In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

No, I did not get Anthony Ciolli fired.

Jill

On AutoAdmit, Anthony writes:

My impression from the phone conversation was that this was the chronology:

1) Jill Filipovic from Feministe tells WSJ that I worked at EAP&D

2) WSJ reporter calls EAP&D, and the firm says I had my offer rescinded.

3) WSJ reporter emails me saying they’re going to run a story on it tomorrow.

Believe me, the last thing I wanted was this to be public. I just want to be left alone.

I did not know where Anthony worked, and I took no steps to get him fired. Apparently someone did post his firm on a 600-plus comment thread two months ago. I didn’t do anything with that information, and didn’t even pay much attention to it when it was posted. I don’t remember reading it. I may have, or it may have gotten lost in the 600-comment shuffle. Either way, I didn’t commit it to memory, and I didn’t pass it on to anyone else. If you had asked me two days ago where Ciolli was employed, I wouldn’t have known. I definitely didn’t contact Ciolli’s firm, WSJ, or anyone else.

The WSJ reporter emailed me yesterday afternoon telling me that Ciolli had his offer rescinded, that the WSJ law blog was doing a story on it, and could he call me for a quote. That’s how I found out about it.

So, sorry AutoAdmit posters (and Anthony), but you’re gonna have to find someone else to blame for this one.

80 thoughts on No, I did not get Anthony Ciolli fired.

  1. Why take responsibility and admit to poor personal/professional conduct when it is so much easier to blame a dumb crazy bitch?

    Looks like your previous post (that you hope his career recovers and that he learns something from it) has proven unlikely.

  2. Awwww, he just wants to be left alone. That’s what Jill and the other women you harassed wanted too, bud.
    Ciolli may not have written the offending posts himself, but he welcomed and tolerated them on his board. That says something about his values. Now he has to live with the consequences and any attention the incident brings him.

  3. Oh, please. The WSJ blog has the ass-covering correspondence from EA. They were laying the groundwork for this by asking for his written response long before this WSJ post came out.

    Anthony, you screwed the pooch your own self.

  4. But but Daddy! The Girls are MEAAAAAN! They wont let me treat them like crap with impunity. WAAAAAAH WAAAAAH.

    Some people are not worth the carbon they are based on.

  6. Zuzu is exactly right here. Anyone inclined to believe Mr Ciolli can please go look at the WSJ Law blog. They’ve printed the damn correspondence that refutes his claims utterly.

    (Just to reiterate.)

  7. Let me re-post a comment I made in the other thread, this one with dates:

    Yes, why don’t we read the WSJ post for the timeline:

    The Law Blog reviewed correspondence between Ciolli and the firm, and here’s how it went down:

    On April 11, just over a month after the WaPo story ran, DeWitt sent a letter to Ciolli stating that the firm had recently learned of the controversy involving AutoAdmit, in particular its “off-topic” message board, and that “the information we now have raises serious concerns about your joining our firm.”
    (snip)

    Ciolli, in a letter dated April 16, recounted the history of AutoAdmit and his joining as education director to “develop educational content and publications” for the site, including a working paper on which law schools place the most graduates at elite law firms, well after the site was founded in 2004. He played down his ability to control content on the site. “While I was free to give input and act in an advisory manner–which I often did, with mixed results–Mr. [Jarret] Cohen always had final say over all rules and policies related to the message board,” and that Cohen “rarely granted” his requests to remove offensive material.

    (snip)

    In a letter dated April 20, DeWitt responded that “none of the information you provided resolves the concerns I expressed in my letter regarding your past affiliation with the site,” and that the firm “terminates the employment offered you” on August 16, 2006.

    Jill, have you borrowed Amanda’s Wayback Machine? Because it’s just amazing! By talking to a reporter from the WSJ on May 2, you got Ciolli fired on April 20!

    __________

    That, my friends, is called CYA. EA needed to lay the groundwork for rescinding the offer, so they put it all in writing. Jill’s conversation with a reporter more than a week AFTER the offer was rescinded had shit-all to do with it.

