Loath as I am to front-page this juvenile behavior, it has gone on long enough and I felt it necessary to address it for those out there in Cyberland who are wondering what this is all about.
For four days, a woman named Denise Romano has been incessantly tweeting falsehoods about me with the specific intent to paint me as a bully. As she has ignored my attempts to engage her and determine why she is on a mission to disparage me as a bully, my only recourse is to memorialize it so that I can tweet this post whenever Ms. Romano tweets about me.
This “dispute” as it were arises from this Twitter exchange regarding Nicole Sandler. Ms. Romano casts the exchange as me encouraging 10 or 20 people to gang up on Ms. Sandler because I disagreed with Sandler about a political issue. Any fair reading of the exchange demonstrates the falsity of this “gang up” narrative.
I’m not a bully. Full stop. And, despite Ms. Romano’s claim that I am lying about such, I have never uttered a single cross word toward Nicole Sandler outside of my requests that she call off her attack dogs. Indeed, outside of this ongoing campaign to disparage me, I have never engaged Sandler or Romano in any sort of political discussion or otherwise.
But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Anyone is free to go search topsy.com to determine who is saying what to whom. If you are inclined, click here, here, here, here to view Ms. Romano’s tweets. Click here, here, and here, to view tweets in which I address Ms. Romano, or here, here, and here for those in which I address Ms. Sandler. Or you can take a look at this screenshot wherein Ms. Romano takes my tweets and manipulates them to cast me as some sort of liar and a bully who is in denial.
If I were truly engaged in any sort of harassment towards Sandler or Romano, wouldn’t there be some evidence of it on Topsy? If Ms. Romano were truly compiling a blog series on bullying featuring me as the star bully, wouldn’t she have (as I have) taken screenshots of any relevant alleged behavior? If this issue arose because, as Ms. Romano claims, Sandler had the temerity to disagree with me about President Obama (that claim is also made here), why has she not provided some evidence of that claim? one would think that she should be able to produce some evidence of my nefarious behavior, especially considering that Ms. Romano has been claiming since December that I am a bully. You don’t have to take my word for it. The Internet is forever and Topsy is an excellent resource.
Make no mistake. Ms. Romano’s ongoing campaign is about me, and any attempt to claim that my ego has resulted in my wrongly assuming that her “educational tweets” are about me falls flat on its face:
And lest you think it unfair of me to lump Sandler and Romano in together, one need only read Ms. Romano’s twitter stream and the conversations that she has with other people about me to realize that rehabilitating Ms. Sandler’s image seems to be her primary goal in all of this. (Example here and continued here.) She even went so far as to tally the purported insults lobbed against Ms. Sandler to compare them to those she perceives as having being lobbed (by me?) against her!
Ultimately, What Ms. Romano has seemingly been trying to do is to whitewash the actual misbehavior – Ms. Sandler’s misbehavior in calling me a “b*tch”, calling @goldietaylor an “a**hole,” calling @adept2u (former DKos blogger and current blogger at The People’s View) an “a**hole,” and telling @vcthree (who has contributed to The Grio) to “f*ck off” — and attribute all misbehavior to me.***
As has been pointed out to me by multiple people, the privilege attendant to any belief that Ms. Sandler should be able to call people names without consequence is astonishing. Why Ms. Romano has decided to target us (we are all black) while simultaneously ignoring and excusing Ms. Sandler’s behavior is a question that answers itself once posed. Indeed, Ms. Romano has gone so far as to intimate that the four of us are some sort of “fam” or group that works together in concert to bully people. I don’t know why she thinks this – perhaps she actually thinks that all black people know each other?
Ms. Romano’s tactics are transparent, as are Ms. Sandler’s. The reason I keep such pristine records (including chirpstories) is to protect myself against smear campaigns such as these. Being a woman of color and an activist, I do not have the luxury of allowing such charges to go unanswered.
