -- then move on. You don't have to respond to bloggers (but then I don't know why you have a blog), but think before you react OR own what you say; learn from the fact that you tried to take back a snappy, revealing remark you made on your own post. Honestly -- besides that action being "almost the Platonic ideal of chickenness" it also merely encourages us blog-thugs in the (s)talking business. If you think your ideas are better than those of others, then be bigger than the others.

But I'm not saying whether or not you're bigger than Bubba.

(original post from which comments were deleted.)