Deb Frisch Category Archive

Deb Frisch, one of the blogosphere's most infamous members, is being run out of the blogosphere.

Nine blogs up, three blogs closed down. Another blogosphere first?

Update #1: Add one more blog down, and one taken over by...a gerbil?!

Update #2: One of her backup blogs has been activated.

Deb Frisch is at it again. This time she is making comments about the lawyer, Jeralyn Merritt, who is blogging about Frisch's scrap with Jeff Goldstein.

Among Frisch's comments:

• Jeralyn Merritt is a shyster, which means someone, in particular a lawyer, who acts in unethical or unscrupulous manner
• Jeralyn Merritt is a hypocrite because she defended Oklahoma city bomber, Timothy McVeigh
• Jeralyn Merritt is inciting violence against Deb Frisch through Merritt's blog
• Jeralyn Merritt is over 60

Deb Frisch gained some notoriety a while back when she issued death threats against the two-year-old son of a conservative blogger -- presumably for the crime of being a conservative.

The uproar cost Frisch her position as a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona.

The situation reached the courts, and the news today is that Frisch was alleged to have violated a restraining order. Instead of appearing in court to explain her side of the story, she seems to have disappeared.

An arrest warrant has been issued.

Seems like only a week ago -- oh, it was exactly a week ago in fact -- that Deb Frisch posted a fake suicide note on my blog.

You can read the whole story.

Now it's Thursday again, and Deb Frisch is at it again, now signing my name at Vodkapundit.

In a post about photography, someone left me the following comment:

oh my god - did you hear that pajamas media blogger dan drezner killed himself this morning?

That's a lie, and a vicious one at that. It might not surprise you that commenter "steve" has the exact same IP address as Deb Frisch. The email address she's using is "janke@email.com," but I assume it's a fake.

What the hell is wrong with someone that they would lie about a suicice? In Deb's case, it seems like a lot of things.

I'm not sure how to respond. It's so obvious now that it almost has the quality of an ongoing prank, like the guys who steal your garden gnome, then drive it around the country sending you pictures of where the gnome has been. You don't want your gnome stolen, but then when it happens, you just shrug.

At least the gnome gag is funny.

Deb Frisch has the persistance and determination to be pull off a sustained gag. She doesn't have anything remotely approaching a sense of humour though.

I guess I'll be waiting until she posts to yet another blog reporting that I've been found nibbled to death by fire ants.

It is notable, however, that this is the first posting in which I have used my name as a Technorati tag.

[Thanks to John for the heads up]

Recently I've started linking my stories with digg. It seemed like a fair way to spread my stories farther. The Deb Frisch story was the first to break through the "popular" wall, and the experience was interesting.

I have never banned anyone from Angry in the Great White North. I take pride in that. I have had comments that were dead right, dead wrong, and some that were so long that I couldn't be bothered to read them to find out one way or the other. Some people are unfailingly polite, and some amusingly coarse, and some just plain nasty.

But until this comment by Deb Frisch, I have never had one that was calculatingly deceptive and designed to cause hurt to someone else.

So do I ban her IP address? I'm not sure. Post your vote. Know that this blog isn't a democracy, and that I'll take the final decision myself.

Readers of this blog might have noticed what read like a suicide note appearing as a comment to one of my posts. It appeared to be from a member of the US armed forces, a Navy SEAL named Matthew Heidt. In the note, this person claims to have behaved dishonourably in battle against the blog Protein Wisdom. He had dishonoured the memories of his fallen comrades in this "battle", and felt he had to die. Matthew Heidt is also a conservative blogger at Froggy Ruminations and Black Five.

Don't worry. No one is going to get hurt. I've been Frisched.

Update #1: The background on the Deb Frisch's vendetta against Heidt.

Update #2: I've been spotted!

Update #3: Deb Frisch comments on the sockpuppetting allegation...well, sort of.

Update #4: Deb Frisch thanks me.

Lawyers? The Deb Frisch saga continues:

I confronted Janke via email with what was going on and asked him to remove the posts so as to avoid giving this new whisper campaign a foundation on which to grow. Not surprisingly he refused, repeated the specious accusation and then claimed it’s my fault for not dealing with his smear that’s based on a lie.

So I’ve collected up all the relevant material and emailed it to my lawyer with the intention of initiating legal proceedings against Steve Janke and anyone else who propagates this new smear.

