Old Business

For quite a while this lady has had a site devoted to saying terrible things about other mothers and giving a forum to crazy accusations about various Mommy Bloggers.

I ignored it, truly believing the cost of saying what I want when I want is having people pretty annoyed by me. People who disagree and are mad about the fact that I can say what I want. That I have what they want. That I don't appreciate what I have as much as they would if they had what I have.  

I accepted that if people like me, people would hate me, will hate me in equal and opposite degrees. 

Fighting against one woman's site seemed a little silly. 

Michelle McBee was the author of that site. She has removed all her archives and posted a good bye letter at her site.

But it's important to note that Michelle McBee of Elk Grove, CA was extremely awful to many bloggers. She was happy to share my home address on her site.  

In her Goodbye Letter, Chicken Liver writes, " I think one of the more compassionate things someone can do is to care enough about your life and family to say so when you are irresponsible with them. So, I’ve felt compelled to tell people when they are making profound mistakes."

Except that she said my 11 year old daughter could "eat an apple through a picket fence" in one of her earliest posts (now gone, bravo to your google skills).

Michelle, I would fly to California to meet with you and talk about your concerns about the children of the bloggers you've featured on your site. 

You know how to reach me, you shared my address on your website (now gone, kudos).

Comments

[anon]

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:1D20gWd_a-QJ:www.pooponpeeps.com/index.php/2007/04/leta-buys-dooce-a-new-house/+eat+an+apple+through+a+picket+fence+pooponpeeps&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Not really gone.

[Ginjoint]

Go for it, Melissa! I read several blogs, with many different focuses (foci?), but I've thought this for years - you are the bravest. You put yourself out there, I think both for yourself (which is NOT a bad thing), but also so that others can know they're not alone in whatever troubles them. You are deeply, deeply courageous, and I truly hope you know this. (You are so hard on yourself sometimes, I'm not sure that you do.) We have very little in common (I'm a lesbian with no partner, no kids), but I read your blog because of who you are. You've helped me realize that revealing our weaknesses strengthens us in the long run.

Now go kick some ass.

[Alison of a Gun]

Michelle, is that you at 6:21 am?!

[Mom24@4evermom]

Wow. I'm not always your biggest fan, you've made fun of people that has hurt me personally. Why do I tell you this? Just to say this isn't the comment of someone who thinks you do no wrong. Why do I keep coming back? Honestly, I struggle with that, but I guess I enjoy your writing so much that I look past the hurt.

I can't believe there is someone out there miserable enough in her existence that she would put so much time and energy into a blog like that. I think you have to feel sorry for her because obviously she's a very unhappy person, very. It's pretty disturbing that someone is living their life like that.

I'm sorry you were a target.

[Grammar Snob]

I simply don't understand why people waste their time and energy getting so mad at someone they don't even know. If I read a site that I don't like, guess what -- I don't read it again. It really can be that simple.

I'm sorry you were targeted by this woman (and others, I'd imagine). I clicked the link to her home address, if for no other reason than to stick my tongue out at their address and say "you should be nicer!"

[Allison]

Beware any person who talks about how compassionate and "marshmallow-hearted" she is.

[MelissaS]

I've received an email saying I've "sunk to her level" by sharing her address.

Her address is located via a simple Whitepages.com search so please spare me the melodrama.

Additionally I could only sink to her level if I personally attacked her looks, her children, provided a forum for my readers to make accusations about her husband's sexuality, to make threats of visiting her home, to speculate about her extended family, and so on and so forth.

In this post I have only asked that she be held accountable for what she's said, just like I always have.

She was always welcome to say and do what she wanted, I never tried to stop her. (Thankfully someone else did.)(http://luckythirteenandcounting.com)

But our actions have consequences. Here's one of them.

[die Frau]

A lot of fighting has been going on at my high school lately, and I asked the kids why they thought it had been happening. Numerous kids gave answers about not allowing someone to talk badly about them and beating the person down as a response. My husband pointed out that "I have to respect you in order for you to offend me," which makes a lot of sense.

However, I do recognize that personal and deliberately vicious attacks on one's family are extremely hard to ignore, particularly when that person puts out personal information and invites others to join in on the hate-mongering. I just don't see any point in living one's life focusing on that much hatred and anger. In this country we have the blessing and curse of saying what we want--but I simply can't agree with deliberately setting out to libel and hurt others. That's purely MY opinion.

Melissa, I've always appreciated your sharp honesty and sense of humor, and I enjoy your posts. If I didn't, I wouldn't continue to read them. Simple as that.

