I Am NO LONGER a Hot Air Affiliate!

Make waves and get the shaft, right?

Yesterday I noticed this Headline on Hot Air: “Meeting of the Minds: Ultra-Orthodox Jews host Amish“. Knowing Hot Air’s latest (and I must say unfortunate) propensity to set up “humorous” headlines I tried to parse it in a way that wasn’t, well, insulting to both parties.

I mean, when we say … humorously … that there’s a “meeting of the minds” we usually mean something like a “convocation of knuckleheads” … right?

Just to be clear … I say “unfortunate” above because, well, I do believe the trend to be unfortunate.  Not only is the new brand of “humor” repetitive, it is also somewhat unimaginative, parochial and sophomoric.  The site seemed, since Michelle handed it over, to be on the skids … intellectually anyway.

So, just to see what the gist might be, I clicked the comments … and was saddened to see a number of them that … to put it kindly … bordered on the anti-Semitic.

I then made a comment myself on the article … to wit:

You’ve got to be kidding … “Meeting of the Minds”? Is that supposed to be funny or ironic? I know nothing of the Amish, but the Chabad Lubavitchers are a great, brilliant people. They are, to a person, among the most intelligent people I’ve ever met or hope to meet … as well as the most charitable.

This site has been going downhill since Michelle left it … if this is an indication of the direction its going in then take me off your list.

Which was responded to in this manner:

Perhaps you should meet some Amish, then. Come here to PA and find out for yourself.

I then replied:

I’m sure that they are very nice … I’m Jewish and attend a Chabad shul here in the DC area, so I merely speak from what I know.

… which I, in my innocence, believed to be perfectly innocuous. I was simply claiming ignorance of the Amish and speaking to my own experience with the Lubavitchers … which has been uniformly excellent. This remark, however, was greeted thusly:

I would call him racist, but since he’s a Jew it’s genetically impossible.

DFCtomm on April 1, 2009 at 7:46 PM

… which … correct me if I’m wrong … sort of crosses the border into the land of Jew-hate. Ignoring of course the fact that it makes no sense.

So now I had a “headline” that seemed to be calling … albeit ironically … two groups of people (one of which I am associated with and admire) “knuckleheads”, as well as some Jew-hating trolls wandering around the site. As I had what I fondly imagined to be a friendly relationship with both Hot Air and Michelle Malkin (I was, after all, their DC Affiliate from the very beginning at Michelle’s personal request … I have also met and spoken with Michelle subsequently on several occasions and we have emailed together on occasion) I emailed them (both Hot Air and Michelle) with this:

Michelle,

When you asked me, before Hot Air went live, to be your DC Affiliate, I was surprised, honored and pleased. I took the role quite seriously then and tried to do my best. Since then, I hope, I have at least met, if not exceeded, your expectations when covering the lunatics that march here in DC from time to time.

However, since you left Hot Air I have noticed a definite change in the tone of the site.

Today, I was surprised and chagrined to see the headline, “Meeting of the Minds: Ultra-Orthodox Jews host Amish”. Frankly I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was that supposed to be funny? What was the writer of the headline trying to say? It seemed, at first glance at least … somewhat insulting to both communities.

However, I went so far as to check the comments on the post, which can be seen here: http://hotair.com/headlines/?p=35595

I was stunned at the low level anti-Semitic junk being written.

I myself contributed to the discussion with this post:

“You’ve got to be kidding … “Meeting of the Minds”? Is that supposed to be funny or ironic? I know nothing of the Amish, but the Chabad Lubavitchers are a great, brilliant people. They are, to a person, among the most intelligent people I’ve ever met or hope to meet … as well as the most charitable.
This site has been going downhill since Michelle left it … if this is an indication of the direction its going in then take me off your list.”

It was met with more anti-Semitic remarks and innuendo.

As such, I am requesting that you remove Age of Hooper from your blogroll at Hot Air. I refuse to be associated, even loosely, with the type of community that harbors such individuals.

Thank you very much for all of your past support, and for the honor you did me by including me at such an early stage in the website’s development.

I hope that we, as individuals, can continue to work together.

Respectfully,

Charles Ryder
Age of Hooper

Now, frankly, I naively believed that as a result of this email someone would take a second look at that post, along with my comments and the bizarre reactions they elicited and simply write back with an apology and a promise that such things were not representative of Hot Air. Or perhaps point out any misconceptions I may have been laboring under.  I thought that the email was respectful and that I made my case without getting too emotional about it.  Like so many “resignation letters” I expected this to be more in the manner of a firm “heads-up” that things may be headed in a bad direction.

I thought I deserved, as a result my long association with Hot Air, at least a return email with an explanation; even if the final decision was to delete my link.

However, such was not to be. I simply discovered today that my blog was erased off the blog roll. Nice.

So, when faced with a choice between a few Jew-haters and someone with whom they have had a long … and I might say fruitful … association, the new management decides to side with the trolls. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

Wonderful.

Nice direction, guys.  Good luck with that.

And, just in case any of this gets flushed down the memory hole … I have screenshots.