  8. What a whiny-ass baby. Give what you get, asshole. And STFU already about being…..harassed. You’re giving me lulz.

  9. I just read Ciolli’s chronology as answering the question, “How did the Journal know where I worked?”, not “How treacherous Jill from Feministe ratted me out to my firm, causing them to rescind my offer.”

  10. Right, Hector. Because reporters who cover legal issues don’t know anyone who works for law firms or anything who might, like, tell them stuff about controversial shit.

  11. 1) Jill Filipovic from Feministe tells WSJ that I worked at EAP&D

    2) WSJ reporter calls EAP&D, and the firm says I had my offer rescinded.

    Well, I didn’t tell the Journal where he worked. And later in the AutoAdmit thread, someone makes the tie between me and his firing, implying that I contacted his firm. I didn’t contact anyone — not WSJ, not his firm, nada. I wasn’t the one who made this information public.

    Hector, you’re right that Ciolli’s chronology wasn’t saying that I got him fired. I had just read the whole thread, wherein I am being blamed for his firing, and was responding more to that. But I didn’t make that clear in the post.

  12. I had just read the whole thread, wherein I am being blamed for his firing, and was responding more to that

    I see that now, thanks.

    One thing that your experience with AutoAdmit shows: it’s been pretty rancid for a long time now.

  13. Can someone direct me to a clear, succinct summary/explanation of this AutoAdmit thing? I’ve read bits and pieces, but nothing terribly helpful.
    Thanks.!

  14. metablogging 101:

    1. do not blog, or allow to be blogged in your name [i.e. allowed to stand unmoderated in a comment thread for more than, oh, say 72 hours], anything you don’t want your mother/father, your girlfriend/boyfriend, employer/employees, or the authorities to read.

    2. moderate your damn comments!!!1

    3. the veneer of anonymity online is very, very, very thin.

    who does not know these things? ciolli could put this learning experience on his curriculum vitae. heck, maybe he’ll get a book deal out of it.

  15. but you’re gonna have to find someone else to blame for this one.

    Like, perhaps, Ciolli himself. (Personal responsibility FTW!)

  16. Can someone direct me to a clear, succinct summary/explanation of this AutoAdmit thing? I’ve read bits and pieces, but nothing terribly helpful.
    Thanks.!

    If you click to the next post and scroll to the bottom, there’s an explanation.

  17. Okay, I know the Post isn’t the New York Times or anything (it’s better! but yes, smaller), but still… this was a FRONT PAGE ARTICLE on the dead-tree version of the Post. And he really thinks it was you, Jill, that tipped off the firm? Really?

    Hmm.

  18. I like how he whines about being left alone. When Jill wanted to be left alone, it was all “free speech blah blah blah”

  19. Jill, have you borrowed Amanda’s Wayback Machine? Because it’s just amazing! By talking to a reporter from the WSJ on May 2, you got Ciolli fired on April 20!

    So Jill is our Hiro?

  20. Anthony Ciolli has always used “free speech” as a figleaf for the racism and other garbage he allowed people to post on that cesspool. Wink and a nod.

    I don’t feel anything but schadenfreude.

  23. I blame Sweet, Delicious Irony. The Chundernozzles will never take me alive I say! Somebody got a fly in Lil’ Tony’s chardonnay!

  24. Ciolli: Believe me, the last thing I wanted was this to be public. I just want to be left alone.

    When I “vant to be alone,” one of the things it doesn’t occur to me to do is drive downtown, take off all my clothes, and run around shouting at the top of my lungs. Because, well, um… that would be stupid.

    Now within minutes of the moment when you first set up a web site out here on Al Gore’s amazing Intertubes™, your content becomes freely and instantly available to something like two or three billion people scattered across every corner of the globe. If “the last thing you want” is for a particular statement or action of yours to get out in front of the people of the world, then there is literally almost nothing imaginable short of crashing an airplane into a skyscraper that will undermine your plan for privacy so entirely as setting yourself up a web site with your own name all over it out on the wide and boundless Intertubes™.

