On Apologies
August 14th, 2007 by EyeOnWinerDave posted, yesterday, what he called an apology to Jason Calacanis. It was unconvincing and, frankly, not much of an apology at all.
I gave it some thought, and I decided to apologize to Jason for interrupting his speech at Gnomedex. I wish I hadn’t done it. It’ll never happen again. That’s a promise.
If the post had ended here, we’d have a real apology. It would almost sound sincere, probably about as close as Dave gets. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to actually apologize to anyone. Too much ego. He continues…
That said, I have a lot of trouble believing that a street fighter from Brooklyn (I’m from Queens) is still having an emotional time with this. But some people are very sensitive, and I’m willing to believe, long enough to apologize, that Jason is still feeling emotional about being interrupted on Friday.
Wait… who said Jason was still feeling emotional? Who said he was ever feeling emotional? Hooray for Dave’s out-dated views on masculinity and his (weak) attempts to emasculate Calacanis with a kind word and a smile. Very sneaky.
However it could also be a tactic, an attempt to silence a critic. I’ve seen that done before too. Recently I objected to a piece written by Richard MacManus on ReadWriteWeb, where he characterized my posts about RSS as warfare. I asked him if there was a way I could write about RSS without it being warfare. Richard is a good guy, who I’ve met many times, and I know him to be thoughtful, and he had a thoughtful response. The answer is that I should be able to write about RSS without it being characterized as warfare.
In Dave’s world, “thoughtful” means “he agreed with me.” That aside, this paragraph is fluff with the exception of turning his apology into FUD at best and a smear piece at worst. An “attempt to silence a critic”? How, exactly, does one silence Dave Winer? Nobody is under any sort of delusion that it’s possible.
If the blogosphere is about anything, it’s about discourse. So if someone has an opinion about a format or a product, not only are they allowed to express their opinion, it’s actually encouraged. It seems this is part of our shared values. So we should be very careful about characterizing mere writing as somehow harmful, or war-like. Imagine if President Bush had written a series of blog posts about Saddam Hussein instead of starting a war. Wouldn’t the world be better off if he had? (I know it’s ridiculous, but I’m making a point).
And if Dave had kept his criticisms to his blog, I doubt Calacanis would’ve cared. The big problem was that he decided to be an ass about it in REAL LIFE, which Dave seems to get confused with the internet. That’s okay, so does Brad Paisley.
Writing freely is also an American value, not just a value of the blogosphere, it’s right there in the Constitution. We are encouraged to speak our mind. And if I may be so bold, it’s also a special value of people from New York. So if a boy from Brooklyn doesn’t want a boy from Queens to write his ideas on a blog, well that’s not a problem for the boy from Queens. smile
More mischaracterizations. Calacanis didn’t want Dave not to post on his blog. He wanted him not to be an asshole in public. Perish the thought.
The rest of the piece goes on and on, rehashing the things he was saying that got him into this mess. Some apology.
I thought, maybe, that he just didn’t understand how apologies work. Maybe he’s such an ego-maniac that the concept is foreign to him. In Dave’s world, is an apology just another way to continue an argument?
No, apparently not. He knows what kind of apologies he’d like to see. Now… compare the kind of apology he’d like to the one that he gave. Absurd.
He then goes on to say that, if Jason were a decent person, he’d also apologize to Google, conference attendees, another blogger, and Jesus Christ himself.
Frankly, I don’t think Dave is in any position to be suggesting apologies (he’s not very good at them) or acting as the arbiter of mensch-dom (since he’s not one himself by any estimate).
Also note: why isn’t Dave chastising himself for getting personal and implying that Calacanis isn’t a good person? Hmm…
August 14th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I don’t know, a lot of Dave-detractors are getting more and more upset about this but I have to think this incident has reached the point where I just feel sad.
You have to think Dave’s existence is a pretty lonely one at this point. Even with a few lunches here and there the reality is that most people have things to do with their day (work, spouse, family) and Dave has nothing. So by necessity he spends a lot of time alone.
This should be enough to encourage a little sympathy for the man. I mean, we feel bad for a person who reaches their 50s and realizes that all they have is their career so what do you say about a person who doesn’t even have that?
The other point is that he’s obviously a very angry man. In my life I don’t ever manage to reach the level of anger that he reaches when someone simply disagrees with him. I couldn’t even speculate as to why that anger is there but I can understand how that, combined with massive amounts of time, can color someone’s view of even the most benign event.
Which I think is what happened here. You can almost see his progression, particularly from yesterday when he was willing to give a half-ass apology to today when he’s convinced that he was the sole wronged party in the whole thing.
Anyway, a little anti-rant there, sorry for the length. There just comes a point where my heart can’t help but go out to the guy. As rotten as he can some times be I can’t help but think he gets so much worse than he gives.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
True enough, but sympathetic responses like yours are one of the reasons Dave treats people the way he does. He takes the wrong message from them. They fuel his sense of victimhood, enabling him to take a situation like this Calacanis feud — which he instigated against a friend — and convince himself that he’s the wronged party.
I’d feel sorry for him, but he’s gone out of his way to hurt too many people over the years, and he only attempts to make amends if his target is powerful like Calacanis.
Read what he wrote to Steve Kirks, the former product manager for Radio UserLand who worked for years to serve its users and make a go of the product. What kind of person tells somebody else, “You’re not special. You need to hear that loud and clear.”?
August 14th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
“Nobody is under any sort of delusion that it’s possible.”
ROFL!
August 14th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
@Bullshit Mancuso - I remember that incident though to be honest, given where my thoughts currently are, it just makes me feel worse for him. A guy that’s so twisted up and angry inside that he lashes out at his admirers like they were his enemies just makes him seem more worthy of pity imho.
Again, I’m not saying he isn’t to blame for everything he’s done just that this incident has helped me to temper my opinion of him with a little bit of sympathy as well.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
My favorite trick of the whole thing:
Dave builds an imaginary case around that he was singled out, when many people interrupted.
According to Jason, Dave chewed Jason out in person 3 different times. This is not even counting the amount of crap Dave has put up on the web about Jason.
Dave is behaving singularly, and it merits being discussed singularly. Unless other people accosted Jason in the hallway and went through the other shenanigans that preceeded Jason’s blog post, it’s Dave who owes an apology, not just to Jason, but to the everyone-else Dave is smearing by claiming they acted equivalently him.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
PS Jason, is, and no sarcasm here, really a class act. To absorb all of that crap from Dave and simply de-escalate with “Apology accepted,” man… Good for him for rising above.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
PPS When Dave apologies to the Cadenhead family, for inviting child molesters to rape a member of their family, he can start lecturing people on apologizing and being a mensch.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Tom, what you say may be true, but that only makes winer pitiful, not pitiable.