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Long flamewars can be tiring to read, sometimes so tiring that the reader
will have trouble paying attention throughout the entirety of an account of one,
so let me boil this one down into the simplest terms possible. Let us say, for
example, that you were posting a few comments about the infamous communications
decency act of the 1990s, and got the following odd response: Somebody You Know: "The CDA was an overreaction, and an unconstitutional imposition on the rights of decent adult users of the Internet" Tell me - at that point, would you maybe be feeling the urge to slap somebody? When somebody started alleging that you have "anger management issues" because you objected to this lunacy, how much friendlier would you be feeling after that? This is much the kind of reception that I got on baltwash-burning@yahoogroups.com, which serves as the homelist for "Playa Del Fuego", under conditions involving this brand of craziness, and to this day the regulars on that list have not come to their senses - assuming that they have any senses to come to, that is. The people on the
Baltimore-Washington list started showing signs of
the reading comprehension difficulties that would make them such a chore
to deal with, showed up early on. Somebody we'll call "A Pagan Visitor"
(or APV for short) wrote in asking for
the name of a camp at which showering would be a possibility. Keep in
mind that more than one Joe from Chicago will be mentioned in this
discussion, a fact which understandably confused a number of the regulars,
because "Joe" is such a very rare and unusual name in this country, almost
as scarce as "John". But I digress. The best answer to APV's question would have been "take your pick", probably. Apparently, almost all of the camps take care of this. It's just basic hygeine, and camps do understand that a lot of members will have serious limitations on space going out, ruling out the possibility of transporting a week's worth of water. But this was the first time out for a number of us. We didn't know what to expect, and having heard much said about "self-reliance" at what is a Californian dominated event (which suggested to some of us that almost all of those present would be able to drive and be able to transport their own water), some of us were understandably concerned, and wished to make whatever arrangements needed to be made. As it turned out, people from "back east" were more common at Burning Man than we expected, and our difficulties were not completely unheard of at the event. One would think that APV's request would be straightforward enough, but incredibly, Terry managed to not understand it, telling APV to buy a battery powered pump. Without an adequate water supply, that pump would obviously not do one much good, and so the answer didn't even have anything to do with APV's question. David P Dudich, this time around, was helpful, mentioning Camp Videogasm, which is well-supplied. At this point, Jason Claiborne (also known as "Ranger Clay") got the rumor mill going in a wholly unhelpful post by suggesting that we would have to bring our own water if we wanted to use the showers and might even being expected to bring water for the other guests (!!!), referring to "the" shower camp of the previous year. Phil Darnowsky offered an anecdotal backup to an observation made by Jason about the legal hairsplitting involved, illustrating the absurdity of it all. Some of the posts either were deleted, or I was unable to locate them -
a distinct possibility given the volume of posting on the old Balt-Wash
list. Either way, we get to see "Feral Space Pirate Monkey" follow up to a truly clueless post by
Jason, in which Jason responded to a post by APV in which the latter
(APV) explained that he couldn't drive, and so would have real problems
bringing that much water out. Responding as if he hadn't even read
what APV had written, Jason wrote > Um, Jason ... if one can't drive, what good is a U-Haul going to do one? It's like handing a pair of binoculars to a blind man. Not that Jason was alone in his clulessness - at around the same time, I was explaining my cerebral palsy related driving problems on the bm-chicago list, where I was "helpfully" given directions to a place near Empire where I could DRIVE to go buy some water. The words would just go in one ear and come out the other with these guys, who then expected a lifetime of boundless gratitude for taking the time to give canned responses which weren't applicable to our situations. The good news soon came that, despite the impression that Jason was
leaving, a good number of camps most certainly did provide water for
showering, Camp Videogasm included. The bad news was that the rumor Jason
got going about camp members being expected to bring their own water, as a
matter of general practice at Burning Man, and by implication at Camp
Videogasm, had propogated and was causing concern among a number of
members at that camp, who took to writing to Andrew Wing. Mr.Wing was
already very busy with preperations for his trip to BM2001, which was not
far off at this point, and the last thing he needed was to be buried under
this kind of mail. An offer was made to him to help put an end to this
rumor, he said that he would appreciate that, and so APV made a post setting the record
straight on the very list where the rumor began. Faster than one could
say "foreshadowing", Rachel then tried to
dismiss APV's correction of the rumor with the following bit of
irrelevance: I really wouldn't sweat it so much. If I were you I would concentrate on joining a camp first which was neither here nor there. It had nothing whatsoever to do with what APV had posted, and the man had already indicated that his water problem had been solved. He also had mentioned, in his very first post on this thread, that he already belonged to a camp. The only issue remaining was that of saving Andrew Wing the hassle of responding to e-mail about this rumor, and Rachel was getting in the way. And not really surprisingly, either. Her post started out, as I said, with a dismissive Um, I hate to tell you this, but YES, playa rumors are abundant! I imagine that they would be, Rachel. But the little detail she leaves out is that the rumor APV was trying to put an end to, was one started by somebody that she shared an e-mail account with: Jason Claiborne. I assume that she was his wife, but in some way or another she was not an impartial party, and clearly was trying to squash the issue to cover Jason's backside, and if Andy Wing should have a few unnecessary difficulties as a result ... such is life. Rumors are abundant, you know. Especially when they're treated like beloved pets, to be nurtured and protected. I am not without appreciation for the merits of a wife being loyal to and supportive of her husband, up to a point - but how should one be expected to respond if, say, one were to discover that Jason himself had written such a letter, glossing over the fact that he was the author of the very rumor he didn't want to see debunked? To take something that would be kind of cheesy if done by oneself for self-serving reasons, and instead end up having it done on one's behalf by one's mate? This brings to mind the expression "egoisme a deux" - "egotism for two", I believe is the translation. (No promises about the spelling). Loyalty does not justify everything we may feel like doing on behalf of our loved ones. Jason, one seems to gather, is fond of starting rumors, and we would find
that he was just as fond of supporting the efforts of others to start rumors
as well. "Mark" had heard one that could only be called a whopper, and
