Well, it seems that Dave’s grand vision to have a “respectful disagreement” was actually just a ruse for a “Don’t Criticize Me” session.
Let’s look at Dave’s snide post on the subject, shall we?
We should return the favor and host an open blogging conference in a blue state, and import some of the south’s most famous bloggers. Before the conference we should make sure that the most flamey left-wing bloggers are present, the people who posted in the comments on Dean For America, for example; and urge them to hurl insults at our southern brothers and sisters, while we sit back and enjoy the scene (and leave early because we have better things to do). Then, when they return to their red state homes, in Tennessee perhaps, they will feel properly chastised as we continue to slam them on our blogs, and they’ll hate the north even more than they did before. Think how much better we’d feel about ourselves! (Sorry for the sarcasm.)
I love off-handed apologies like that. “Sorry for the sarcasm.” No you’re not. Quit acting like it was some big accident. Grow a backbone. At any rate, this kind of thing is typical of immature teenagers and Dave Winer. Don’t make any solid accusations that could be refuted… instead shroud your attacks in parallels and metaphors so they can’t be debated on their merits. Passive aggression at it’s finest. For someone who claims to to want to be “in your face”, he certain goes to a lot of trouble to keep the issues from being debated in any serious way.
For a more reasoned description of the events, and Dave’s childish behavior therein, see Stan Brown‘s take:
Unfortunately, we got a confused, disjointed mess that quickly ran off the track. As others have noted, he got into a ridiculous exchange with John Cox that got really heated and went on and on and on to the point that people in the room began to get really uncomfortable. At that point, someone wondered if Dave was trying to conduct some kind of encounter group. As others have noted, his treatment of Robin Burk was totally out of line. He was rude quite often. About a third of the way through, he took a deep breath, slowed everything down and mentioned we still had another hour to go. I was actually feeling sympathy for him at this point. It occurred to me that perhaps he was taking medications that he had forgotten to bring with him on this trip.
Sounds about par for the Dave Winer course. Les Jones has a good piece on the issue as well. Observe:
Dave’s introduction was “How do we disagree with each other without burning bridges?”
Conclusion after attending the session: Winer doesn’t know, and the guy is a massive control freak. He tried to lead the discussion, but once it got off the primrose path he wanted it to be on he turned into a jerk.
Example. Early on, Winer semi-admonished Robin Burk from Winds of Change when she casually mentioned posters and commentors in the course of her comment. Winer stopped her and said he didn’t believe in dividing people into posters and commentors because he doesn’t believe in hierarchies.
That was a feel-good groaner in and of itself, but he became a hypocrite once disagreement started by playing the speaker card, saying he was the leader today and that if Allen Forkum John Cox didn’t like it he could leave. Winer made the classic passive-aggressive mistake of starting out pretending to be incredibly permissive and then being forced to turn into Attila the facilitator to regain control.
Read it all
So at the end of the day, what did we learn? That Dave Winer is a pretentious, passive-aggressive, asshole. So, essentially, nothing we didn’t already know.
The Political Teen has the video of Winer and Brown which you really need to see to believe.