I don’t call people “b*tch.” I don’t call people “c*nt” and I can’t imagine that Ms. Romano truly believes that sort of behavior is acceptable in political discourse under any circumstances. I have asked Ms. Romano repeatedly to stop her disparagement of me, and were she an expert on cyberharassment as she claims, one would think that she would respond to my repeated requests. Other Twitter users (whom Romano will surely call my “minions” have tried to explain to her that they don’t see me as having ganged upon Ms. Sandler. (See here, here, and here.) I have repeatedly expressed my dismay at her behavior (example here), and civilly have asked her to explain why she is behaving the way she is. Her response (not to me – she never responds to me, only about me) has been that she has seen no evidence of my being able to carry on a mature and healthy discussion –
– all the while continuing for days on end to pollute Twitter (specifically the “ConnectTheLeft” hashtag) with passive aggressive sub-tweets about me. She even has gone so far as to claim I think cyberharassment is a joke –
Hopefully with this post, she will finally realize that I don’t think her behavior is a joke.
I wish I knew what Ms. Romano’s motivations are and why she feels it acceptable to carry on this crusade against me. Even assuming that everything I have said about the exchange with Ms. Sandler is a lie (it isn’t). Even assuming that I got 10 to 20 people to gang up on Ms. Sandler and attack her (I didn’t) for how long is Ms. Romano going to tweet about me while feigning that her tweets are not about me? This “dispute” occurred in December, yet three months later, Ms. Romano still tweets about it. Will she still be tweeting about it three months hence? Will she post her disparaging tweets at Huffington Post? How many times do I need to ask her to stop before she will? How many times do I need to specifically ask her to explain to me why she is behaving this way before she responds to me (and not to other Twitter users)? How many times do I need to tell her that I find her obsession with me to be creepy?
This needs to stop.
I have no grudge against any of these people nor do I expect them to like me or my politics. I simply want them to stop polluting Twitter with this juvenile grudge-based harassment. Therefore, I will maintain this post and continue tweeting it until the behavior stops (even though I am certain that this post will be used to further cast me as a bully, probably because I’m “angry” and “black.”)
I have tried to resolve this absent writing a post about it to no avail. We have an election to win and Republicans to keep out of this country’s collective vagina. I simply do not have time for this.
Please stop.
***Follow the links to read about @vcthree’s struggles (“To Be Young Gifted and Black“) and @adept2u’s struggles at DKos (“How Markos Moulitsas Taught Me To Call Them The Tea Party“) (he was part of the banning that disproportionately affected bloggers of color at DKos.)
***posted edited on 3/7/12 5 pm to remove references to Ms. Sandler’s visit to Congressman West’s office based upon her assurances that she has contacted Ms. Romano and asked her to stop. -ABLxx
ABL, I’m not really familiar with any of this but color me conspiracy prone. I think we will see lots of concerted attacks on pragmatic liberals, their blogs and followers as we move on to November 2012.
They want us all busy in defensive mode & not to say we should not stand and defend such egregious attacks as you have described here. But we should never lose sight of the prize which is Obama/Biden & more Dems in 2012!
FUCK these sorry excuses for women!!!
It is standard right wing projection.
Objecting to abusive behavior is always considered worse that the abusive behavior. Right now the right wing is lighting their pants on fire over Sandra Fluke bullying Rush Limbaugh. Srsly!
You might notice a certain similarity to your situation.
I caught the edge of that this afternoon, and after looking at this Denise Romano’s history on Twitter, my first thought was “spammer” followed by “obsessive twit.” Apparently she wants to be one of the “cool kids,” and she thinks her “in” to the club is to attack you. Yeesh.
Passive aggressive malarky created by someone with a clear axe to grind who in my opinion quite frankly doesn’t think that she’d measure up in a direct conversation, because she wouldn’t, because she’s wrong on this. Nothing to do with stopping bullying or improving or enhancing conversations, just smiting enemies.
What’s telling is that true bullying experts who are seeking real solutions to what is in fact a real social problem never isolate one party and hurl abuse in “revenge.” Such as in the program at work in Chicago Schools, bullying is addressed by targeting both the bullied, and the bullies, and flooding them with positive adult attention. This is how one may detect positive intent and solution-seeking.
