The Hypocrisy of Grumpy Bulldog

Not surprisingly, Tony Laplume was not happy about my July 4th post.  Actually it's a little surprising because he noticed it like immediately after it posted so I wonder if he has a Google alert on his name or something?  Anyway, there was something he pointed out that I had not realized before.

At the end of 2013, I closed down this blog for a little while.  In 2014 I did a few guest posts on his Comics Reader blog.  And then I read his terrible book Pale Moonlight and said it was terrible on Goodreads and Amazon.  Then out of spite he kicked me off his blog.  I mentioned it in this article.

As he pointed out on July 4th, this was pretty much the same thing that happened with the Andrew Leon Debacle(patent pending) only I was the Andrew Leon in this case.  Oh the irony!  The shame!  The hypocrisy!

Or to put a more positive spin on it, this was why, perhaps unconsciously, I had such a visceral reaction when Andrew Leon did it, because I had done it myself and knew how destructive it was.  To a certain type of person, something like that can feel like a betrayal and cause a lot of hurt feelings that linger to this very day.

(Though in the case of the Andrew Leon Debacle(trademark pending) Sandra Almazan never really gave a shit nor was she involved while I fought a futile proxy war.  It was basically like if the Trojan War had been fought with Western civilization tearing itself apart while Helen of Troy were on a beach sipping mai tais somewhere.  It was stupid and pointless--but I won't say I was wrong, only that I was wrong to bother with it.)

Part of being a grown up (a part most people seem to have forgotten) is owning up to mistakes.  And it was a mistake to do that to Tony, as the Andrew Leon Debacle(copyright 2015 by me) later proved.  I shouldn't have done it and I'm sorry.  As acts of contrition, I pulled the negative review of Pale Moonlight from Amazon and changed it to 5 stars on Goodreads because I don't know how to delete it there.

I'm sure he will cynically believe this is just me trying to get on his good side.  But really I violated my own standards by doing that and so I should own up to that and try to correct it.  You know what they say:  if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.