  25. We had a kid starting at my old firm who had a tech blog, where he would occasionally (Oh my goodness!) use uncouth words beginning with f and s in referring to some new tech products. As we were a patent firm, his blog could conceivably be on the radar of opposing counsel. One of the partners asked him to tone it down.

    If Ciolli was too dumb to see where his association with a message board known for misogyny and anti-Semitism (much less threatening a person with rape) might cause some problems, then he is too dumb to work at any law firm worth hiring.

    Either way, he’s an ass who should have his offer rescinded. The fact that he is trying to blame Jill for it just makes him a bigger ass.

  26. Well, first of all serves him right. Second, Jill, you’re such a big person to do nothing with that information, cuz if I were you I sure would have wanted to hurt him however I could. You’re just awesome.

  27. And as it turns out, after the months of mealy-mouthed defenses of XO’s right to defame regular people going about their common business, Ciolli’s feelings are as delicate as a fucking orchid.

  28. Now he knows how it feels, I guess? Hmmm.

    Teh Intarwubs has consequences, whether fair or not.

  29. I really want to play Cracker Jack psychologist- what is that thing where people have no effing clue how other people feel, where they literally cannot comprehend other people’s existence? That dude is soaking in it.

    I wish I were more of an asshole so I could call him up and just go “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

    Or would that be too baby-ist?

  31. Umm yeah, right the mean feminists did it because no one at a law firm reads The Washington Post with all that tedious stuff about bills, Supreme Court Cases & stuff like that! (in case it’s not translating, I’m being sarcastic).

    Also, given that the firm’s webpage has a pretty strong message re: diversity , like many firms these days, chances are someone may have had a Eclipse (automated news search by Lexis) and/or Intraclip (same thing by its competitor Westlaw) and/or a Google news search just . Any of which could’ve picked up the story and e-mailed it to the person who was designated to get results. Many firms have designated partners or other lawyers and/or staff who work on gathering information about diversity.

    Or maybe they were Googling their hires and saw it. Awww, does the widdle misogynist not like the taste of just desserts?

    At any rate, someone finds out, forwards it to the partner who wrote the letter. Ciolli also changed his tune midstream. At first it was all First Amendment! & they’re asking for it by having their Facebook photos online. But once he realized that not everyone had the same stupid misogynist outlook he did, and there might be consequences for that, he tried to change gears. By giving him a chance to write the letter, the partner probably wanted to see how he would handle the situation. By trying to worm his way out of it, by pinning the responsibility on Jarrett (who was willing to take the fall for Ciolli’s share, because after all, he doesn’t have to take any consequences), he proved to be not only a misogynist, but a wishy-washy, flip-flopping one as well. Despite rumors to the contrary, some firms/partners do value integrity. IMHO, it probably had more to do with his very own letter than anyone telling the firm about his very own actions.

  32. Now within minutes of the moment when you first set up a web site out here on Al Gore’s amazing Intertubes™, your content becomes freely and instantly available to something like two or three billion people scattered across every corner of the globe.

    Well, true, but that does happen in a pretty capricious way, such that most of us post things that are available to the whole world but are completely ignored. Making it really tempting, even if you know all about how public the Internet is, to post things you don’t actually want your mother or employer to see.

    Not that having that level of connection with AutoAdmit is a particularly low visibility Internet thing. Or that you’d expect a front page article in the Washington Post to go unnoticed.

  33. Sorry about that, I didn’t link correctly, here’s the page re: diversity:

  34. Still having trouble with the linking, but if you Google Edwards Angell & Diversity, the link is one of the first things which pops up.

  35. Karma is a crazy feminazi bitch! Suck it up, Anthony, admit that you could have handled the AutoAdmit boards with more responsibility, and get on with your life.

  36. If Ciolli was too dumb to see where his association with a message board known for misogyny and anti-Semitism (much less threatening a person with rape) might cause some problems, then he is too dumb to work at any law firm worth hiring.