asked the list about it: We've heard that the police are arresting people for indecent exposure at Burning Man this year. We have a few friends who were thinking of going nude there, this year. Are the rumors true? Should we tell them that they'd better change their plans? BobbyG pointed out the absurdity of this in a condescending but semi-logical manner, pointing to the number of people the the law enforcement officers (LEOs) would "have to" arrest. That's not literally accurate - courts have long since ruled that the police do not have to make an equal effort to get all offenders penalized; one can give a ticket to one speeding driver and not the others, even if they're going faster. But he was sort of pointing in the direction of the truth: there are so many people going nude and Burning Man that a few arrests would hardly make a dent in the situation or pose much of a risk to the typical individual so attired, and the whole effort would probably begin to feel very futile for the LEOs very quickly, even if they were so inclined - and Nevada is NOT Oklahoma. They probably would not be so inclined. So far, so good, especially considering the unlikely source of the common sense on this point. Along somewhat similar lines, APV pointed to the historical implausibility of this rumor and raised some legal questions about jurisdiction and community standards - in other words, questioning the very possibility of this rumor being true, going on to point out that were it true, he would have heard the bad news from campmates already on the site. And then things started to get stupid. This is where Jason made his entrance, talking about the citing of people who performed "lewd acts" when facing the road, stating that "thus if you're doing the nasty it should be in the tent or at least away from prying eyes," which had absolutely nothing to do with what Mark had asked. At this point, I found myself seriously wondering whether than man even bothered to read the posts that he was replying to, because he was making of habit of posting these non sequitirs. Then David Dudich got weird. (I think that he was trying to be funny, attempting a satire the anti-Bush conspiracy theorizing APV had complained about). Phil Darnowsky (from the so-called vodka vs wine flamewar that this section started on) assessed the likelihood of each of Dudich's suggestions, still trying to keep things light. But that they could have stayed that way. Both overestimating the rationality and underestimating the fanaticism of the regulars, APV asked which roads Jason Claiborne could possibly be speaking of. For those unfamiliar with the environment, the Playa in the BlackRock Desert is a huge, tabletop flat expanse of nothing but dust. No trees. No rocks. No streams. No objects to clear away, no obstacles to avoid. For the state or county to lay out roads on it would be an expensive, pointless venture, because during the summer any path through there would be a perfectly good dirt road, and during the winter the road would be under a few inches of water. Common sense would suggest that no governmental body would bother to put down roads under such circumstances, and sure enough, once one got there one found no marked roads of any kind within miles of the Burning Man camp site, which was miles and miles from anything, out in the middle of nowhere - just as that sign on the gas station coming in suggested. Rachel Claiborne, who had tried to put an end to the discussion when Jason Claiborne's
previous rumor was revealed to be a hoax, once again rushed
to Jason's defense, with one of the feeblest rationalizations I've ever seen: If you look at the city map, you will see it is divided, there are "streets" and street signs...of course not paved, but nonetheless designated. If I ever did spit takes, that would have been the moment for one. Yes, Rachel, "streets" are designated, but by whom and with how much seriousness, and under what authority? The "city" she speaks of is, as I've mentioned, the fictitious "Black Rock City", which is nothing more than the Burning Man camp site, whose temporary occupants play at being the inhabitants of a real city. Never the less, Black Rock City is not a legally recognized municipality. The Burning Man Limited Liability Corporation (BMORG) is not a local government - if it were, it would have to allow its seats to be filled by popular vote, and would be subject to constitutional limitations that would have ruled out incidents such as the one seen in Hermine's case - that would have been a blatant first amendment violation, at the very least. These so-called "streets" were, as I've probably explained too many times already, nothing more than expanses of ground left empty so that cars or trucks could get through, which the participants at Burning Man would pretend were real streets, as part of the game of pretending that this very large campsite was a real city. To try to draw serious legal implications from what should have been nothing more than good natured fun and games, would be like being one of the "Baker Street Irregulars" in London, a few decades back, and getting in a serious, heated argument as to whether or not Sherlock Holmes was a real historical personage. Such an attempt would kill the fun almost instantly, and raise serious questions about the soundness of mind of the person arguing the point. Not that such questions slowed down Jason Claiborne one bit, as he soon posted a me-too in support of Rachel Claiborne's apparent attempt to rescue him online. Not yet pulled into the flamewar to be, David Dudich continued his attempts at satire, alleging the existence of a Canadian conspiracy to promote global warming in order to improve their country's standing as a vacation destination. APV continued making the mistake of trying to insert some
sanity into the discussion, rebutting Rachel's facile argument regarding the city street map,
writing: Yeah, but wait a second, Rachel. That's not the same thing as having a public highway going past. Calling something a "road", and sharing a collective fantasy that these are real city streets, does not change the fact that these are just cleared spaces between tents, out in the middle of nowhere. The only people who are going to see anything "lewd" going on, are people who have driven out to this more or less private location, with the reasonable expectation that such acts might be going on in front of them (based on a decade of precedent), and had to go to considerable trouble to get there. To compare the Esplanade to the Beltway, in terms of status as "public places" would be ludicrous. Citations based on taking whimsy literally are not things that the authorities should be in the business of giving out. He then went on to rebut Jason Claiborne's me-too, getting to the heart of this non-issue, reminding people of why it is that the law does (and should) draw a distinction between public and private places, as it sets the standards of behavior acceptable in each. Sigh. Just because we play make-believe, and call something a road, that doesn't mean that it actually is one. Having had the just sheer, mindbending stupidity of his remarks pointed out, Jason then tried to adopt a bulletproof attitude, in the apparent hope that if he smirked enough, his audience wouldn't notice that he wasn't making sense. As, undebatably, he was not. Let's make sure that the reader does not forget how this discussion began, as Jason and Rachel would probably want him to, judging by their efforts to cloud the issue back in that thread on the Baltwash list : "Mark" had asked about the likelihood of his friends being arrested if they went nude at Burning Man. I and a few thousand other people did exactly that at the event, which has been clothing optional since it started on Baker Beach, a nude beach in San Francisco. I passed more than a number of patrol cars during my stay, and not only was not arrested, but