[Lisa V]

I totally get the urge to gossip about people. We all have it, whether it's people we know in real life or celebrities or just people we think we know through the internet. I get the urge. I don't get the follow through on the urge and the amount of hate that seems to come with it. I didn't have that kind of hate in junior high talking about the ugly hair of the girl who stole my boyfriend. So how can people have it about people they've never met?

And while Chicken Liver was the ring leader, there were so many willing to join her and comment (yes I read her site sometimes). It truly was like a car accident.

I don't get the legion of anonymous people who seem to follow Heather Armstrong around and make disparaging comments to every post she makes everywhere. How do you do that? How do you have time for that? Isn't life too short to get your panties in a wad about a stranger?

The old saying "judge not lest ye be judged" seems to be pretty appropriate here.

[Sadie at heyMamas]

I never get mad at people who say bad things about me or mommy bloggers, I usually just feel sorry for them.

When you are happy, happiness radiates out of you and when you are sad or resentful or jealous, all of those things also radiate out of you.

I am usually just so thankful that I am not them and hopefully will never be.

I can't even believe someone would personally attack you and put your home address out there. That is truly sad and I feel for her (and you!).

Sadie at heyMamas

[Melissa Summers]

It feels good to publicly name her after all this time.

Melissa

Sent from my iPhone with fat fingers on tiny keys.

[CinAA]

The thing I find interesting about these sort of "oh my God, they are so awful" rants is that the #1 thing they do is drive more traffic to the site that the ranter finds so distasteful. In the case of sites that derive revenue from their visitors, this makes them more successful. So, good job perpetuating the thing you hate!

As to the personal comments, my mother always said "Consider the source." Anyone who was so much more attractive (internally or externally) than you wouldn't have been spending all her time hate blogging apparently for free. I hope she gets the help she needs, and I'm not just saying that in the passive-aggressive way we are raised to say such things in the South -- between the archived bile I just read (how had I never heard of this site before?) and the fact she apparently lost a child, if I were her friend I'd be concerned.

I think I've been reading your blog for five years --is that possible? -- and I like that you worry and complain about the same sorts of things I do, here in SE Michigan with a daughter and son. The fact that we both have nice lives, nice kids, nice husbands, nice roofs over our heads (okay, not all that nice, often barely adequate) probably make people feel like we should never have a worry or complaint cross our minds, even if we are blessed with picky eaters. The thing is you write them down for dissection. Rock on.

[sooboo]

Never heard of that site but isn't Michelle McBee the cuckoo Nazi lady that was boinking Sandra Bollock's husband? Busy lady.

[lanned]

I can't understand why anyone would be so hateful...not you...but her. I've been reading the stuff herbadmother is going through right now and it literally makes me sick. If someone's blog makes me uncomfortable I move on, I would never attack them or their families and it is truly beyond my understanding that anyone would. Are people like that really even truly human?

[CinAA]

Okay, I just found out her lost child was a miscarriage. She definitely needs help.

[vegas710]

Wow. I'm glad I had not heard of this blog before now. I read the link from anon about the teeth thing (which, what?) and then read the goodbye letter. That letter was the biggest load of self-congratulatory BS I've ever read. And I read a lot of mommy blogs.

[t]

I'm one who was bothered by your oldered, negative postings "WHY ME" over and over again boring and depressing. So I unsubscribed but then recently resubscribed. I noticed lately you've been blogging differently and I appreciate that! Seems like the "did they eat it" posts are more frequent and I love them. In fact, I've made several of your recipes Melissa! I think this is my first comment!

[vegas710]

Ooh, and I just went over to Thirteen and Counting. Thank you for linking her, she's living a version of my dream!
And haters can suck it. I've always enjoyed your posts and you have the same right to complain as the rest of us!

[anon]

I'm most definitely NOT Chicken Liver. I just wanted to make a point that her ugliness is still out there and I actually hope it haunts her forever.

I wanted to give proof to Melissa's pudding, so to speak, so that everyone would know that CL really did say some completely ugly nasty things.

And let's not forget the times she actually commented here as well and tried to be Melissa's friend. She's a conniving, hypocritical lunatic.

[Quack and Quill]

No Chicken Liver? Good riddance. I stumbled on her site once and found myself wanting to be in defense of the blogger she was currently attacking, but it was a lose-lose proposition. I chose never to go back, not wanting to give her the attention of the site traffic.

I feel sorry for people who deal with their own hurts and problems by attacking others.