This by contrast is simply posturing and belittling the entire concepts of bullying and harassment. Sorry that you’ve become the target of someone’s obsessive behavior, but it’ll pass when she gets bored, or finds someone else, or (the optimist in me can’t help but hope!) comes to her senses and recognizes her behavior as inappropriate.
Long sigh. This incident is the direct descendant of the GottaLaff-Shoq feud, and Nicole has adopted the style. She had a public falling-out with me on Twitter last December. It’s ALL personal, even when it isn’t.
I’ve said before this is an example of “Thou doth protest too much.” When someone keeps at it like Romano has been for the past 4 days, either she has a guilty conscience or an agenda. I’m starting to believe she has both. This is classic projection of one’s own faults and misdeeds on another person with the claim by Romano that ABL is the bully.
I have only been actively posting on Twitter since ~Feb of 2011. You and ABL were some of the first people I followed because you both are on top of issues & can weed through the muck to get to the truth. I have seen you both legitamitley call people out and expose their agendas but I’ve never seen either of you bully anyone. If anything, both of you have always been the first to say “Enough is enough! I’m done!” block the person bullying if necessary and/or stop replying to those that are attempting to bully you.
I had some of these people try to pull me in to this childish nonsense in the beginning of this feud because I retweeted Shoq. After they demanded I choose sides, I instantly blocked them. I’m too old for this high school “Heathers” crap. I didn’t do it in HS & I’m not about to engage in it now. I follow you all & will continue to do so BECAUSE you’re bright, informative & the adults in the room.
Wow, this was a fascinating read. I think Nicole got a little defensive on account that adept2u quickly and concisely showed she was lying about NDAA, and once she realized her error was going to be saved and posted she went into attack mode.
I have no idea what Denise Romano is doing. I can’t even with that.
Denise Romano and Nicole Sandler are both disturbed.
That’s hilarious.
Tweeting a public message, then freaking out when someone reads it, responds to it, and wants to share it.
It’s like erecting a billboard with your picture on it, then cursing and throwing eggs at passersby who look up at it.
So sorry you are having to deal with this. Ms. Romano is definitely engaging in bullying behavior, and like all bullies, won’t face the person she is bullying when called on her behavior.
Wow ABL is such a nice person. I don’t know what’s wrong with Romano.
I want to know, specifically, if my name was mentioned by Romano–if so, I’m going to take corrective action directly to any clients of hers, and end this buffoonery once and for all.
When some troll published Simon Cowart’s address & phone number, he gave me this link to make an appeal to Twitter on his behalf. https://support.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser
It looks like it’s time to use it for this nutjob.
After viewing as many chirpstories as I could find relative to this discussion & thinking about this for a few days, I see, at the root, 2 groups who disagree on tactics for using Twitter & disseminating info, each being ill-behaved & well-behaved, in different respects. I see petty in-fighting, but not bullying, per se. I think Ms. Romano’s definitions of “insult & “bully” are too broad, in some cases where the insult was not severe enough to amount to an attempt to bully & where attempted humor in an inappropriate climate did not equal to insult. There simply is not enough intimidation to form a threat. Sure, there’s disrespect & inconsiderate callousness, but from both sides. However, insulting someone, even repeatedly, is not harassment. It’s extremely annoying, bothersome, unwelcome, but without the same demoralizing destructive intent. To misuse the term is to detract from true bullying, which has far-reaching detrimental emotional effect. In all the chirpstories I viewed, there’s ugliness on both sides, but no credible attempt to belittle someone into quitting their job or hobby, or changing their name or location, or taking their life. I also believe that it takes 2 to bully; the attempt must be accepted as such. The check is written, but the choice to cash it is with the bearer. Retorts & return-lobbied insults means that check was not cashed. If the target of insults & ill humor had cried, whined, or threatened self-harm, I would say the insults were accepted as bullying, but both sides stood ground & gave back some change. Both sides have strong & intelligent personalities. The in-fighting is all ego-based & I don’t see any of these egos being permanently scarred or scared. They give as good as they get. The actual count of how many insults flying this way or that doesn’t matter. Some were pointed, some were pot shots, so it really came out even in that regard. This arguing is like a Tug O’War match & there are no