didn't even get bothered by so much as a single law enforcement officer. Thousands of other people will tell you the same, so this is not debatable. Jason was wrong, and stupidly wrong at that. Jason and Rachel had presented us with two very distinct issues to respond to, in particular. First, there was the way in which Jason casually skipped from the question of the police cracking down on public nudity, to that of them cracking down on public sex, as if public nudity almost certainly implied that sexual behavior was soon to follow. Anybody who has ever been to Burning Man should know better, and almost certainly does. And then there was this assertion of Jason's that there was no difference between doing something in clear view of a "street" in "Black Rock City", and doing so in clear view of a real street, in a real city. This was so unbelievably dumb that I couldn't even believe that I was reading it. Something that insane cries out for a rebuttal, just on general principle. Yet, as subsequent events showed, a commanding majority of the active participants on Baltwash were willing to go along with Jason's dementia. Most seemed to respond to his tone and attitude, as if it were an argument, each member of that majority reacting to Jason on much the same level as that on which a dog relates to its owner. Continuing to display his willful inability to
read at anywhere above a fourth grade level, Jason wrote
sigh... it isn't make believe. it's a fact. i'm not believing what i'm reading... i witnessed the giving of a ticket for a sex act last year. Let us count the ways in which Jason has seemingly deliberately refused to get the point of what he was responding to. "Mark" spoke of going nude on the Playa, to which Jason responded, at first, with a vague reference to "leud acts" (a term applied in some locations to appearing nude in public where this is not allowed), and then (as here) to sexual acts in public - not the same thing at all. "Mark" expresses a concern about his friends getting arrested, and now Jason is trying to defend the claims he made - claims which would not be borne out by events at Burning Man 2001 - with a reference to having witnessed a ticket being given out - which is clearly not the same thing as getting arrested. APV talks about the imaginary nature of the roads at Burning Man, and Jason acts as if he were saying that what were imaginary were the arrests for public sex acts, in all cases. Instead of responding to what others have written, Jason responds to what he wants them
to have written, "putting words in their mouths" as the saying goes. Jason counts on the
suggestibility of the reader who, he hopes, will not notice that Jason is trolling without
shame, playing to a gathering mob all too eager and willing to be taken in by the deception.
In fact, we actually get to see Alex Nicholson apparently
complaining that APV is getting in the way of his being deceived! (Note the reference to
Santa Claus, which is apropo to the level of maturity we would find to be typical of baltwash).
Not yet knowing which way the political winds would be blowing,
"Magorn" explained where the rumor Jason Claiborne was
trying to push had come from (typographical errors slightly cleaned up):
good lord lad, this is an old chestnut that keeps popping up.....the sole grain of truth to this is that one person once got a ticket for indecent exposure becuase he took a whiz in front of a cop, and even then I believe the ticket was later rescinded. An Old ranger friend of mine tells this story from about 4 years ago...... Exactly. The rumor was ludicrous, and Jason was either a fool or an a** for having spoken in support of it, a bizarre act that he was now trying to rationalize in the mind of the reader by spreading confusion about exactly what it was, that was under discussion. But the local cabal, apparently, had not had a chance to get the party line straight yet, and its members were still working at cross purposes as a result. Not that this kept one of the moderators (Kathleen Ellis) from making her own contribution to the trolling in progress. Yes, one might think that the moderator finally showing up would be good news and that the tone of the discussion might start to improve, but such would have been far from being the case. Muddling the issue even more than it was already muddled, Ellis engaged in free word association, writing <major snippage of philosophical rant on the nature of roads and their place in the universe> Yes, Kate, heaven forbid that somebody should try to confuse matters by introducing a few facts and a little logic into the discussion. But, at the risk of quoting Rush Limbaugh, I would remind her and the reader that words mean things, and when one uses those words in a way that is at odds with those meanings, one has lied. The tone of APV's posts in the thread, up to this point, (1 2 3 4), would have to be said to speak for itself in the mind of any reasonable reader: measured, focused on the facts, and surprisingly temperate given the distortions of reality and snide tone he was getting from the Claiborne family. But Kathleen Ellis wasn't trying to be a reasonable reader, she was trying to play politics, and backing a trolling with a moderator's authority, she played a major role in helping what had been a mere passing nuisance escalate into a flamewar. This is conduct unworthy of a community leader. If the reader should think that I'm judging Ellis too harshly, let him take a look at what APV wrote and Ellis flippantly characterized as being lengthy philosophical ranting "on the nature of roads and their place in the universe" : (1 2 3 4). He will note the absence of anything that could reasonably be considered metaphysical rambling, ruminations on the nature of life, or anything else of the unfocused nature implied by Ellis' words. The material she sneers at is directly on-point, but by giving those reading her post the misleading impression that it is not, she helped dissuade those reading those first few words of her post from doing the one thing that might have ended this flamewar before it ever had a chance to begin. The irresponsible message she was sending might have been subtly expressed, but it could not be misunderstood: "don't bother to read this man's words for yourself". But when somebody is being ganged up on and abused, as APV would be shortly, that's exactly what people need to do in order to see that the spin being put on events by the local cabal is a misleading one, and that they ought not join in on the mass trolling. How are people going to see that somebody's comments have been misrepresented, if they do not read those comments for themselves? Having thus removed one possible obstacle to Jason Claiborne's efforts to create confusion about had been said, Kathleen Ellis continued:
a comment which, on casual reading, sounds far more reasonable than it actually is - the mark of a skilled manipulator. The reader who sees just her post is left with the impression that APV has been telling people to go flip off the cops. He has not. As Magorn himself, one of the regulars (and local cabal members) on baltwash had himself already acknowledged, there was no historical basis whatsoever for this (latest) rumor that the Claibornes were trying to get the list to accept as dogma, trying in one way or another to browbeat the insufficiently gullible newbie questioning the rumor into not giving them any backtalk. There is something more than a little unwholesome about the social dynamics making an appearance at this point, and it's familiar enough to anybody who has ever witnessed cultlike settings for there to be a term for this. Jason Claiborne was attempting a power play - pushing a deliberately absurd demand (in this case, agreement with something that is clearly ludicrous) in order to re-establish his standing as somebody who gets his way. What does it tell you about the moderator, her list, and the "community" that she and it are helping to build if she should prove to be supportive of such an effort? Would it sound like a very liberating place to be? But look at the facts. One of the moderators - somebody whose responsibility it is to set the norms of behavior expected on her list and enforce the demand that people abide by them - leaves us with the misleading impression that the cops have been seeing things in the way that Jason alleges, when in fact the evidence is very strong that they have not been seeing things in that way. A rebuttal to Rachel and Jason Claiborne's grossly (and apparently, deliberately) misinformed (and frankly, scatterbrained) commentary about the law and the way it is enforced, something displaying an understanding of basic civics far below the 8th grade level (note Jason's comments about the laws that apply in "every municipality", as if municipal ordinances were set in Washington and not at home) is quoted out of context, to be made to sound like a call to go out and dare the cops to arrest one by somebody who, subtly but unmistakably discourages the reader from reading those remarks himself, and seeing that this is very clearly NOT what APV said. The person whose stance he was not taking seriously was not the sheriff and not one of his deputies. Jason Claiborne's posturing was what he was not impressed by, and the last time I checked, Mr.Claiborne was not a law enforcement officer anywhere in the state of Nevada, so the effort to stifle discussion by instilling fear in the reader was purely manipulative. Kathleen Ellis's actions speak for themselves, and they were inexcusably, outrageously irresponsible. Just how irresponsible, one would be able to see in what followed. The low key general hysteria continued in Dale Ghent's post,
in which he claimed that since one was on public land, that the fourth amendment didn't apply, more
or less. Phil was a little skeptical about this, and publicly
asked Magorn (a law student) what he thought about this. And since an expert (or semi-expert) opinion
on the law was required, Jason Claiborne spoke up. You know,
the guy who thought that muncipal ordinances were the same everywhere, and that this imagined
uniform municipal code would be binding on a camp site 40 miles from the nearest real, public road
because the campers played make believe and called their camp a city? Just who you'd want to go to,
if you wanted to find quality legal advice. But, again, I digress. Forgive me. Magorn responded to Phil's
question by telling him what university student legal services has been telling students for
years - that one doesn't have to be on one's own property to have a constitutional right to not
be subjected to an unreasonable search. Dale Ghent's would-be rumor was dead on arrival. Good.
This left us with only one that baltwash was on the verge of putting into circulation. Not that
the regulars weren't still offering plenty of stupidity and attitude for all to enjoy. At about
the same time as Dale Ghent was busily trying to rewrite the consitution, Dustin Smith (one of
the people who wrote in to Internet Trash asking Rob Langfeld to censor these pages) decided
that this would be an excellent time for a petulant outburst, and maybe take a quote out of
context as a prelude to starting an "is so, is not" contest. God bless him, because we just
never get enough of those online, and now that my nephews are three, they've outgrown getting
into those themselves. In response to APV's comments, Dustin wrote
which is the entire issue in dispute, but how good that you don't let yourself get distracted by the actual subject of the discussion, Dustin. Do continue. but they're both roads. Do you have another term you'd prefer to use? "non-governmentally maintained watered down dirt walkway you can't camp on" is too much of a mouthful for me. How about the word "path" or "trail", neither of which implies an act of construction or clearing, and both of which have been in use as long as anybody can remember? The BLM and other LEO's have decided to enforce laws as they would anywhere else. Visibly, this is BS. Try walking naked down the street in Gerlach, past a police car, and see how far you get. Thousands of people have did so at Burning Man without incident in 2001, and in the years at BRC before and since - an undebatable historical fact. We've seen "Mr.Megaphone" bellowing out greetings to people - in the city, that would be called "disturbing the peace". Lush Camp constructed a small mushroom-shaped building in 2001, without a building permit. Do that in town, and the city will order its demolition. The wooden structures in the so-called city of Black Rock are torched and burned to the ground at the end of the festival. Were BRC a real city and were those structures real buildings, that act would really be called "arson", and one would really end up a guest of the correctional system of the state of Nevada for a really long time for doing that torch job. Or let's say that one were to set up an unlicensed radio station inside an incorporated municipality and advertise its location. The FCC would most likely pay you a visit, and shut you down. BRC 2001 had three such stations, as I recall, one of them broadcasting in clear view from the corner of 4:30 and Infant, practically on the Esplanade, in clear view of everybody at a location marked on our maps. Need I go on? One almost doesn't know where to begin in offering counterexamples to such an outlandish claim. If they see a crime taking place, they will do their duty. No kidding Dustin. But that has no bearing on the question of whether the letter of the law and the way in which the law is enforced are both the same in Black Rock City, Gerlach, and in every real municipality other than Gerlach, as Jason Claiborne suggested. Demonstrably, this is not the case. It gets more complicated when you get into what rights of search and seizure they have, and what level (if any) of probable cause they need to search a tent. Maybe in some of the more corrupt major cities, but in most places, Dustin, a fair minded observer will find that the police take the words "law enforcement" very seriously, and that the last thing they want to do is break the law themselves. But even if a cop would want to do that, from his point of view, what would be the point of carrying out an arrest, filling out the paperwork, and more paperwork, and more paperwork, going to court, getting grilled by the defense attorney, and going through endless hassle - only to discover that the court ruled that there was no cause for arrest, that the defendant can now walk free and just maybe sue the city and the cop himself, with his less than generous salary, for false arrest and wrongful prosecution? Why would the cop want to do this to himself and his career, because the city is definitely not going to thank him for costing it money in a court settlement? It's one thing to say that cops make mistakes all of the time, but to imply that they simply wipe their backsides on the law as a general practice everywhere, acting purely on whim, is to take cynicism into the realm of paranoia and hysteria. Not that hysteria can't occasionally prove useful for some of us, especially
those who've been busy misrepresenting their opposition's arguments and finding
that others have been willing to let them get away with that. You, have, presumably,
already seen APV's very calm and rational rebuttals to some of the almarmist
defenses of this latest rumor : (1
2 3
4). Continuing her display of chutzpah,
Rachel Claiborne wrote:
Oh MY god! Calm Down Dude! Errr ... I think that you might have that a little backwards, Rachel. 
