The Favorite Son called to check on me yesterday, wondering what had happened to a recent post, and in our conversation I realized that I regretted baiting Robin with that post. Because that's what it was for me, baiting.
I am sorry, Robin, it wasn't a very nice thing to do.
I don't agree with Robin very often and I knew that his sardonic remarks were not really a recommendation to donate to something he disdained. I chose to see it that way because I knew it would irritate him. I don't like that behavior in others; I don't want to do it myself. And I'm sorry.
But I'm still not going to publish his comments when they are inappropriate.
18 comments:
I do believe that this is the first time that a Unitarian*Universalist minister has offered an apparently sincerely apology to me for their inappropriate behavior that they have taken personal responsibility for and have acknowledged as being wrongful or harmful. Hopefully for all concerned it won't be the last apology I receive from a U*U minister who has slighted me or otherwise behaved inappropriately. I can think of a few other U*U ministers, including high level UUA officials whose apologies are long overdue. That being said I have a policy of unconditionally accepting apologies that are offered voluntarily without me even having to ask for one, clearly and unequivocally acknowledge wrongful behavior, and appear to be sincere. So I hereby accept your apology Rev. Ketchum.
Thank you for showing some personal integrity and setting a public example for your colleagues in the U*U ministry. I had hoped that your colleague Rev. Victoria Weinstein would do so when she insultingly defamed me on her Peacebang blog but she refused to do so and we all know how that turned out. It is most regrettable that Rev. Ray Drennan lacked the human decency and personal integrity to properly apologize to me after he insultingly, slanderously, and I believe maliciously, attacked me in late 1995. He could have saved Unitarian*Universalists a lot of trouble had he done so. An apology that clearly acknowledged the wrongfulness and harmfulness of his well beyond inappropriate comments, retracted his insulting and defamatory words, and expressed sincere regret for having uttered them would have led the way to peace and reconciliation that the Unitarian Church of Montreal, the UUA, and the rest of the U*U World have willfully avoided for well over a decade now.
As far as my own allegedly inappropriate comments go. Comments that were suppressed by Rev. Ketchum prior to her wholesale "memory holing" of her inappropriate blog post, complete with comments made by other U*Us. I do not believe that they were all that inappropriate. In fact I believe that they were a quite appropriate response to Ms. Kitty's acknowledged baiting of me in her own rather inappropriate blog post that is now relegated to the burgeoning "memory hole" of U*Udom. As I have made clear to Rev. Ketchum in my suppressed and allegedly inappropriate follow-up comments, I reserve the right to post suppressed and "memory holed" comments on my own blog along with appropriate (or indeed somewhat inappropriate. . .) criticism of those U*Us who censor and suppress my legitimate comments. This is especially true when U*U clergy choose to censor and suppress my legitimate criticism. I had intended to do just that with respect to Rev. Ketchum's recent inappropriate behavior but did not get around to doing it prior to her unsolicited, quite acceptable, and apparently sincere apology here. I will take her apology into account, but will probably post about this incident in any case. Indeed I look forward to commending Rev. Kit Ketchum for being the first, and so far only. . . Unitarian*Universalist minister to adequately and sincerely apologize to me for their own inappropriate comments about me.
Well I guess Rev. Ketchum considered that comment to be appropriate. ;-)
I'm with Belle Watling on money for a good cause being money for a good cause, and I was just happy to raise money for an ad campaign that I thought was good and was a step in the right direction for UUism. And yes, if people opened their wallets partially because they were frustrated, I can totally live with that.
I was also bummed to see that thread go in that Robin talked about his day of conscience and I thought it was sort of interesting.
But I hunted up the website for day of conscience rewrote my comment there.
CC
Thanks, CC. I agree with you and Belle.
I do believe that this is the first time that a Unitarian*Universalist minister has offered an apparently sincerely apology to me...
Robin, I don't know you from Adam (or the UU equivalent), so I have no ax to grind in the matter. You seem like an all-right sort to me, especially since I don't understand the nature of the disputes at hand.
But I have known Ms. Kitty for four decades, and her sincerity is never, never "alleged." I may disagree with her three-fourths of the time, but she always means what she says. For her to offer an insincere apology to someone who burns her butt in the comboxes as much as you do is as likely as the pope campaigning to canonize Joseph Smith because he enjoys watching "Donny and Marie" reruns.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Joel.
(((I agree with you and Belle)))
I think you missed my point, but anyway...
I think Ms. Kitty's apology is sincere. Annoying, but sincere.
CC
I would be interested in knowing why you believe Rev. Ketchum's apology is "annoying" ChaliceChick. Please offer an explanation as there may be any number of reasons that you might say that.
Joel, no offense was intended when I said that the apology was "apparently sincere" (corrected the spelling there). The apology did have the appearance of being sincere, hence my statement to that effect. I have in the past received an alleged apology from a U*U minister that had virtually no semblance to being a sincere one. Not only was it insincere but it was far from adequate even if it had been sincere. In fact it effectively repeated the insults and defamation that it was supposedly an apology for. Some say that an insincere or inadequate apology is an insult in itself and I would have to agree.