extra points for how much ground is gained this way or that until the line is crossed. And, like any sport, the crowd enjoys watching & rooting for their side. And there are sides in this, because also apparent are attempts to jockey for a leadership position in the info game & those who jump in to support the side they believe is doing the best job at winning it. I would label it as “bandwagoning” rather than “bullying”, each side supporting their tactics for disseminating info while disparaging the other; sensationalism vs substance & which side uses which tactic most. My preference would be that both sides could see validity in each other & cooperate in whatever aspects raise them both up, but that’s not necessarily human nature, especially when any positive aspects of output are marred by negative motivations for feedback, thereby poisoning the water, like self-promotion for followers or link-baiting or headline-crunching or false pretenses to direct web traffic. These tactics and others are at the core of these arguments. The game is: Who disseminates credible info for the purpose of raising awareness on pertinent current events without regard to self-promotion? The winner will be the side that is posting the best info with the most ethical tactics & works harder to advance the #p2 cause than it does to increase followers or web hits. Of course, ideally, respectful cooperation would be a win for both. As for Ms. Romano’s motivations for declaring this “cyber bullying”, it is unclear why she magnanimously feels the need to defend people perfectly capable of defending themselves. My guess is that it’s for a book that she’s working on for which she already has a deal, and she’s collecting data. She is known outside of Twitter for accusing PickUpArtists (PUA) of rape via hypnosis, disproven by solid folks like Penn & Teller. She makes a living from finding situations where she can insert herself for financial gain.
@pixsher: I first was made aware of Denise via this interchange: http://chirpstory.com/li/2495
From the perception of the group involved, and by some gracious outside parties who volunteered to mediate after a day and a half of bombardment, it seemed that she had misinterpreted a new-style RT as being directed at her.
This was resolved, at least with me, in what I saw was an amicable manner. I rather had wish I had thought to document that then.
Then came the Sandler chirps. And all of this.
Given people’s interaction with her in the real world [per your comment, as well as confirmation from other Tweeps that they've dealt with her in an alumni and professional manner], I’m not sure what I believe about that initial discussion.
TY I was looking for that one! She mentioned this Chirpstory as a time she felt harassed & bullied & then was upset when it was chirpified. So this all goes back to 9/11 when she received erroneous RTs (when Twitter made changes to the function) & thought they were directed at her specifically, and her perception that tweets are chirpified for the purpose of ridicule rather than ease of viewing relative tweets. Since she’s working on a conflict resolution book, she probably viewed it as an angle to use in her book when she saw the Chirpstory re: Nicole and is making an issue of it to vindicate herself as far as her reaction to the mistaken RTs & to create a different angle on cyber bullying. Too bad she can’t find actual instances of cyber bullying to focus on, but it seems her prior experience is clouding her judgment.
I would tend to agree with you on that.
The thing is, the new RT had been in effect for over a year prior to that … so either she was emotional about 9/11 itself [she and I actually had a really civil discussion about her injuries and limitations because of her experiences then], or she was really unaware of how the tool [Twitter] could work.
If you’re right, and this is all some elaborate plan to come up with a book premise, then that’s all the more reason to call it out for the ruse it is.
ABL, you truly are a fu*king BI*CH and a C U NEXT TUESDAY with nothing else better to do with your time. Hate you very much. Please fu*k off and die. You use race and suggest racism is involved here. How the f*ck is anyone supposed to know the race of the individuals you cite? Please explain you juvenile piece of sh*t. You are a liar and you are unethical. Should you ever decide to practice law again your ethics will become a point of dicussion. You sasying you’re not a bully is like certain racists saying they’re not racists because some of their best friends are black. You’re a bully and a whole lot more. We all know, by the way, how deceptive Matt Osborne is for leaking the details of the conversation on the list serv to shoq and then lying about it by blaming his girlfriend. Matt you really don’t know how many people abhor you. “Sigh.”
thanks for proving my point. i guess you got tired of commenting under shoq’s name, didja? ;)
Aw, I thought it was fun when he posted as shoq. Betcha it’s the same person who impersonated shoq on my post awhile ago.