Just STOP thinking In that one carelessly tossed out phrase, one sees a member of the local cabal summarise her entire philosophy, and it's a pretty pathetic one. "Just STOP thinking." Kind of like Tara Ball's comment about her refusal to grow up. But such an approach impoverishes one's inner life, denies one the opportunity to distinguish between real threats and figments of one's overheated imagination, closes the door to the possibility of sensible discussion, all in the name of "fun", which seems strangely absent in the lunacy that follows. and expecting and wondering and setting yourself up to have a bad attitude. Look who's talking - the woman who is going hysterical because her and her husband's fear mongering is being debunked. How is one "setting oneself up to have a bad attitude" by arguing against the suggestion that an unpleasant scenario is a plausible one. Unless one wants to be arrested, how does something along the lines of "don't worry, the police aren't going to be arresting people for that, and here's why" make the following commentary reasonable? Just wait until you get there, OK? Stop listening to and stressing about RUMORS. Conveniently glossing over the fact that she and (her husband?) Jason Claiborne have been the ones promoting those very rumors! But, and again I beg the reader's indulgence if I'm repeating myself - how can one seriously argue that by showing that a rumor is without factual basis, and that the threat it presents as being real is one that people need not take seriously, that the person debunking the rumor has displayed signs of "stressing about RUMORS"? Rachel's intentions are nakedly obvious. She and Jason are being exposed as a pair of BS artists, and now she wants to distract the attention of the group away from that embarassing fact, one which raises serious questions about the wisdom of the group continuing to accept her husband (?) as a leading member of their community. She is, as some of us would put it, "playing the hysteria card" in the hope of shutting down rational thought. That, and playing on the tendency of suggestible readers to believe anything that they see repeated, regardless of how very little basis in fact it has. This is now the second time that we've seen Rachel have the chutzpah, to have the true classic nerve, to posture as being the calming influence who tells APV not to worry ... about the rumors which she's been spreading and APV has been debunking. Look through the posts and you'll see that there is no other way that a sane and honest person could view this situation. But reading every post on a busy list like baltwash was before it was shut down (take a look at those LARGE message numbers) would be an enormously time consuming task, and many people just wouldn't bother, something that Rachel is apparently counting on as she tries to bluff the reader into confusing the spin she is trying to put on events, with reality itself. This is the scenario described in "A Brief History of Usenet", all over again. One uses Hitler's technique of the Big Lie to suck the gullible into the fictive reality one is creating for them to live in, enjoying the added perk that anybody who mentions that technique will be shut down by "Godwin's Law". (As usual, Netiquette proves to be highly convenient for some some highly unsavory purposes). Trolls of a feather flock together? Or would that be "trolls of a scale flock together" ... whatever.
Now that Rachel was setting part of the official party line for the list, Leah Marcus seemed to decide
that supporting it offered her an excellent opportunity to do a little trolling of her own, giving her
a chance to kiss up to Rachel. Leah got preachy with APV about
his desire to wash, writing
Yes, and don't worry about showers. We do remember that APV et al. had already found their showers, right? Now, even if Leah's comments were correct - which they were not - she'd be out of line, even under the warped standards asserted by the regulars of the Burning Man forums. "Not interfering with another burner's experience", remember? If APV wants to look for someplace to shower while he's out there, and somebody wants to provide him with that place, that's between APV and the camp providing him with those facilities. It is not any of Leah's business, not from the viewpoint of established, common sense civility, and not from what her own faction has proposed replacing those traditional notions of civility with. But to see that what she was posting was utter nonsense, one need do no more than note that people living in that area do, indeed, bathe, as anybody from that area will confirm. Even if one has to walk out into 100 degree heat fully clothed, and a new layer of funk is building up, the old layer is still gone and with it, the bacteria that had been living and multiplying in that funk, and the sticky layer of slime their secretions was helping to build up. It may well make you dryer and more raw and you are dusty again in 30 secs. Maybe, if your skin tends to be extremely dry, but not everybody's skin does - individual needs vary, which is why we should sometimes shut up and mind our own business, Leah.  But as
even a very poor sense of smell would allow somebody to tell, a lot of people at Burning Man who followed the kind
of advice that Leah was giving (to somebody who had given no sign of wanting it) DID NOT have dry skin at all. Some
of these people reeked to high heaven, but weren't bothered by this, unsurprisingly, because they were stoned out
of their ever loving minds. Not everybody, however, is so impaired. David Dudich
told us all to not worry and be mellow about everything except, maybe, the "alkali dust" that might stick in
"inappropriate places" if one showered, and apparently was out in the desert after one's shower, dripping wet.
Yes, Dave, that's why some of us bring towels - to wipe the water off after a shower. And even fully dripping
wet skin dries out there in 90 seconds, so what would this allegedly alkaline dust be sticking to? Dry skin? Skin
which, by the way, is going to be less sticky and less likely to hold onto dust, because the aforementioned bacterial
secretions will be gone? But as whacky as Dave was being, he would seem like a gentleman scholar compared the next
person. Or, at least he would until he joined in on the "me too" posting to come.
