Tuesday 4 July 2017

Open comment to Liana K

This is the text of a comment I left on Liana Kerzner's video response to me.

I have been informed that the comment is not visible, despite the url linking directly to my comment. Here is what it looks like to me (note the flair "highlighted comment"):



Here is what the exact same url looks like to other people:




Now, I don't know whether my comment, which contained two links, ended up in her spam filter, or whether I'm now blocked from commenting on her channel. But I will put the text of my comment here so everyone can see it:

EDIT: it has come to my attention that a different test comment I left is indeed visible to other people, so the following comment being invisible is almost certainly not due to any nefariousness on the part of Liana K. That being said, I still do want people to see this comment.

First thing: My dog recently died while I was overseas, a horrible situation in which my 14 year old son was mostly left with the burden of dealing with her sudden illness, even more sudden death and the necessity of dealing with her remains, without me here to help him with his grief. And well, she was my dog for 10 years, and I'm also still grieving. Also, two close friends of mine have been diagnosed with cancer in the last week, and one of them has been given a month to live. And despite my best efforts to try to revive my thyroid gland and get it working properly, I'm still finding myself with almost no appetite or energy and needing sleep in the afternoons. But please, don't anyone take this statement as me trying to engage your sympathies. :/ Liana, you did demand an apology from me, as a condition of coming on a radio show I almost certainly wouldn't have even been participating in. It was a requirement you put out, before you would even come to the table and talk with people who are NOT me. Below are some quotes from our exchange: "I was more than willing to talk to you as long as it seemed like you were approaching it in good faith. That was the purpose of the apology. I didn't get it, Allison told me I would not be getting it, and so I didn't think any ensuing conversation would be productive for obvious reasons." Yeah. So in order for you to be willing to talk to BRIAN on an HBR Fireside Chat in which I wouldn't even be present, you demanded an apology FROM ME over my comments about you, comments I made as myself and not as a representative of HBR. You essentially told HBR, "make her apologize, or I won't come on your show. It's either her or me." That's a demand. Not only this, as far as I know you didn't even tell them what I had said about you that required this apology. To my knowledge, THIS is the comment I made for which you were demanding an apology. http://imgur.com/a/b9lc4 Here is what I said about your statements on Lauren's show: "She and I were guests on Lauren Southern's Rebel Media show about a year ago to discuss the Jian Ghomeshi case as well, and her assertions and arguments there were... astoundingly inaccurate and betrayed a stunning ignorance of the criminal justice process and how it's supposed to function. She spoke with confidence and authority while making assertions that were entirely factually inaccurate (such as claiming that in the US, unlike in Canada, the prosecutor acts as a legal representative of the complainant. Uh, no. In the Canadian system, the prosecutor represents the Crown, in the US the prosecutor represents "the people", not the complainant or victim)." Here is what you said in response to that: "And since that Lauren Southern episode is still behind a paywall, people can't see it for themselves. They have to take your word regarding what I said, and you're hardly an impartial judge. You're somewhat misrepresenting the nuance and context of what I was saying, which was that demands by activists for additional advocacy for victims would be redundant. The Crown is pursuing charges on behalf of the accuser. The accuser should not need protection from the Crown. I don't understand why you're picking a fight here. I believe the right verdict was reached based on how the case was tried. There's no disagreement between us here, and yet you're making it sound like there is by throwing out a reference with very little context." Christ sake, even in your defence of what you said, claiming I misrepresented you, you get it wrong. The Crown (or the DA in the US) is pursuing charges on behalf of the people, not the accuser. "I still think you cross the line when you attack a person's characteristics which they cannot control," I apologized in my video for what I said about your voice. I apologized for how I worded the one comment that someone (not you) provided so that I would know what I was supposed to be apologizing for. I clarified that I was not apologizing for saying that half the stuff you say is BS. I uploaded my critique of your appearance on Standoff for two reasons: 1) as a justification for my refusal to apologize for saying half of what you say is BS. MORE than half of what you said in that interview was misinformed, bogus, inaccurate, etc. 2) to demonstrate to people that your suggestion that I was taking you out of context thinking I could get away with it because the video was behind a paywall and people can't check for themselves, was bogus. You made a false accusation (or, I suppose, more appropriately, false insinuation) about me, and I wasn't going to allow that to stand. "and you've said some other choice things about me that weren't just harsh." I won't consider apologizing for them until I know what they are. "They were assumptions about my motivations that you could not possibly know, and your "proof" of your assertions was essentially layman's psychoanalysis. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and your opinion is not evidence." I won't consider apologizing for them until I know what they are. Show me what I said and the context in which I said it, and I will consider it. I asked you in that thread, multiple times, for context regarding the one comment a third party had linked to. I wanted to know where I'd left that comment. What, specifically, was I commenting on. The person who'd made the video was finally kind enough to link it to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJR2XCxs8Ls He'd made it unlisted because it contained more "pwnage" than he was going for with his channel overall, but has recently unlisted it because of this controversy. I would suggest people go give it a listen, and ask themselves whether my comments about your delivery were completely out of line in the context in which I was making them. Now you are perfectly entitled to be as satisfied or dissatisfied with my apology as you wish. And you're perfectly welcome to bring to my attention, in their full context, whatever else I've said about you that you believe is worthy of an apology. But I will not apologize for being right and pointing out how you are wrong. I will not apologize for defending myself against your insinuations regarding dishonesty on my part. I will not apologize for things I have not said (for instance, I won't apologize for calling YOU functionally retarded, because I didn't). And I will not apologize for not apologizing in the exact way you wanted me to apologize. Like it or don't. This is the best you're ever going to get out of me. If I would not demand an apology from someone if the situation were reversed, I will not give them the apology they demand.