Janke’s accusation is based on the lie that Deborah Frischer threatened Jeff Goldstein’s child. She did not in fact, utter any threat.

Well, you know where the tip jar is.

Pssst, on the right, just below the Angry Beaver.

Update: Donations not required, thanks (besides whatever tips you think I deserve for my witty writing...<crickets chirping>). Warren Kinsella has commented to this post to say that he will be happy to represent me, gratis, in any proceedings. Not that he believes for a second that it will get that far. Any donations received will be returned (actually, I haven't completed any transactions since I did not expect to need them). And to the people in the legal community and from the media who have written or phoned with offers of support, thanks. I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

I didn't think I created the "foundation" for this. I thought McClelland did:

Frisch: Ooh. Two year old boy. Sounds hot. You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby.

McClelland: Tough break. It's a hard way to learn that there's a double standard when it comes to death threats. The right can go on national tv and make them (ie. Adams Apple Annie) but the left never can; not even in a moment of anger on some paste eater's blog.

You shouldn't have resigned though. The right whingers only foam at the mouth for a short time before becoming distracted by their next 5 minute hate.

And for the record, it sure sounds like a threat to me. And the highlighted portion of McClelland's defence of Frisch makes it clear he took it as a death threat as well. Just one that wasn't worth getting excited about, given our short attention spans.

Update: Oops, a correction has been issued by McClelland:

Goldstein’s site was down when I wrote the comment and I’d only read a partial accounting of what Deborah had said. I erroneously gave her accusers the benefit of the doubt at the time. When Jeff’s site came back up I was able to read all her comments and determine no actual threat was made.

Robert McClelland, July 12th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

So you only supported her death threats when you thought they were death threats? And that changes things...how?

Funny you choose only now to share this enlightening "determination" of yours. After your "double standard" comment was brought up, I notice. I look forward to other "determinations".

In the comic book world, this is known as a "retcon".

A comment from Robert McClelland:

Your flying monkeys are now sending me hatemail accusing me of threatening your children. If I get one more you and I are going to be meeting face to face to discuss this matter.

OK, I haven't seen the emails, but I'll assume they exist. I didn't send them. Nor do I condone them. More than that, and more than McClelland is willing to say with regards to Deb Frisch's vile comments, I'll say that anyone who levels that sort of allegation at McClelland is guilty of the same thing Frisch is.

My point has always been the same: McClelland has provided moral support to a person who has admitted to making vile comments about the young son of a conservative blogger, using an infamous child murder as the basis of a cruel taunt. McClelland has never said that the comments were unacceptable, and has gone further to say that Frisch should not have lost her job but remained working as a teacher. One wonders just what one has to do to be ineligible to mold young minds in McClelland's estimation.

To me, McClelland's choice to support Frisch makes him unwelcome in civilized company. And certainly not welcome in my company. As a father with young children, anyone, including McClelland, who takes Frisch's side on this without at least condemning the remarks she made has to be watched carefully. Just what sort of value does he put on children?

I don't care to know.

But to make it clear, McClelland's moral failure is not the same as a threat. I said so in my original post. Anyone who thinks otherwise about McClelland is wrong, and anyone who has made that allegation needs to retract it immediately. Failure to do so makes you no better than Frisch or McClelland.

And a face-to-face is never going to happen, McClelland. I have addressed the issue in this post. Deal with it yourself. You know what you need to do.

Compare and contrast.

Oh, and one of the two respondents is Professor Deb Frisch herself.

[Welcome readers from Hot Air. Despite the shrill nature of this little dust-up in the blogosphere, Angry in the Great White North is usually a lot more sedate and measured.]

Remember how Robert McClelland accused me of wanting to beat up children because I said it wouldn't have bothered me one bit if someone who witnessed those three drunken louts urinating on the National War Memorial had given them a thorough thrashing? I even mused about how in less enlightened times, there was the concept of the "hue and cry" which compelled bystanders to help fight crime.

Now as it turned out, two of the three were 17 (but somehow able to get their hands on alcohol). Still, that makes them "young offenders" in the eyes of the law. In McClelland's mind, though, that makes them equivalent to children, and so that makes me a child-beater:

Two of the war memorial urinators are under 18 years of age. So clearly conservatives believe it's acceptable to beat up children.