David Diller responded to APV's rational counterarguments against the latest rumor that Rachel and Jason Claiborne
had tried to promote with a coarse personal attack that portrayed APV as pervert
who wished to prey on children. Here are a few representative passages:
If you haven't read APV's rebuttal posts yet, read them now. Seriously. (1 2 3 4) I commented earlier, about the rhetorical game of making something that was clearly false seem true to the more suggestible people online, merely through repetition. Take a good look at what APV has posted in this thread, up to this point. That is exactly the game that Diller is playing along with, and his contribution is absolutely libelous. Not to mention, unintentionally ironic. Here we have somebody who is lying, trying to portray his faction's opponent as a pervert who would expose children to something that they shouldn't be seeing, ... and he admits to being the kind of parent who would take his kids to Burning Man in the process! Some may feel uncomfortable with the idea that the kids are being taken to a clothing optional event, others might not, but either way it is one at which we all know that drugs are readily available, and being used in clear view inside some of the shade structures all throughout the day and night. Anybody care to claim that's a good thing to expose the little ones to?
None of which had anything to do with what the person he was smearing had been writing about, and a thoroughly inappropriate and positively libelous ad hominem response to a rational critique of some of the arguments that had been seen on the list. At this point, I had seen enough and decided to speak up. Much pointless speculation has followed in the years that have passed about this flamewar, about the exact nature of the relationship between me and APV. Some have claimed that we are one and the same. Others have identified me as being the "publisher" he mentions on his website, still others claim I'm an old childhood friend of his ... who cares? It doesn't matter, and given the fondness this crowd has shown for cyberstalking and defamation of character, I'm not even going to answer the question, because I think that leaving people like David Diller chasing shadows is an excellent idea. I will state that APV is somebody that I've known for a long time. Suffice it to say that if APV was me, I was certainly not unprovoked at this point, having had more than a little mud thrown in my direction, and if I was not, there's something to be said for feeling a little righteous anger at seeing somebody else get treated this way, especially if that was somebody who, in one sense or another, was always there for me. Either way, what I did next was the right thing to do, so those who are curious about such things can remain curious. I ripped Jason Claiborne a new orifice, going into detail as to why he could be seen to be an utter fool, doing so without apology as he was the instigator. I then prepared to hear the usual whining about how "mean" I was being - as if the offending parties in this case had done nothing to earn my scorn and rage. One thing that I made very sure to do, since I was not about to let myself be smeared in the way that "Mark" and APV were, was take a good, careful look at the rhetorical game of "bait and switch" that Rachel and Jason Claiborn (along with their supporters) were playing, and the insinuations they were making. A question about the dangers of going nude at this historically clothing optional event was responded to with comments about the reaction of law enforcement to public intercourse. The obvious implication that Jason is making, to the extent that any of this can even be said to make any sense, is that if one goes nude at a clothing optional event, one is obviously doing so with the possibility of having public intercourse in mind. Otherwise, one is left with the unanswerable question of how he got from point A to point B; what would be the relevance of his response to the question he had just been asked. I almost have to apologize to the reader for pointing out something so blindingly obvious, but we are dealing with a sort of sophistry here, sophistry that some would try to disguise by capitalizing on the tendency of some to skip to the end of a long discussion. I most was not going to allow somebody to leave the impression that I was out there on the prowl, looking for the opportunity to have public intercourse, and I definitely was not going to let somebody do unto me as David Diller had done unto APV, and leave the impression that I was the kind of person who would masturbate in front of any child, small or otherwise. When Rachel and Jason Claiborne and David Diller went out and made these insinuations, that this is what somebody acting on the clothing optional nature of the event was up to, they weren't just attacking those who had already argued against the ludicrous arguments that Diller and the Claibornes had tossed out, they were attacking anybody who was nude at this clothing optional event. That would include me, and as I was not about to stumble blindly into the verbal trap that had been set before me, I made darn sure to rebut those insinuations. If you've seen all of the pages leading up to this one, then you've already read my comments and you might as well skip ahead. If not, then here is what I wrote. It's not very friendly, but then, neither was what it was written in
response to, with its many distortions of what Mark and APV had said, insinuations about the motives of a
group of burners I belonged to, and so many other joys - coming in response to a series of rational, polite
posts. As far as I was concerned, the time for turning the other cheek had passed, and had certainly done so
by the time David Diller posted the piece of libel you've already seen. Do keep in mind the context for all
of this; I'm responding to the claim that doing something in view of a "street" in "Black Rock City"
(the fictitious city created as an act of mass performance art at Burning Man) is no different than doing
so when visible from a street in Gerlach or from an official country road or state highway. I wrote:
Clay, your post is wrong on so many different levels, that it is hard to know where even to begin with it. But, sweat it they did. I didn't have to wait long to hear the expected whining,
and I wasn't surprised by the source: Rachel Claiborne. Rachel, apparently assuming that
I and APV were one and the same based on the fact that we shared an uncommon name ("Joe")
and were from the same small town (Chicago, population 2.7 million, not counting suburbs)
started complaining about how mean I was, writing:
> You mean, aside from David Diller accusing APV of being a pervert who wanted to masturbate in front of small children, your husband's habit of quoting people out of context and then lying about what they had written (a quirky little hobby that you seem to share with him), his decision to respond to APV's calm and rational arguments with smug aspersions upon APV's intellect, his insinuation that those who went nude to Burning Man must be doing so with the intent of engaging in public intercourse, your own habit of going hysterical and then telling other people to calm down, of starting rumors and then pretending to be a disinterested party when other people start to debunk them and then lying about what they said, etc., etc., ad nauseum ... Gosh, Rachel, I suppose that aside from the things that your side had been posting, this HAD been a friendly discussion. The thing is, some of us do eventually get tired of discovering that the friendliness has been one-sided, and don't feel any obligation to let ourselves (or our friends) be used as verbal punching bags indefinitely, not directly and not indirectly. Not by open insult, not by innuendo, not by any means whatsoever. > Reminder for the reader: I did not even so much as get stopped by law enforcement, even once while I was out there, much less taken into custody. But notice Rachel's smug and condescending tone, so reminiscent of Jason Claiborne's. This is something that is going to irritate almost anybody who doesn't have a drug habit, and that's the point, the game Rachel is playing: push people until they push back, and then start crying about how mean they were. Ask the poor woman that it happened to last year. And if you think that was a rumor, confirm it yourself with the Rangers when you get there. Confirm a rumor that a ranger is starting with the other rangers? Yes, I suppose that one would get an impartial source of information that way, because you know that "hard core" burners never, ever let themselves be diverted from telling the whole truth by political/factional considerations or favoritism. Except when they speak or write or do something, I mean. But you're about to start quoting me out of context, and I'm slowing you down. My deepest apologies. Go ahead, Rache ... > Now, Rachel, when you say "tact", are you referring to the kind of tact that we saw out of David Diller when, with no protest from you, he accused APV of wanting to masturbate with small children, in response to APV's disagreement with the argument that you and Jason were advancing? Or would that be the kind of tact that you and Jason show when you habitually respond to substantive arguments with snickering and character assassination? I do so want to be the kind of