I like to think that I am am alright sort. Plenty of people who know me reasonably well certainly feel that way. However, apart from our interactions online, I do not know Rev. Kit Ketchum from Eve. I was not in a position to know with any certainty just how sincere her apology was. There was a possibility that her apology was at least somewhat expedient, and thus not as sincere as all that, so I did not want to definitively state that it was completely sincere when I did not know that for sure. I did however feel safe in saying that it appeared to be sincere, and did so largely because I had received a far from sincere apology from a U*U minister before.
Since you know Rev. Ketchum very well I will take your word for it that her apology was completely sincere. Rev. Ketchum had the benefit of what little doubts I may have had about the sincerity of her apology in any case. My personal policy is to unconditionally accept unsolicited, timely, and adequate apologies even if their motivation is somewhat suspect. It would have to be a very grave offense for me to consider not honouring that policy because I felt that an apology was more expedient than sincere. Rev. Ketchum's offense was comparatively minor as far as offenses go, even as far as offenses committed by U*U ministers go. . . It did not even occur to me to ask her to apologize for her minor offense so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she had offered an unsolicited apology for baiting me.
:For her to offer an insincere apology to someone who burns her butt in the comboxes as much as you do is as likely as the pope campaigning to canonize Joseph Smith because he enjoys watching "Donny and Marie" reruns.
Point taken. ;-)
Now when the Unitarian Church of Montreal, the UUA, and at least a handful of other U*U ministers implicated in this conflict get around to offering adequate, and at least apparently sincere, apologies for their well-documented wrongful and harmful behaviour towards me, our little war of words will be well on its way to being satisfactorily resolved. I have actually been meaning to contact the two candidates for next President of the UUA to see if they might be prepared to do what is necessary to finally resolve this conflict. It would be better for all concerned if this conflict was responsibly resolved on President Bill Sinkford's watch but I have little confidence that it will be thanks to his obvious failure, indeed his effective refusal. . . to live up to the purported principles and ideals of U*Uism, to say nothing of his own evidently empty rhetoric about "waging peace" and "standing on the side of love" yadda, yadda, yadda, in this conflict and other UUA matters. I have my fingers crossed the Rev. Ketchum will not consider that very honest statement to be an "inappropriate comment". I consider it to be a highly appropriate comment based upon a fair and realistic assessment of UUA President Bill Sinkford's well-documented failure to responsibly address the "obviously deep concerns" that I first shared with him in 2002. . .
You have my sincere thanks for posting that comment that too many other U*U ministers would deem to be inappropriate and suppress Rev. Ketchum. For anyone who may be wondering about it, the previous comment from me that says -
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
was the pretty much same comment that was submitted with some spelling errors or typos in it. I resubmitted a corrected version of my comment when I saw that there were a few too many errors to disregard. Nothing of any consequence has been "memory holed" by Rev. Kit Ketchum in this instance.
I thought it was annoying because I would have far rather her not put up a post about it and not participated if she thought it was such a bad thing to do.
In putting up a post in support of the idea and then changing her mind and denouncing it, she made a much bigger point of her disapproval than if she'd either put up a comment objecting, or just left it alone.
Am I furious that she changed her mind? No.
But annoyed at the way she went about it? Sure.
I'll get over it.
CC
I guess I'm one of those people who acts first and regrets later. I regretted my own behavior and needed to make amends. It was a mistake. I wish I'd known it sooner.
PS. And I owe you an apology too, CC, for backing out. I'm sorry.
You owe ChaliceChick an apology for listening to your conscience and then acting upon it by "backing out" of participating in baiting me Rev. Ketchum? ChaliceChick was clearly engaged in baiting me with her Robin Edgar's Good Idea post. It seems obvious from your own testimony that you understood that CC was baiting me, as I expect most of the other U*Us who chimed in there did.
It would appear that ChaliceChick is "annoyed" with your apology primarily because your acting upon your conscience and "backing out" of participating in her online baiting did not reflect all that well on her. . . I can't say that your doing the proverbial right thing reflected all that well on the other various other U*Us who gleefully participated in "baiting" me on ChaliceChick's blog either, but that doesn't change the fact that you (and you alone) did the right thing.
Hopefully ChaliceChick and other U*Us, particularly other U*U clergy, will learn from the example that you have set here. It is an example that at least two of your professional colleagues had an opportunity to set years ago but quite evidently lacked the human decency and personal integrity to do so. I repeat that your "mistake" of baiting me was really quite minor compared to various other "mistakes" committed by U*Us, including U*U clergy and UUA administrators. Indeed I condider it minor compared to your mistake of suppressing legitimate critical comments that I have submitted your blog from time to time. Would that those U*Us in positions of leadership and authority in the UUA, and a certain unmentionable U*U "church". . . might finally get around to publicly acknowledging that they regret their own behavior and do what is necessary to make amends to me, to say nothing of those other people who they have quite seriously harmed with their "mistakes", some of which are quite egregious "mistakes". You have set a public example for other U*Us to follow and I sincerely hope that other U*U clergy, including UUA leaders, will see fit to follow your example in their human relations with me and other people who they have offended or harmed in some way.
Robin, this is between CC and me. It does not include you. Any more posts about it will not be published. CC has a right to her own opinion and my apology is for supporting her idea and then withdrawing that support publicly. It is not your business.
See my previous comment.
And again, Robin, I would have minded it a lot less if she had just not participated in the first place.
But she and I worked it out over email and the issue is settled.
CC
Thanks to both of you for your thoughts. I'm closing comments now.
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