McClelland's grasp on logic is not only tenuous, it also selectively applied. Some people who threaten children are stoutly defended by McClelland:

Tough break. It's a hard way to learn that there's a double standard when it comes to death threats. The right can go on national tv and make them (ie. Adams Apple Annie) but the left never can; not even in a moment of anger on some paste eater's blog.

You shouldn't have resigned though. The right whingers only foam at the mouth for a short time before becoming distracted by their next 5 minute hate.

Posted by: Robert McClelland at July 8, 2006 11:23 AM

Who was the subject of these words of support? Deb Frisch, formerly a professor at the University of Arizona. She resigned after she posted threats aimed at toddler.

Note, I was musing about a 17-year-old getting a firm clip to the head for getting drunk and defacing a war memorial.

To McClelland, that makes me a threat to children.

Frisch was hoping that the two-year-old son of a conservative blogger would be murdered or sexually abused, posting her comments at Protein Wisdom under the handle "Southwestpaw".

To McClelland, that makes Frisch the victim of vicious right-wingers when she was forced to resign.

Am I making this up? If you haven't been following this story, be prepared to be shocked:

I'd like to hear more about your "tyke" by the way. Girl? Boy? Toddler? Teen? Are you still married to the woman you ephed to give birth to the tyke?

Tell all, bro!"

***

"[...] as I said elsewhere, if I woke up tomorrow and learned that someone else had shot you and your "tyke" it wouldn't slow me down one iota. You aren't "human" to me."

***

" Ooh. Two year old boy. Sounds hot. You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby.

Are you still married to the woman you humped to produce the toddler? "

***

Give your pathetic progeny (I sure hope that mofo got good genes from his mama!) a big fat tongue-filled kiss from me! LOTS AND LOTS OF SALIVA from Auntie MOONBAT, if you don't mind!

Somehow, Jeffy boy, I think you get off on the possibility of Frenching your pathetic progeny, even if it is a boy. You seem like a VERY, VERY sick mofo to me, bro.

All the creepy details are at Michelle Malkin.

But back to our friend McClelland. In my response to McClelland's nastiness, I mentioned my 5-year-old daughter in the context of knowing right from wrong. I wish I hadn't now. For the first time, I feel nervous knowing that McClelland knows I have young children.

It's not rational. Unlike McClelland, I know when I'm being driven by emotions. I know in my mind that McClelland is no threat to her, and I'm sure he is no threat to anyone's children.

Still, to provide moral support someone like Frisch...that takes a special kind of weird.

McClelland, stay away from me and my family. Don't ever come near my kids. Ever.

Hat tip to Let Freedom Reign.

Update: McClelland responds to my point that his support for Deb Frisch and her threatening statements about a toddler while at the same time calling me a proponent for the beating of children disturbs me so much that I have to say that I don't want him anywhere near my family. He says, quite succinctly:

Only a sick loser uses his child as a prop in his political battles. Grow up Janke, you sick bastard.

Of course, he does not tell his readers why I would want to keep McClelland away from children.

I guess we need to recap.

Deb Frisch to a conservative blogger: Ooh. Two year old boy. Sounds hot. You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby. [One of several comments in the same vein.]

Robert McClelland on Deb Frisch's subsequent resignation: Tough break. It's a hard way to learn that there's a double standard when it comes to death threats.

Steve Janke: If you can't figure out that death threats against children are not some sort of free speech for liberals to indulge in without consequence, then you can't be trusted with children. Period. Something is wrong in the way you think. Your values are twisted in a way that is difficult to describe.

Despite my problems in understanding how you think, I can make this contrast quite clearly. For the crime of wanting to keep a person who defends Frisch's comments without even a note of criticism or concern about those comments away from my children, you have labeled me a "sick bastard".

Yet I have yet to hear the label you've attached to Deb Frisch. She was the one who made comments about molesting and murdering the two-year-old son of a blogger whose politics are different from hers. Seems to me that she was the one who makes children into props for her sick quasi-political snuff fantasies.

You should be more careful about who you defend, McClelland. People might think you are the one with the problem.

And for that, stay away from my kids. I just don't know how deep that problem goes.

[Oops: McClelland, not McLelland. McClelland, stay away from me. Thanks to Cynic.]