> Note to the reader: See what I mean? When did I make any reference to a desire on my part to engage in public drug use, or say anything that could reasonably be taken to be a hint in that direction? (j=joint=marijuana; as much as Rachel may later try to deny it, that is how her comment would be expected to be taken by any reasonable individual who grew up in this country; being evasive as one says something does not change the fact that one has said it). In point of fact, I have no interest in the stuff. I have, in the past, expressed a tolerant attitude toward those who do partake - an attitude that dealing with burners finally convinced me to abandon - but jokes in the midst of Martin Luther King parodies aside, I seldom even consume alcohol, and then only in very modest quantities, very slowly so as to avoid intoxication, purely for the taste of the liqueur or wine that I am enjoying. The reader will kindly note the distortion of my remarks: a rebuttal to Jason Claiborne's incredible (and easily disprovable) assertion that one can't get away with anything at Burning Man that one couldn't get away with at home, is portrayed as being an assertion that one can do absolutely anything that one likes at said festival. Nudity is one thing, public sex acts are another, no one is disputing that... Ellipses hers. But in response, I would write this: Rachel, attaching any meaning to the babbling that has been seen either out of you or out of Jason, in its entirety, would be a challenge, and a pointless one to take up, because as we have seen, you two were doing nothing more than trolling, even prior to my (well-justified) flaming of Jason in this post. You would attach an inflammatory meaning to an inoffensive passage that you had quoted out of context, retreating and protesting your innocence when called on this, being sure to "needle" your opposition by tossing in a little ignorant sneering for flavor. But as for your never having disputed the distinction between nudity and public sex acts, give me a break. Your and Jason's decision to use insinuations instead of open, easily quotable accusations didn't change the impression that your words would leave on a casual reader, and I think that you know that. Certainly, any even marginally rational person would have to. Somebody asks about public nudity, and Jason responds instantly with a comment about public sex acts - what is being implied will be obvious to any native speaker of English. For you to then try to evade criticism of such an outrageously offbase suggestion, when it is challenged, by hiding behind the very slight indirectness of your (and Jason's) prose is disgraceful, dishonorable, cowardly behavior. If anything, to resort to insinuations is worse than making open accusations, because one has attempted to deny one's victim the right of response, in exactly the manner that we see you attempt in this post. > So, in other words you're saying that what a man says, tells one nothing about his character? How intriguingly convenient for you, considering what we've already seen out of you two, already. Jason is a Ranger. I would probably wager a guess that he knows more about what happens on playa than most... We're talking about the same man who responded to a query from somebody who said that he couldn't drive (APV), and asked about where he could go to get access to showering facilities on the Playa, by telling him where he could DRIVE to get water? At times, Jason doesn't even seem to know what's going on in front of his own eyes, must less what's going on in his absence; he's visibly the sort of person "who couldn't add 1 and 1 and consistently come up with 2 as his answer", as somebody I know would say. Really, the only defense of his actions possible is that he was too stupid to know what he was doing, which may be the case, but that would hardly make him an unimpeachable source of information. It also doesn't square with the way in which he tries to manipulate the reader. And, once again, I remind the reader that subsequent events would, undebatably, prove Jason to be wrong. Not only did I and several thousand other people go nude at the festival without falling prey to the evil, wicked nasty sherriff of Washoe County or our uncontrollable urges to have sex with each other in front of small children and then masturbate later, or whatever vivid imaginations would have most of us doing this week - but more than a few people went a lot further than us. Sex themed camps were not hard to find at Burning Man 2001. Indeed, I was a little disappointed at how numerous they were - this struck me as being a sign that many were so lacking in imagination, that all that they could do was go for shock value, a guaranteed route to the point of diminishing returns on one's investment of effort, as the very expectations one is counting on to make shock value a possibility, fade away. I would add that one of the first things that happened to me as I headed out onto the darkened playa, that first night on the Playa, was that I almost tripped over a couple in mid-orgasm before my eyes had a chance to adjust to the dark. Personally, I could have done without that, but ... *shrug* Nothing that I couldn't look away from and walk past, swiftly enough to avoid disturbing the two of them. The fact of the matter was that it was very easy to find couples coupling, in places that weren't even remotely private. I mean, come on - our camp was at 4:30 and infant, and the couple was maybe 25 feet from the Esplanade. Short of making their night of passion into a performance on the Center Camp stage, right across from the Café, how could they have made this more public? Arresting officers were nowhere in sight on this occasion, or any other occasion that I was present for. The LEOs at Burning Man have, in my experience at least, been getting attacked without reason, showing no signs of being anything like, say, the Chicago Police Department. Truly, "hard core" burners do not know how good they have it, in more than a few cases. Like many a good troll, Rachel then "mirrored", accusing her opposition of being guilty of that which her side was doing, writing: You are misinterpreting his words and over-reacting to them. You recommended that he read before replying, I recommend the same to you. Except, Rachel, as we know you know all too well, considering how much you've put this fact to use - the order in which comments are made does matter, as it defines the context that helps to give statements their meanings. There is most certainly a major difference between doing something to encourage a misinterpretation of what somebody else has written for the purposes of flaming or trolling, and confronting somebody about the insinuations and non sequitirs he employed, in order to do some flaming or trolling. APV's side (including me) had not entered a discussion that Jason's side (including you) had initiated, and introduced a chain of non sequitirs, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps; it was the reverse. To pretend otherwise would be disingenuous. Have you been to Burningman yet? I don't know who you are but I am far too excited about burningman to waste anymore replying to your terrible negativity. You do not seem to have any Burningman spirit at all. Maybe a few hits of acid would help me in that area, but I'll pass on them all the same, thank you. I'd rather live in reality, even if that does mean that I won't get along well with the stoners. As even a member of the Burning Man Organization itself once said, "it's just a f**king camping trip". It's not the be-all and end-all of all existence, and any "spirit" associated with it would be a feeble reason to refer to nonsense and abuse as being anything other than what they are. I hope you find some. Oh, garsh, you used a little smiley face, so now I have to like you no matter what you say, because obviously you mean well. OK. Rachel, go to H**l.
