I was hoping to avoid any meta-drama-blogging this week, but a correspondent of mine asked me specifically to comment on what happened between Justicar and Jennifer last weekend. The short version is that he posted a video warning that she may have been giving away too much personal information in a tweet, she deleted the tweet, and he removed the video.
In the wake of these events, some people said some terrible things about both of them, including PZ comparing Justicar to the Islamists who send death threats, and me joking about how Jen reminded me of the East German Stasi when she invoked the idea of keeping a file on someone for the sake of constraining their future behavior. I must unreservedly apologize for that particular characterization of Jennifer on my part. It was uncalled for, even as satire or hyperbole, and it contravenes my previously stated commitment to civility, particularly point 12. This sort of over the top demonization of people on the “other side” will never help us move forward as a community of freethought.
In my view, Jennifer really deserves to be cut some slack at this point, both by the SlymePit and by Jonathan himself. She hasn’t done anything to inject herself into the ongoing online atheist dramascape, and as such there is no point in going after her for acting like a perfectly ordinary Tweeter talking about perfectly ordinary things. If you feel (mistakenly, in my view) that her security is at stake, then send her a private message about it, instead of creating a big public kerfuffle which makes all of her old online enemies and allies start dragging her back into old arguments that she has tried very hard to leave behind.
