Quote of the day--"phaggotish"?! edition

These phaggotish, conspiratorial, childish, dorkish, baseless, mindless, shameful, dumb, aggressive, jealous, reprobate, obsessed, mad, clueless, shockingly delusional, completely lost and in trouble, bottom-of-the-barrel, short-sighted, dumb-fuck, ranting, Un-American, contemptible, obnoxious, embarrassing, incompetent, bizarre, constipated, bankrupt, hypocritical, stupid, fearful, carnivorous, wolverine, ranting, foaming at the mouth, bullying, lying, paranoid, no-better-than-the-mafia, smeghead, scumbag, cretinous, lazy, delusional, demented, narcissistic, pathological, extortionistic lunatic, thuggish drama-whores, poised on the edge of a precipice, hoisted by their own petard, their holy fucking shitballs burning inside a biplane careening toward the Statue of Liberty, rhinos raping chinchillas dressed up in unicorns' undergarments, who deserve every bad thing that happens to them, having to learn their lessons the hard way, and who I wouldn't even piss on if they were on fire (they believe in name-calling at TechDirt) claim that these types of statements are not actionable because they aren't "false facts," just "satire." Where is the dividing line?
- Tara Carreon, as quoted by Nate Anderson,
"FunnyJunk lawyer's wife wades into fray,
calls critics 'nazi scumbags'
,
ars technica, June 26th, 2012.


"Phaggotish"?

Tara Carreon, if you haven't been following the Internet kerfuffle, is the wife of attorney Charles Carreon, who sent a rather ridiculous SLAPP-happy letter to Matthew Inman, a.k.a. The Oatmeal; Mr. Carreon demanded Inman pay him $20,000 for accusing another website of prolifically stealing from him. Inman retaliated with a fundraiser to raise $20,000 for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) and a promise to send a photograph of the cash and a cartoon of "your mom seducing a Kodiak bear" to the copyright-infringing website. This being the Internet and Inman being a strikingly popular online personality, Inman overshot his fundraising goal by two hundred grand; consequently, Charles Carreon demonstrated his class and charm by filing suit against Inman, against the website indiegogo Inman used to raise the funds, and against the NWF and ACS, and against a growing number of "John Does" that may well encompass the entirety of the Internet by the time he's finished.

People were not happy. A lot of them said rude things and pulled classic, admittedly childish Internet pranks like signing Charles Carreon up for various spam sites, setting up a fake Twitter account in his name, etc. And this is where Tara Carreon comes in, rushing to her husband's defense with... "phaggotish"?!

I'm sorry. But, really?!

I mean, what is that? What is that? Is that an attempt to bypass a text filter? An asinine attempt to use a homophobic slur while coyly misspelling it so people won't accuse you of using a homophobic slur? Some kind of Lovecraftian thing--

The phaggotish denizens of the abyssal-coloured, eldritch, primordial, non-Euclidean regions arose, calling "tekeli-li! tekeli-li!" and Hathorne felt what was left of his sanity slip away; "Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Black Goat Of A Thousand Phaggotish Young!"

Though, you know, bonus points for using "smeghead". I mean, a Red Dwarf reference, nice. And I have to confess, going back through the invective, a twinge of jealousy. That's some first-rate venomous bile, there.

Which is why I vacillate between calling this a "Dumb quote of the day" and "Quote of the day". "Quote of the day" because it's good stuff. "Dumb quote of the day" because this is a woman defending her husband for doubling down on a really baseless legal threat by not only filing his original frivolous lawsuit, but also joining two respectable and respected American charities as codefendants. I mean, first of all, Inman seems to have his claim that his intellectual property was misappropriated sufficiently well-documented that you're not going to win a libel suit--libel being a false claim--and he has plenty of legal defenses piled up even if you somehow get past that (e.g. he's clearly running a satire site; a reasonable audience would perceive obvious hyperbole; the Lanham Act violation claim Carreon makes is absurd on its face); secondly--you're really suing adorable little bear cubs and people trying to cure cancer (clearly I'm being facetious: as of this writing, Charles Carreon has not, so far as I know, actually sued an actual bear cub... yet).

There's a point, you know, where you really just need to stay down. I mean, really, stay down. Not double down, I mean, you need to lie there and wait for the pounding to stop, because you're just asking for another one in the kidneys, otherwise. (And given the Carreons evident cluelessness: this is all a metaphor, duh.)