I’m wondering if this is the person who hacked my Twitter account today and created a huge headache for me, which I did NOT need.
I know this is a tired cliche, but really, some people DO need to get a life (beyond what they live in the basement…..)
Oh gee, aren’t you just too cute for words.
If you’re going to swear, at least have the cojones to actually use them instead of using asterisks and stupid shit like “C U”. We know what you’re fucking saying, and we’re adults here. Unlike you.
And you have no idea how immature this reads.
Wow, may I suggest you go see a psychologist? Then a psychiatrist to get some fucking drugs, you twisted nutter.
You need to put the keyboard down and get some meds
If you have to resort to baseless attacks and insults, you’ve lost
Denise Romano is a disturbed individual. Not so long ago she had a crusade against men trying to learn social skills in meeting the opposite sex. Whatever you think of the individuals involved in this ‘self help’ industry they’re not rapists, which is what Romano branded them all as. It would’ve been funny if she wasn’t so serious and persistant. Tried reporting people and companies to the police over it. Basically, any social discourse between the sexes not condoned by Romano is rape. Now she has a new hobby horse, but still same brand of crazy.
Wow, they really need to legalize weed. I bet a lot these folks would calm down a little. Pickup guys as rapist? I’ve heard it all now. It’s not that serious.
So, are they just going after the black prag-progs in this case?
We try and respectfully disagree, and they go all Rush Limbaugh on you…..thats great.
Its fucking sickening that they’re using the tactics of the right, then try and claim the moral high ground, I mean come the fuck on.
This is why every time she subs for Randi Rhodes, I switch to something else, even Thom Hartman is tolerable compared to her
this is part of an conscious effort by GOP activists to constrain Democratic activists. in my county, a small town mayor is our County Dem Chair, and the local GOP has led a months-long campaign of municipal hysteria to tie him up and keep the party from organizing properly. we are doing our best to fight them off, and then they come up with something new, whipping the Tea Party here into froth.
stay focused, organize, and delegate.
I managed to dig far back enough in Denise’s Twitter feed to see how she responded to your post. It wasn’t easy. She must retweet everything she reads on Twitter.
Essentially, abl, you are at fault for the 20+ people ganging up on her because you didn’t tell them all to stop picking on poor Denise. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t send them out to attack her. It matters that you didn’t stop people you had no connection to from attacking her. And compiling her words into chirp stories without including those attacks is a gross misrepresentation of what happened. You even provided context that goes against her argument, so you just don’t get it.
In other words, Denise might not understand how the Internet works. Did you know that one person can’t control everyone else on the Internet? Because she still doesn’t.
please, ABL, ignore her and move on. do not feed the troll, and all that. it is a nationwide strategy, and she picked you.
move on. fight the good fight with your energy and power. we need you active, not distracted with this noise.
My god, what a loon. Seriously. This is why I stopped with Twitter. It permits people with OCD issues to vomit out nutty spam non-stop, and allows others to whip up drama and fulfill their need to be perpetual victims. Swear to god, it’s worse than teenagers on facebook.
I don’t know when I turned into the grumpy old man across the street, but some days, I just want to nuke the entire internet, lol.
Wow! Two unstable bullies trotting out their respective acolytes to give them aid and comfort in their own manufactured shit storm. This whining is golden and entertaining to boot, but don’t we have vaginas to save. Drone on bitches! All hail Holder, holder of the sacred flame of ridiculous double speak. Shine, my brothers and sisters, shine on.
…whatever you’re on, pass that shit around!
I know, puff, puff, pass. What are you waiting for?
COMMENT EDITED: I appreciate the sentiment and the support Nargle, but I have heard from Nicole and she assures me that she does not want to continue this conflict, and I don’t want this issue to become anymore inflammatory than it has. Thanks! -ABLxx
I’m closing comments now. Thanks for all who have read and commented.