    Exactly what I was thinking.

    The fact that he is trying to blame Jill for it just makes him a bigger ass.

    Yes and he has managed to tag himself as the co-worker/ business partner from absolute hell. I wish all the other morons I’ve been forced to suffer came with such a warning label prior.

  37. Jill, I’d just like to chime in that I admire your professionalism. I’d certianly hire you to work at my law firm.

    And personally, the very idea of creatiing an unmoderated forum shows I think a lack of good judgement. Did he really think he could let people post rape threats and *not* have it come back and bite him on the ass? I mean, come on, common sense.

    It seems to me it’s this lack of common sense that maybe cost him the job more than anything else.

  38. So this douche bag runs a site that viciously attacks women, women who never wanted the attention in the first place. He allowed and helped to violate people’s privacy and now he wants to be left alone?

    Fuck him.

  39. Jill, as a fellow former WSN opinion editor (albeit one whose section you apparently didn’t like), I thought I’d share my own experience with AutoAdmit.

    This is from my final column:

    Last January, I published my first op-ed in WSN about Killer Coke at NYU. It was met with widespread critical acclaim such as the following, which I found on an internet discussion board: “dear michael devlin: please follow in your gonzo journalist hero’s footsteps and blow your brains out with a shotgun.”

    Evan-2001 of AutoAdmit.com, I received your letter. Regretfully, I chose not to follow through with your advice.

    Personally, I thought the thread about me was funny, even if every poster at AutoAdmit is a huge prick. But it’s clearly nowhere near the level of threatening rape and including personal information.

    I don’t really understand who posts at AutoAdmit. I’m starting law school next fall (most likely at Duke) and, during the applications process, I quickly learned to avoid that board. They offer zero useful information.

  40. If Jill had indeed contacted his firm, what exactly would be wrong with that? Is there some unwritten rule of online harassment that says exposing employers to their employee’s actual documented behavior is somehow wrong?

    Given that Tony the Shithead was openly running a site that was directly connected to legal practice, his firm’s interest in his activities outside work is completely reasonable.

    Even if the false accusation was true, Tony got what he deserved and Jill did nothing wrong. Given the fact that Jill didn’t take a completely justifiable action in response to the abuse Ciolli facilitated, it looks like he has less then no leg to stand on.

  41. Ha, it was nothing personal, Mike. And I did like your section — in fact, it’s pretty much the only section of WSN I ever read — I just think Gary Miller is a jackass. And I wasn’t exactly a star editor or columnist myself, so, you know, take my criticisms with a big grain of salt.

    Have fun at Duke next year — I almost went there for law school as well. And it’s looking like one of my best friends (another NYU grad) will be there next year, too. I’ll tell her to watch out for you.

    And thoroughly agreed about wondering who the hell posts on AutoAdmit in the first place. Kind of depressing when you think that there are that many law students who are that foul.

  42. Wow, even this turn does not surprise me. Oh shock, he gets bit in the ass by his own actions and … it’s still.not.his.fault. There is quite literally nothing that will make this man take responsibility for his own actions. There will ALWAYS be someone to scapegoat with this. And that is exactly why, Jill, your professionalism and mature conduct in this matter should make him even more ashamed. But, from his previous actions as well as his actions thus far in this situation, I feel that shame is an emotion Mr. Ciolli considers “beneath” him. That’s for “lesser” people who have to take responsibility for their own behavior when it has negative consequences. But Mr. Ciolli is not one of THOSE poor shumucks, no sir!

    Let’s see…Mr. Ciolli was very public about his association with co-running a board where threatening, racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic material was frequently posted. Someone found out about this not-so-secret board and Mr. Ciolli was then held responsible for this association. So, who might possibly be “to blame” for this situation? The posters at the board who felt free to spew hatred? The firm who had ultimate decision over hiring practices? Dare I say it? Mr. Ciolli himself? Clearly not. No, it’s got to be feminists Jill! That makes sense all right…

  43. I want to be left alone? It goes so far beyond plausibility that he could actually be that obtuse, I have a hard time believing that he really wrote that.