[ab]

I'm glad you posted this. My sister and her coworker came across that blog once by following a link from somewhere else, and we were both pretty disgusted by it. I found it particularly awful that she was gathering this little following by not only mercilessly ragging on other people, but that she wrote like she barely spoke English and people were still hanging on her every (hard to read) word. Once they read that the blog was taken down I wondered when one of her targets would comment on it. Now that she's gone, it's sort of like having the last word, which I think has got to really get on her nerves. Beautiful.

[Bianca]

Hey,

I wrote you once, and it was a stupid email a la "look on the bright side", and you reamed me for it. Then I read more of your posts and figured out what you were upset about and I was duly chastened.

I don't agree with everything you post, or everything Dooce posts, but I keep coming back, so that must say something.

Don't know who this woman was, but I read your link (with her goodbyes) and she sounded *kind*. Then I read your quotes from her about your daughter, and found some of the stuff she *did* write, and whoo boy, she is one mean, spiteful, human. Horrible stuff. Hope she's done.

[Jaxx]

I love how she tried to act like she was dropping her website of her own free will when in fact she was run off the internet by Sandi Benson at Lucky Thirteen.

[Okie]

How did this other mommy blogger run Chicken Liver off the internet?

[Ashley, The Accidental Olympian]

Fuck her. The internet is a better place without her in it.

[amyt]

oh man. I knew she was a mean one- I had heard she was terrible to E- you are so right to stand up- this is yr space and yr life. I just don't understand so much of the hate in blogging world- she's not the only one to want division and bad juju- I know it sounds stupid but I really get shocked every single time i see it. Hugs.

[Valorie]

Never heard of her, and glad of it. Went to the links you provided. Anyone other than me find the statement "I hope you find a new place to vent your frustrations about people behaving badly without fear of repercussions from bullies" to be rather revelatory and ironic? Gah. The Nerve. I have faith that she will burn (or is already burning?) in her own private hell. Rock on, Melissa.

[list maker]

1) The point of posting her home address is what??

2) Not sure that is true that Sandi ran her off - big assumpion you are making.

[melissa]

Turn around is fair play in my world. I was the bigger person during her attacks and now? I want her google-able for what she did.

Simple as that. I accept your opinion but disagree.

[anon]

I know I'm going to be skewered for saying this, but I'm sort of sad that CL is gone. she was so relentlessly moronic, insipid and unaware of her own screaming stupidity that it took a lot away from what she was trying to say. don't get me wrong: the handwringing, the Maude Flanders "but what about the children?" routine, the bad spelling, all of these things sucked a lot of energy away from what legitimate criticisms could be leveled against some personal blogs and the personal blogging community. she was cruel and vicious to you, Melissa, and she deserves whatever rancor you want to drop on her now, but that doesn't mean I wasn't glad she was there to act as an easily-dismissed target.

the trainwreck girls were equally vicious, but far more intelligent and capable writers. Now that CL is gone, there is a gaping void where someone with more brains than Michele McBee can step in and started satirizing or criticizing some of the more subtle aspects of our community that are, perhaps, deserving of criticism (the sychophantism, the popularity games, the oversharing, the actual ethical dilemmas of writing about children).

I, for one, don't look forward to being in the crosshairs of somebody smarter than Michele McBee. when she was around, she did a good job of sucking most of the hate in the community right into her ugly little black hole.

[melissa]

Yeah and there will always be people like that. I know. I'm just happy that one in particular is gone. An old 8th grade friend of Logan's was there frothing at the mouth fairly often. Things were even made up and accepted as fact.

And I didn't even have it the worst.

I really do understand not everyone will like me. I understand that there are varying opinions about what I do.

In the end I can only do what I think is best and feel confident in that choice.

Certainly people can criticize me for that. Perhaps without calling my husband gay, making fun of my appearance, implying my husband is cheating, that my brother is afraid of becoming a pedophile so he isn't have a child, trying to upset my relationship with an advertiser because she didn't think a particular post was funny.

In the end you are allowed your opinion and I am allowed to demand respect. In real life and on the internet.

Michele McBee was incapable of doing so.

I hope i prospective employers, colleagues, friends, aquaintances end up googling her name and know what kind of person she is.

[Cole]

She blogged with a peculiar vitriol about you and your family. It just was not right.

[RebeccaLand]

Melissa, I don't know you, have never spoken/emailed you but a your narrative has always struck something within me over the past 5+ years of reading your site. Our lives as women/parents, me as a single parent, are different but I have found your voice one I so can relate to on so many levels. Thank you.

[RebeccaLand]

bad self editing: 1st line;
spoken/emailed you but... axe out the "a"
Rock on girl friend,

[sheusedtohaveaname]

That felt good, didn't it? Sorry you had to put up with that for so long.