To follow up on my Streisand Effect post it is now time to provide some details. Mid-day, I get this call from a Dennis Senibaldi DEMANDING that I take down some posts. Not posts that I had written but posts that Kimberly Morin had published both here and at Examiner.com; covering the Windham School Board circus of which he seemed to be Clown-in-Chief. (Actually, not so true as another decided to really out do him, but I do like that turn of phrase.). He said that they were inaccurate and that she was lying about him in those posts. I was rather puzzled as I have generally found her posts to be well resourced, with links to foundational material (yes, I do require this of the Groksters – to always let our readers to go to the original material for background, and to make sure we’re not just blowing smoke when we talk about things). We chatted for a bit and it was clear that there was an intimidation factor going on; he “leaned” on me by stating that since the Examiner.com had complied with his take-down request, I HAD to as well.
I don’t cotton well to someone’s demand to do ANYTHING just because someone was told to do such; you see, I learned my lesson well from Mom when she kept telling me “well, if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you?” Yeah, telling her that if it was a real hot day and the water down there was wet and cool, it probably would be a great idea (just like when I didn’t clean my supper plate and she said “Children in China are starving!!” and I answered back smartly “Name two” – yeah, that didn’t go over well and I did learn a lesson about corporal punishment. So, if the Examiner.com wants to wuss out and knuckle under, well, not a terribly good reason to join that cowering.
Well, I’ve been through this before (That is, demanding something) when it was rather clear that my poking at the folks at WMUR had created a sore in a series of posts in which I used their logo to specifically ID where the content was coming from. Well, they were ticked enough to have one of their lawyers, a Ms. Dietrick (who also was branded as a Hearst First Amendment Fellow – go figure) sent a cease and desist letter concerning the use of the WMUR logo on flyers that I was sending out. At first I was surprised, and then annoyed but curious; in part, my response was:
I am but a simple man (you may ask my critics for confirmation of this fact) so I wish to address one thing from your letter at a time. If you would, Ms. Dietrick, please forward to me one or more examples of the flyers you have singled out for infringement for my inspection. I have no problem in reworking them so as to remove any WMUR logo (presented here for illustration only to ensure we are both communicating and being precise concerning the artwork of your letter) that may be present; I only wish to careful and accurate.
I never heard back. Yeah, you know the rest of that story where the moral of the story is IF someone accuses you of malfeasance, if you have, apologize. If they accuse you of malfeasance and REFUSE to ante up the offending “bits”, the whole exercise was one of intimidation. And I believe this was: Big Media Company going after a lowly blogger.
So, I asked Dennis Senibaldi to point out which posts were in error about him….he only maintained that it was “Morin!”. I asked him what PARTS of Ms. Morin’s posts were in error; all I got back was because MORIN!. I did offer to go over them but ONLY if he gave me specifics about what was inaccurate in the posts or what were outright lies; he deflected and didn’t answer. His only semi-cogent response (yes, I’m being kind here with that description – given his level of argument was that of a young, none-to-bright child) was that since the Examiner.com had pulled down the posts, there HAD to be something wrong. Ipso Facto? No, not going with that. Vagueness wins in politics but not with an engineer who has been translating Politicalese for a few years now – and this “politician” just didn’t get that I generally don’t regard politicians well just because people voted for them.
I offered him the chance to do a rebuttal – after all, the answer to Bad Speech is always MORE Speech and not to ELIMINATE speech. He said he would “contemplate it over the weekend” – actual words.
Sidenote: if an audio suddenly appears of that phone call in an attempt to rebut the above, let me remind Dennis Sinibaldi that at no time was I informed that he was recording – and NH is a two person consent state. Just figured I’d save him some jail time – and the advice is free!
I let him know the offer is there again. To be honest, I don’t believe I’m going to get that “rebuttal” (and yes, he was informed that if it went up, we allow More Speech and that no small amount of commenting would probably ensue (we DO have a dedicated corp of commenters to which I am both pleased and honored to have)).
But the inanity was outdone by the duet partner who followed him. Now, this chuckehead (and yes, to me he has proven that he owns that title) decided to engage your lowly blogger, not by phone, but by a series of emails. Yeah, this went as well as what you might have expected…
