Spencer to get same treatment as any other e-mail abuser

Robert Spencer has continued to send me insulting e-mails, and I realize that I should have done with him a long time ago what I do with any other abusive or irrational correspondent: block his e-mails. And that is what I am doing now. In the future, if Spencer has anything to say to or about me, he’ll have to say it at his own website; and if I feel like responding, I’ll respond here.

I feel I made a mistake yesterday by posting Spencer’s e-mails, in which, among many other insane insults, he called me “the lowest form of character assassin.” I should have told him and his reader Mike S. that if they expected me to publish or respond to their comments, they had to change the way they spoke to me—just as Mayor Giuliani, in a great moment early in his mayoralty, said he would have nothing to do with New York’s so-called black leaders until they changed the way they spoke about him.

Also, given Spencer’s statement yesterday that he would walk out of any room in which I was present, it is absurd of him to keep writing to me. But it’s typical of the man’s radical inability to take a consistent and dependable stand on anything. He wants everything both ways at once—from the nature of Islam to what to do about Muslim immigration to his dealings with critics.

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As further indication of where Spencer’s coming from, and why his e-mails will be blocked from now on, here’s an e-mail from him that got through my e-mail filter:

Robert Spencer writes:

You are a despicable, deeply dishonest, and highly unbalanced human being.

James W. writes:

Despicable, dishonest, and highly unbalanced. I picture Laurence Olivier as Mengele, drilling Dustin Hoffman’s teeth as he seeks to extract information from him. You have found a hell of a nerve, Doctor Auster.

Despicable and unbalanced are qualities you are not, but they are at least subject to opinion. Honesty is not subject to opinion. You are honest to a fault, and a fault is sometimes what honesty can be. I would say you are occasionally guilty of excessive honesty, but of dishonesty, never. It is fortunate Spencer has included that accusation in his attack, because it works as a poison pill.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 08, 2008 10:37 AM | Send