  44. Is there some unwritten rule of online harassment that says exposing employers to their employee’s actual documented behavior is somehow wrong?

    No – it’s just that Bill Donahue gets pissy if you steal his shtick.

  45. Oh, whatever, Garbo Ciolli.

    Jill, you’re a class act, and I mean that in the most honest and complimentary way possible.

    Pinko Punko, I think you’re thinking of narcissism. (The fancy psych term is “narcissistic personality disorder,” I believe, but I could be wrong.)

  46. Wow, he wants to live by the sword but sure not die by it.

    Amanda, don’t you know anything? The pointy end of the sword is supposed to go into the OTHER PERSON!

    Ciolli isn’t really in possession of the full Professional Clue Upgrade here. Because having a job offer rescinded (note, he wasn’t FIRED from a job he already had) is small potatoes compared to the real 800-pound gorilla: passing the Bar.

    I would assume that Ciolli’s state, like most states, has a “moral character and fitness” requirement that you have to pass to be allowed to practice law. If I were him, I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about that than about whether or not I got to work at a firm that gave me a BlackBerry on start day.

  47. “I just want to be left alone.”

    Hillarious.

    Seriously, what a hypocritical drama queen. I just read the following comment on the Law Blog:

    My daughter suffered a nervous breakdown, and was forced to withdraw from an Ivy law school, and to give up her dreams, because of vicious and unremitting malicious comments made or facilitated by Cioli and his ilk. It is nice to see that what goes around comes around!

    Jill’s a much bigger person than I, because Ciolli gets absolutely no sympathy from me.

  48. I just want to be left alone.

    *Cue Ally Mcbeal song*

    Hug the blowup boyfreind ciolli, hug it like your professional career depended on it.

    I would assume that Ciolli’s state, like most states, has a “moral character and fitness” requirement that you have to pass to be allowed to practice law.

    Yeah but that means more “don’t nibble the manwhores” more than “don’t be a skeevy tool with no moral fibre”.

  49. It’s only courageous to have AutoAdmit under his own name if he were knoweledgeable about its content, beleived in the principles it was advocating, and was willing to take responsibility for things done with his sanction and tacit consent.
    There’s nothing to respect about not really understanding what you are doing, saying, or consenting to, but actively supporting or taking part in the activity ANYWAY.

    Either set of actions would disqualify him from being a good representative for any self-respecting company.

    If he didn’t stand by what the site had to say, then he had a vast array of choices, including blogging anonymously. If he openly engaged in internet discourse that was invasive and abusive about people who are trained in a intellectual and ethical killing field and expected no repercussions…then he’s just either bone dumb or has a pathalogical case of cognitive dissonance.

    Guess what, Tony. You screwed with a bunch of lawyers who beat ass in a field decidedly skewed against them, didn’t have the sense to do it stealthily, didn’t have the cojones to own up to yoru own behaviour, and are now shocked and pissy about your actions having repercussions. What did you THINK would happen?

  50. I would assume that Ciolli’s state, like most states, has a “moral character and fitness” requirement that you have to pass to be allowed to practice law.

    I work for a company that conducts character and fitness investigations for bar applicants. I don’t know of any state that doesn’t have a moral character requirement.

  51. BTW, a friend of mine in law school got hauled before the C&F committee in Illinois for unpaid parking tickets. So, if you give them a reason, they may very well look a little harder at your application.

  52. Different state bars have different criteria that they are particularly worried about when it comes to the character of their applicants. Some states are very concerned with unpaid debts, just as an example. They also don’t generally like to see when an applicant is unrepentant and completely remorseless about his past indiscretions or foibles. It tends to make a bar committee think that as an attorney that person might not worry so much about the ethical treatment of his or her clients.

  53. Believe me, the last thing I wanted was this to be public. I just want to be left alone.

    That’s odd. The women whose personal contact information was posted by Ciolli’s band of fuckwits wanted to be left alone as well. Boo-hoo Tony boy.

