A few days ago, our paper had a comic strip with the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil and speak-no-evil monkeys flanked by a fourth simian typing away on a laptop-"No one said anything about blogging."
One of the interesting things about blogging is that you'll write things about people that you wouldn't say to their face if they were in the room. In many cases, that's a safe assumption, especially for a small-fry blogger; if I were eviscerating a Paul Krugman essay, what's the chance that big-shot NYT writer will have my missives show up on his radar.
Conversely, I haven't done any punning that I know of on my pastor, David Head, and his last name. For one, he's a fellow blogger and will link through when I link to his blog; at least I see someone using the Ponder Anew admin page to link to my page. If I write about him, he's likely to read it, so I write as if he will read it, and write with the proper respect and tact, at least for me.
However, the targets of your derision occasionally stop by.
Back when I was living in Florida, I recall lighting into a piece from the Lakeland Ledger's religion writer, Cary McMullen, declaring a certain piece "a steaming pile", back when such rhetoric was common currency among "fisking" bloggers. Well, a few months later, McMullen calls up and is interviewing me on a piece on religious blogs, and I quickly have to backtrack on what I said; using nasty rhetoric makes more since when you're critiquing a unknown person rather than a reasonably decent guy on the other end of the line.
I had a similar moment yesterday. I had written on a piece on gentrification, making fun of the name of one Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, a Methodist minister. Not only that, but I made the assumption that "a lady Methodist pastor with a hyphenated last name is going to be a big Bible-thumper." Avoiding a cheap Gilligan's Island quip was hard, especially when I forgot that she might be reading what I wrote.
Which she was. I've not seen Todd Bentley or Joel Osteen stop by and call me on questionable writing, but Rev. Gaines-Cirelli did, in a civil but slightly peeved way. I had such a rebuke coming, for I was out of line and need to ask for forgiveness.
I've gotten out of that combative "fisking" mode a while ago, but sometimes sarcasm gets the better of me, and that cutting humor gets misplaced more often that I like. Pray that I do a better job of being a good witness in what I write.
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