Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut...

Sometimes, you don't:

Imagine, if you will, that you're a normal person and then one day a quasi-famous mentally ill blogger becomes fixated on you the way Gollum was fixated on the Ring. Even though she hasn't been setting the world on fire lately, she has been on TV, on the Howard Stern show and she's written for the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, & The Washington Times. Most people in the know realize she's off her rocker, but how many people are in the know? How many fans does she have who don't realize what she's really like?

So this person, this quasi-famous mentally ill blogger, starts claiming you support death threats against her. She tells people you're an anti-Semite. She calls your job and tries to get you fired. When she hears of people connected with you, she tries to contact them to lie about you. When people mention your name on the web, she shows up to tell untrue stories about you. Then, she starts going after your friends. She accuses them of supporting death threats against her and being anti-Semitic for being associated with you.

You tried ignoring her. It didn't work. You tried sincerely apologizing for offending her. Not only did it fail, she misrepresented what you apologized for in an effort to try to use it against you. Since she was a lawyer, you even eventually tried filing a complaint with the Michigan Bar, trying to get them to keep her from obsessively harassing/cyber stalking you; it didn't work. You hoped, over time, the obsession with you might fade. However, four years have gone by and it's still going as strong as it was in the beginning.

This, my friends, is not a rhetorical discussion. The victim here is named Emily Zanotti. The quasi-famous mentally ill blogger I'm speaking of is Debbie Schlussel.

John Hawkins goes on to paint a picture of a blogger unable to separate criticism of her blog entries from criticism of her as a person.

When you encounter a person like this and point out errors of logical and substance in something they write, they take that as personally as if you had personally insulted their intelligence. Combine that with a personality that has an ego that can never admit to failure, and you have the recipe for a very angry person with a huge chip on their shoulder who can never let go of a grudge.

I feel pity for a person so insecure and vindictive that their lives seem to revolve around creating enemies and maintaining vendettas. Harboring that kind of perpetual anger would be exhausting... wouldn't you think?

Debbie Schlussel's bizarre behavior is hardly a secret in the blogosphere but I've typically ignored it, simply because such people are generally better left ignored to rant and wail into the darkness.

That said, I understand John's desire to set the record straight and let the sun shine on hate calculated to hurt and smear others. Debbie Schlussel seems intent on trying to become a bully.

I think she's picked the wrong opponents.