As I said last time, our FAQs state that if anyone sends us an email, they may see it here on GraniteGrok: “Look in the Contact Us to email us. Anything you send us is fair game for us and we may use it on the site.”
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Look in the Contact Us to email us. Anything you send us is fair game for us and we may use it on the site. Exceptions to this policy are only if you ask us not to; however, if we judge the email to be nasty, we still may post it and skewer it and its (lack of) critical thinking. Since we have lives outside of the blogosphere and are married to other people and not this blog, emails may go unanswered. This will be especially true if we become roaring successes and get millions of hits a day. Otherwise, we will make a good-faith effort to respond to some/many/most emails.
To recap, here is the “Cease and Desist”email (without my fisking) sent to Steve from Berniece Van Der Berg (Co-Founder / Vice President Sales & Marketing, Moonlight Meadery); Steve forward it to me (emphasis mine):
From:vanderberg@moonlightmeadery.com <vanderberg@moonlightmeadery.com>
To: “steve@granitegrok.com” <steve@granitegrok.com>; “stev@granitegrok.com” <stev@granitegrok.com>
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020, 12:17:05 PM EDT
Subject: Cease and Desist
It is confounding that you state on your blog post that the drivel you write is not a reflection of what the company or advertisers believe in but yet you dare to publicize an inaccurate and false statement without even reaching out for comment.
That statement was meant for a disgruntled ex-employee with a grudge to bare that had been trolling my private Facebook page. You are formerly been told to cease and desist writing about the company in manner, shape or form. My personal views are that, my own, they do not have anything to do with the company. You will be charged with criminal threatening.
If you persist in your hateful rhetoric and criminal threatening, I shall have no recourse but to follow legal action. Consider yourselves duly notified.
Berniece Van Der Berg
Co-Founder / Vice President Sales & Marketing
Moonlight Meadery / Hidden Moon Brewing – Mead / Cider / Braggots
2019 Mead & Cider Best of Show – San Diego International Beer Festival
23 Londonderry Rd, #17, Londonderry, NH 03053
Office: 603.216.2162 Cell: 603.421.4469
Right – personal views sent on her company’s email. So, I sent back a reply (again, emphasis mine):
On Jul 20, 2020, at 6:15 PM, Skip <Skip@granitegrok.com> wrote:
This is HILARIOUS! Steve forwarded your email and I can’t stop believing you actually wrote this – and then sent it onward. You didn’t read our FAQs, did you?
You are formerly been told to cease and desist writing about the company in manner, shape or form. My personal views are that, my own, they do not have anything to do with the company. You will be charged with criminal threatening.
If you persist in your hateful rhetoric and criminal threatening, I shall have no recourse but to follow legal action. Consider yourselves duly notified.
Sorry, Berniece Van Der Berg, VP of Sales and Marketing of Moonlight Meadery (You ARE the face of your company and as co-founder, you did speak for your company in firing someone and carrying on on Facebook) – you don’t have ANY authority to tell us what we can or cannot write at all. Even about Moonlight Meadery.
If you were stupid enough to put a “private” HR type conversation out into the public domain in your public FB page that included calling the entire Republican Party / Trump supporters racists, that’s a problem of your own construction. You then doubled down by being ignorant of the First Amendment as well as Articles 22 and 30.
We’ve not threatened anyone or anything at all – we’ve merely commented on what you publicly said. We call people like you “Blog Fodder” because you’re such low lying Progressive fruit for us to comment on.
And the only “hateful” thing is that you hate the fact that you got caught. After all, you’ve already commented about Trump on your Facebook page – and a lot of THAT was quite “hateful” rhetoric. Are you going to apologize for all that?
Oh, wait – you won’t. You can’t. You just “disappeared it” all, didn’t you? Screenshots, deary, screenshots…the Internet never forgets…
But then again, Progressive Privilege. Which, by the way, you proved in SPADES by wiping your Facebook page back to 2015. A most moronic action after issuing a Cease and Desist email (what, you couldn’t even bother with a registered and return reply letter?). That’s evidence tampering – it proved motive. What do you think a judge would say after tampering with your own evidence? Hahahahahaha!
I can well imagine the look on your lawyer’s face when you show him your email to us and then asks to see your FB page. I’d love to be in his head as he’s thinking:
- Do I take a little bit of money and tell her she, as an idiot, brought this upon herself – and don’t bother because they’ll file a SLAPP suit?
- Or,Do I charge her BOATLOADS of money in order for her to learn a valuable lesson about Free Speech and public utterances?
Hmmm…
No, you have brought us upon yourself – if we first don’t just forget about you altogether because we have other fish to fry.
So Steve’s post is here: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/07/co-founder-of-moonlight-meadery-in-londonderry-doesnt-want-your-business
My response will be going up in a couple of hours. And this email.
-Skip
No, she was not too enthused at all (to put it extremely mildly) and decided to respond yet again. I’ll post that up next time. In the meantime, some other stuff came up about this matter – that will be posted up as well.
Can you say “disappearing evidence” – again???