  54. Wow.

    I haven’t ever commented on this whole thing, because I’m not a lwyer or in law school or anything, but I’m really impressed with the whole “Ironic Comeuppance” aspect of it.

    It’s like last weekend, I was just tooling down the freeway, and a jerk in a black sports car comes weaving through the lines and roaring around the right side. About a quarter mile down the road, he was pulled over by a cop.

    Taking the high road can be satisfying, it can.

  55. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    Jill, you’re a much bigger person than I could be. I’d be throwing a schadenfreude party if it were me.

  59. I have a shirt on the back of it that says, “Excuses are for losers.” It’s a good motto in a lot of ways. I can forgive lots of things; people make mistakes including me. I’ve done things that I am not proud of, for sure… certainly not a viking in the moral rectitude department.

    But if I screw up, I don’t pass the buck and I don’t make excuses. Because excuses are lame and everybody sees through them pretty clearly, but people generally respect those who own up to mistakes. From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, it’s far better to just admit errors and ask forgiveness.

  60. This was posted over at cat_macros on livejournal – I really didn’t expect to see a reference to this there

  62. Pingback: Jumping In The AutoAdmit Mess For A Minute at justdreadful.com

  63. Reminds me of Edwards firing Marcotte over her statements at her blog. That was a pretty shitty thing for Edwards to do. Didn’t we all vow never to vote for Edwards after that?

  65. Reminds me of Edwards firing Marcotte over her statements at her blog. That was a pretty shitty thing for Edwards to do. Didn’t we all vow never to vote for Edwards after that?

    I think there’s a huge difference between firing someone because of their political views, and not hiring someone because they enable threats, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, etc on the site that they own.

    If Ciolli had his offer rescinded because employers found his blog and disagreed with his political positions, I’d think that was pretty shitty. But that isn’t the situation here. He actively provided a forum for harassment, threats, and hate speech. Keep in mind also that when lawyers take the bar, they can be dinged for character and fitness — perhaps Ciolli’s firm didn’t want to invest in an attorney who would be penalized for those things.

  66. I have to make dinner for my family, so I will bow out after this, but many of us believe that actively provided a forum for harassment, threats, and hate speech is what Amanda does in terms of men, fathers, and Christians.

    I do appreciate you letting that comment through and addressing the issue, and I in no way think it’s a bad thing that Ciolli got his ass handed to him. I think it’s a great thing!

    (I just think that it was entirely reasonable for Edwards to do the same to Amanda for similar reasons (but not to McEwan.))

  67. (thank you for letting that out of the moderation queue)

    No problem. I think it’s a fair question, and there is a very fine line between firing someone for speech you don’t like and firing someone because they enable ethically and morally questionable (and possibly illegal) behavior. Like I said in the above post, if Ciolli wrote a right-wing blog or engaged in some other speech-related personal activity and his employer rescinded his offer for that, I would absolutely be on Ciolli’s side. But when a firm hires a recent law grad, they’re making an investment, and Ciolli’s decision-making on that board means that he may have issues when he takes the bar, and may have ethical and character-related issues.

  68. Reminds me of Edwards firing Marcotte over her statements at her blog.

    Uh, according to Marcotte, she was not fired. She decided to resign rather than have the shitstorm continue to affect Edwards’s campaign. If you can’t even get Amanda’s own views of the situation correct, are you sure you should be voting?

    I suspect that the law firm rescinding the offer was more concerned about sexual-harassment claims. How sensitive do you think a guy like Ciolli is going to be to a female subordinate?

  69. I have to make dinner for my family, so I will bow out after this, but many of us believe that actively provided a forum for harassment, threats, and hate speech is what Amanda does in terms of men, fathers, and Christians.

    Based on what? I haven’t seen where Amanda or anyone on her blog, for instance, published your real name, address, class and work schedule, and photos of you at the gym so that other people could stalk and potentially rape and murder you. Ciolli did have a hand in doing that.