Then again (and I have to preface this by saying this was almost the quote of the day, from the same ars technica post):

"It's not the first time we've been targeted as sacrificial victims," Tara wrote. "We were targeted by the entire Buddhist community when I told them to go fuck themselves, for being nihilists, elitists, and authoritarians."


How big a prat do you have to be to piss off "the entire Buddhist community"?






Comments

Seth said…
Haha! "The entire Buddhist community." Outstanding.

It's amazing how frequently the real world makes me wonder if it isn't some kind of bit orchestrated by Andy Kaufman.
Nathan said…
Also from the Ars Technica article - This is a fight that is rapidly regressing into truly hateful territory; if there's a high road, everyone involved appears to have lost sight of it. Piled on by random Internet e-mailers and commenters, Tara kept lashing out, often against Inman personally. "You are a cancer, Matt Inman," she wrote.

I think they've got that wrong. At least within the context of this whole thing, Inman has taken the high road all along. Or, at least the high-er road. On his blog, he specifically called on people to lay off Carreon; to stop contacting him and spamming him, etc. and to just donate to the charity.

In one of the first blog posts I read about this, someone showed up in the comments defending Carreon; saying that he had personal experience of the guy and that something must have gone off the rails. The same commenter showed up again later to say he had spoken to Carreon and he was revising his opinion to something along the lines of (I paraphrase badly and shamelessly), "Carreon has lost his fucking mind and he's behaving reprehensibly and I retract any defense of him".

But to get back to the crux of your post, I'm sure that Tara used "phaggotish" to describe people suffering from or behaving like phagocytosis. Yup, I'm sure of it.
Nathan said…
And while I was babbling, Seth won the internet with his Andy Kaufman comment.

::applause::
Nathan, that bit appeared in one of the PopeHat posts.

And I think the Oatmeal has been acting (for him anyway) quite admirably. I mean, it's not like he's known for being sensitive and demure.
Eric said…
As Michelle observes, The Oatmeal has never been known for holding back. That said, one can tactfully say one's rights have been violated or one can say it tactlessly with references to bearlove and such; the former may be nicer and the latter may be funnier, but the upshot is pretty much the same at the end of the day. And as far as I can discern, Inman is completely and totally in the right on this one: his intellectual property was misappropriated, Carreon's legal threat was ridiculous, and Carreon's current suit appears to be completely baseless. The last bit being particularly true when Inman has publicly requested third parties to stop hassling Carreon.

Of course, the Carreons don't take Inman at his word on that point. One thing that I meant to get to in the original post and didn't, that's either funny-in-a-sad-way or sad-in-a-funny-way is the whole paranoid messianic subtext of Tara Carreon's rants: her husband is trying to save the world from Internet fascists who may be connected in some strange way to Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (we don't know if Matthew Inman is related to Admiral Inman, see, because nobody will talk about Matthew Inman's mysterious past, making him, "A man without a past, just like Barack Obama. Sure, there's lots of famous people like that in the world! Usually, they are children of Intelligence Agents, or Intelligence Agents themselves.")

Oh, Great Cthulhu, sleeping his undead sleep in abyssal R'lyeh, Tara Carreon appears to be a Birther. Figures.
Great post, Eric. I agree that there comes a point where you just stop. STOPPPPP

But in the meantime, this kerfuffle is so absorbing! Crazy people: the spice of life.
Steve Buchheit said…
She pissed off the Dalai Llama? Now that takes true skill because even all of China couldn't accomplish that and not only did they take his throne they were shooting at him on the way out. And in one ignorant rant she managed to piss him off? That is the truest form of narcism.

Hell, I am a buddhist and I didn't even know here fucking name before this. Although I did feel a disturbance in the force a little while back.
TimBo said…
What are "unicorns' undergarments" and why would wearing them be an insult?
John Healy said…
I was thinking "thesaurus" until I got to "holy fucking shitballs burning inside a biplane careening toward the Statue of Liberty". Then I wept with jealousy.
I plan on asking my Buddhist friends what she did to piss them off. I'll let you know how it goes.
Jim Wright said…
The only people who win in a fight between two websites called The Oatmeal and Funnyjunk are, well, all of us.

And thanks to Inman, a lot of richly deserving poor people too.

Carreon gives lawyers a bad name. Seriously.
Eric said…
Poor, sick people and bears, Jim. Don't forget the awesome, adorable, bears.
John Healy said…
After macing himself on vacation last year, Jim won't be forgetting the bears.
Not soon, anyway.
She forgot to mention whether the Buddhists forgave her. One assumes so. I'm guessing she hasn't forgiven herself. That's OK, though. There's always next life.

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