Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield has a nice tribute to the late Joel Rosenberg — gun rights advocate, science fiction author, husband, father, and one-time Windypundit co-blogger. When Joel died, Scott wrote a simple eulogy, which was recently visited by an anonymous commenter calling himself “Bill”:
I’m glad this fat, POS is dead. Joel was a complete fucktard.
Rest in Hell you retarded, worthless fuckstick!
Yeah.
“Bill” reminds me of the pseudonymous “Albatross” who left a 500-word rant on a Greg Laden post about Joel explaining that he used to like Joel’s novels but threw them away after Joel insulted his wife, speculation about Joel’s penis size, and this charming tale:
This was VERY amusing to me when I sat behind him for a play in one of the Rarig Center’s theaters. I enjoyed the performance a lot more than I should have, imagining myself kicking him really hard in base of the skull, and then shouting “How’s the chambered round in your goddamned handgun working for you now, asshole?!” at his twitching corpse. Likewise slitting his throat with my pocketknife.
When I pointed out that Greg was mistaken and Albatross was crazy, he dropped in on me:
So don’t mistake cause and effect here. My violent fantasy was caused by Rosenberg’s violent attitudes. Had he been anything but an armed crazyperson with an arrogant sense of his own security, I could have enjoyed that play with no violent thoughts whatsoever.
Anyway, it would be easy to get angry about someone like “Bill” speaking so ill of Joel, but Scott manages to find a more positive reaction:
After giving some thought about what to do with this anonymous hater, this idiot coward who called himself “Bill,” I had an epiphany. I couldn’t offer Joel a gravestone, or a vault, to stand as a monument to his life and the things in which he believed. But this psycho who, even a year after Joel’s death, still hated him so much that he wrote this ignorant screed, provided something that I think Joel would have enjoyed and appreciated.
This is Joel’s monument. That after all this time, he made such a great impact on the liars, the fools and the cowards that they can’t forget him. He still burns in their consciousness. Joel still owns them. They will always be sniveling cowards, filled with rage toward Joel for his life being proof of their worthlessness.
I think Joel would be laughing about this, appreciating the fact that even in death, he matters more than they ever will.
Read the whole thing, including the comments from some other people who knew him.
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