    As a white, male, former Christian myself (conservative, even), I’d like to think that I could see where you were coming from. But I honestly don’t see that there’s any objective case to made for some kind of parity, here. Ciolli operated a forum where credible threats of violence against women were commonplace, and where information necessary to carry out those threats was provided freely against the wishes of the victims – just because they were women. Amanda runs a thread where the behavior of white male Christians is disagreed with.

    How does that constitute “threats, harassment, and hate speech?”

  70. In a sense, I think it is like Edwards un-hiring Amanda and Melissa, in that Edwards and the law firm are both highly public entities that decided not to hire people’s whose highly public internet presence would embarrass them or cause them grief in the long term. That’s how things work in the real world.

    There are two big differences, as I see it. The first is that Ciolli is a nasty little weasel, whereas Amanda and Melissa are awesome. That’s true but also somewhat besides the point. But the second is that Ciolli was in law school and therefore knew that he was going to want to get a job as a lawyer. Unfortunately for him, he was apparently too stupid or too entitled to realize that being publicly associated with racism and rape threats might get in the way of that goal. Whereas I don’t think Amanda set out to get a job with a major political campaign. If that was her plan and it was more important to her than running a fabulous, sharp, entertaining blog, she probably should have toned down her discussions of religion.

  72. Amanda raised this same concern over at Pandagon. It’s an interesting parallel, but I see huge differences.

  73. I have to make dinner for my family, so I will bow out after this, but many of us believe that actively provided a forum for harassment, threats, and hate speech is what Amanda does in terms of men, fathers, and Christians.

    Ironically, Amanda is very uncomfortable with this development, even though several people at Pandagon have pointed out the differences, so you’re actually in the position of agreeing with her as you disagree with the rest of us.

    But, as others have said, please point out where Amanda allowed or facilitated people in following and taking pictures of private citizens and then posting their full names, addresses, and photographs online, along with commentary about how “rapeable” they are or how much Amanda and her readers would like to “hate-fuck” them.

  74. I fail to see the similarity in the situation at all; in fact if Ciolli is comparable to anyone in that ridiculous wank, it would be Donahoe.

  75. Pinko Punko may have been referring to narcissism, but the term “sociopath” also springs to mind.

    I too am enjoying the schaudenfraude. Karma is a wonderful thing.

  76. Well, once you realize that disagreeing with and making fun of “men, fathers, and Christians” is as bad as and probably worse than publishing names, addresses, and photos of women along with highly descriptive threats, then it all makes sense, doesn’t it? *snark*

  78. I think a big part of it was that he didn’t disavow any of it when specifically asked by said employer. If he had been smart, he would have at least realized that the proper way to backpedal was to decry everything that happened on the board and make it clear that he didn’t agree with it rather than saying “first amendment” and “I didn’t ban anything”. From the clip of the firm’s statement that was in the news article, they were the most concerned that he seemed to show no sense of understanding that the comments on his website were inappropriate and mean.

    So, basically, it’s pretty simple. They didn’t want to hire a dick. He proved that he was, indeed, a dick. So, they didn’t hire him.

  79. RKMK is right. Donahue spread lies and slander about Amanda and Shakes, and has made veiled threats against anyone who has the gall to not genuflect before the Church. His followers threatened and harassed Amanda and Shakes.

    Ciolli’s cohorts threatened women, spread lies and slander about them, and posted their photos/identifying/contact info about them, and refused to take it down when asked (while allowing the liars and stalkers to remain anonymous.

    There is a comparison–but the similarity is between Ciolli and Donahue.

  80. I had no idea of this whole issue, AutoAudit etc etc and when I read an allusion to it on another blog my first reaction was “Oh gee! Sounds like typical overreaction.”

    I was so wrong.

    The young lawyer Ciolli is getting at least what he deserves. And then he has the gall to say that he wanted it all to be private. The law firm declined to fire him not only because he showed lack of judgement but also because he showed dangerous stupiity.

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