Oh, wait a second - you live in Baltimore, so I guess that you're already there. Oh, well. But
at least I'm glad that we can be such good friends.
At this point, Dustin Smith once again blessed us with his presence.
You might remember Dustin as being the person who wrote to Internet Trash,
arguing that my download of one of his posts directly out of the New York
Burning Man lists was libelous, defamatory, or something along those
lines, demanding that the page be removed, and seeing what he posts, one
can well imagine why he wouldn't want the general public to be able to
read it. Certainly, his inability to follow a simple argument, or think of
a word other than "road" or "street" to describe an empty stretch of
desert dust, which we saw earlier in this thread, did not speak well of
his intellect, nor did the ranting which accompanied it say much for his
character. Not surprisingly, Dustin
offered an ill-focused rant, bitterly complaining that I had not
minded my place, and saluted Jason Claiborne's wisdom. Having seen that
wisdom, I would hope that the average reader would see why I might not
feel the need to salute that, though I was greatly amused to see Dustin
commenting on my alleged "anger and communication problems", an experience
which would have to be on a par with hearing Madonna complaining about
one's promiscuity. APV seemed to view
David Diller in as complimentary a light, and considering the
provocation he had seen from Mr.Diller (who had accused APV of wanting to
masturbate in front of small children, the rebuttal he gave was no more
unfriendly than what Diller deserved:
> Dave, go to h**l. I have never publicly masturbated, nor do I plan to. Nor have I given you any reason to think that I was planning to, so your remarks to that effect are completely out of line. There is a pre-existing map to the camps, and the camps are very open about what will be going on at them. Their audiences are there by choice, and know what they're getting themselves in for. > Well, Dave, if the parents are dumb enough to take their kids to an event that they aren't old enough for, I'd say that the parents are the ones you should be taking that up with. I must say, though, that you did spend a lot of time in your letter, speculating about me masturbating. Is it a personal fantasy of yours? Is it something that you've long dreamed about? I am so sorry to have to disappoint you in this area, but I'm sure that Jung could meet your needs in this area. I'd be happy to set you up with him. Now, would you prefer this with S and M, or without? I have to know, because Tara needs advance notice before ordering the whips and chains. It gets so hectic this time of year. > Never even heard of those, Dave, but apparently, you have. But, hey, I don't judge. If the woman of your dreams comes with Kung Fu grip, go for it. Just be sure not to leave the wrapper on my lawn when you're done. OK? Dave, all sarcasm aside, the event is noted for its permissiveness. Does this bother you? There's nothing wrong with that. And there are plenty of good, creative artistic events where you won't be exposed to such things. But when you start trying to tell other people what they can do, and try to excuse this by saying that you might be dumb enough to bring your impressionable young children with, that's what is really offensive. If you're not ready to live and let live, and maybe look the other way once in a while, then why are you coming? Which is exactly the point. When some of us hear about these sex themed camps, we know that the people in them probably aren't people that we would want to hang around with, because they aren't our kind of people. But then, neither are stockbrokers for the most part; would it surprise the reader to find out that it doesn't follow from this that I would like to see the brokerage houses shut down? Fashionable gibberish about "radical inclusiveness" to the contrary notwithstanding, an acceptance of the notion of tolerance doesn't mandate that everybody seek to be close friends with everybody else. I and a number of others will object (and object loudly) to attempts to create the impression that we want to have intercourse in public, not because we think that doing so is some kind of absolute moral wrong, which should be stamped out, but because the kind of people we would enjoy hanging around with would tend to find that distasteful, as do we. The misperception that we were the kind of people who wanted to do such things would tend to drive away the kind of people we would like to get to know while getting us in touch with others we won't be comfortable with, and that we must object to. It's sort of like why a nonhomophobic male might strongly object to attempts to spread the rumor that he is gay. He doesn't hate gay people, but if that impression gets widespread, the women he'd like to get to know will lose interest in him, and men he would rather not be pursued by, will be paying him visits out of the reasonable perception that the interest might be mutual. That just gets uncomfortable for all involved, and Burning will allow for plenty of opportunities for analogously uncomfortable situations to arise. That much having been said - if these folks aren't free to be themselves and be left alone when they're tens of miles out in the middle of an unihabitable wasteland, at an event notorious for being something that the PTA wouldn't want to be around for, having announced in advance what their intentions are in a publication given to anybody who comes close enough to see what they're doing - when and where would they be left alone? The notion that consenting adults should be denied their freedom to do as they please, because somebody wants to go to what is basically an adult event, but doesn't want to bother to have to get a baby sitter for the week, is just basically obnoxious. The cliche is well worn, but it fits: these people want to have their cake and eat it too, and are trying to get their childish desire to be indulged mistaken for a noble cause. Which is why I can put up with these people only in small doses, and writing this up, I think that I've had enough of this crowd for a while. Refreshing my memory regarding them is starting to spoil my mood, and summer is too precious a time to be ruined that way. I'll come back to this in a few months, long after the irritation has worn off, and I don't find myself thinking that I've traded the singing of the cicadas for the screeching of Dustin Smith. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 
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