Mrs G’s post

{Updated:  Suffice it to say that this post is now “posted with permission”.  Also suffice it to say that Mrs. G is fucking AWESOME dude and we maybe (crosses fingers) haven’t seen the last of her, uh, work!}

Last week a reader shot me an email and let me know that Mrs. G has apparently closed Derfwad Manor (aka The Women’s Colony) so the link to her beautifully written post was no longer valid.  I checked it out myself and discovered she was right.  I searched high and low for a way to contact Mrs. G and, so far, haven’t found one.  I located a cached copy of her post and have put it here as well as in the forum. {PWSux update: I did have an email exchange with Mrs. G and I’m happy to say that the issue was technical issues with her host so the post is still there but she did give me permission to keep it here as well.}

I’m of the opinion that this is a very important situation because for many it was the first red flag or possibly even the straw that broke The Pioneer Woman’s back – it certainly was for me.  Mrs. G was very well known in blogging circles and a well-liked guest poster over at Ree’s site so it was VERY eye-opening for a lot of us to see how Ree handled the situation, not to mention the fact that she later deleted the entire post on her site so it’s like it never happened.  I noticed she left many of Mrs. G’s posts up so it wasn’t quite as thorough a cleansing as when Dutch Girl left, but still – very chickenshit of her.

If you’re unaware of the backstory leading up to this situation (and anyone who remembers more detail, please feel free to jump in) let me summarize.  Mrs. G was a paid guest poster in the homeschooling section of The Pioneer Woman and, from everything I remember, things went along swimmingly for quite some time until this particular incident.

The post was available on the internet (and still is) for years, however, I want to make it known that if I do hear from Heather asking that it be removed from my site, I will.

I’ve copied this post exactly as it was but have added a couple of editing notes which are clearly marked.

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Intolerance  in The First Person (by Heather G.)

Last night I resigned (after many months) as one of Pioneer Woman’s regular homeschooling contributors. I was sad to resign because I love writing about the subject of homeschooling to a large group of readers and because Ree was benevolent in inviting me to be a part of her enormously popular blog and because girlfriend paid me good money for those posts—there are emotional and financial consequences to my decision.

Ree responded to my resignation with kindness and generosity and she expressed regret for how the whole situation went down (more on that in a sec). I told her I was going to write honestly and respectfully about this experience one time and then never mention it again. And I won’t. She politely requested two things:

Request # 1: To please not paint Pioneer Woman Readers with a broad brush, because the post {PWSux editing note: that post was LONG ago deleted by Ree} that caused some folks to instigate this blogospheric Jihad received mainly positive comments (that is true), and because she had the experience of meeting hundreds of thousands of her readers during her book tour and they were the nicest people in the world. I absolutely agree with her (there isn’t a blogger of Ree’s stature who doesn’t have a minority of oddballs) and will honor this request because I, in general, try to avoid painting anyone with a broad brush—with one exception that both delights and vexes my readers: I think people who cheat on their spouses are knuckleheaded bottom feeders.

Request # 2: To please, as someone in her inner circle, keep our behind the scenes conversations private. Now as much as I (and my ego) would like to consider myself as part of Ree’s inner circle, she is simply being gracious in granting me that status. We have never met. We have never talked on the phone. Our communication has been confined to short (mainly five sentence) and sweet emails and two instant message exchanges—no deep conversations, but, nevertheless, I will, with one exception that pertains to a poor choice on my part, honor that request as well.

So, anyone over here looking for internet drama is going to be thoroughly disappointed.

Finally…How The Whole Situation Went Down.

On Thursday, I submitted a homeschooling post to Ree on how I chose to teach my own children (now teenagers) religion.  I wrote Ree that I hoped it would be interpreted in the spirit in which it was intended. She said she would post it, and we both acknowledged it would be interpreted in many different ways. Most writing is.

Now I’m going to speak to the poor choice I mentioned up above. Ree asked me to edit the first paragraph. It originally began: “I have been reading Pioneer Woman long enough to know that most of her readers homeschool for religious reasons…” Ree wrote back and asked me to edit my first few lines because she didn’t,  ”want to reinforce the contention on the part of the occasional detractor that PW readers are largely right wing Chreeschins. ” I changed the opening sentences and it was a huge mistake, which I regret, because any writer worth her salt knows changing something she believes to be true is selling out, and I cop to it. I ignored my intuition to try to disarm readers, to let them know I wasn’t waltzing in like some spiritual authority.

Ree put the post up on Thursday night and when I opened my laptop on Friday morning, my inbox was filled with hate mail assuring me that I was going to hell, was a horrible parent, a scourge to the Pioneer Woman’s blog and just about everything but a child of God. The Women’s Colony, this blog, had been hijacked by internet trolls who left an enormous amount of cruel comments and scripture quotes from what seemed close to 77% of the Bible.

“Satan, that deceived the whole world. He was thrown down to earth, and all his angels with him.” (Rev. 12: 9)

“Put on all the armor that God gives you, so that you will be able to stand up against the Devil’s evil tricks. For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers of this dark age.” (Eph. 6: 11-12)

“Your enemy, the Devil, roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Be firm in your faith and resist him.” (1 Peter 5: 8-9)

You get the idea.

I also made another huge mistake. In the homeschooling post I submitted, I linked my daughter’s amazing essay on her own spiritual journey. Apparently, there are lousy, deplorable  grownups in the world who feel comfortable insulting and mocking a teenager’s most vulnerable thoughts…but I just kept deleting.

So, Ree and I touched base, and she asked me if I wanted her to moderate the negative comments. {PWSux editing note:  how……. odd that she would ask Mrs. G if she wanted comments moderated when she so HEAVILY moderates them for her own posts?} I told her no, because I thought it would be counterintuitive to the heart of the post. She said she had gotten a few negative emails, and I told her I had received many. We left it at that.

The Christian hate mail and comments kept coming in.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I had some atheists come after me, too. They resented that I was shoving religion down my kids’ throats.

Honestly, it was like a harmonic convergence of halfwits.

I’d like to take a moment to thank the Jews for leaving me alone.

One commenter said she had watched some of my videos and that I was obviously a foul mouthed alcoholic who, get this, had to drink to get through the Christmas holidays, and that I had some serious mental problems.

All true…and somehow it helped to know at least one reader really “got” me.

By Saturday, I was losing it, so I put up a post requesting that anyone who had issues they wanted to discuss that had nothing to do with content on the Women’s Colony please quit leaving comments on the blog and just email me directly. I gave out both my email addresses and I promised to respond politely to each and every one. Plenty of people emailed (and I did write them all back—except for a moronathon named Jan Westemeier who told me she was shocked to read I was only 42 because I looked 60 and that I need to dye my hair and get new glasses and aspire to look like Courtney Cox because she’s 42 and LOOK AT HER!) but the comments on the blog continued.

Late Saturday night, we received two phone calls. One from a woman damning me to hell and the other from a guy quoting some gibberish from Saint Anthony…I didn’t really get the gist of his point, because I hung up on his Jesus, Mary and Joseph loving ass. I don’t use my last name on this blog (though most readers know it), but apparently some sleuthy readers looked into my children’s Facebook information and took more opportunities to introduce them to the path of righteousness and, bless their hearts, pray for my kids’ souls. It was at this point that I started to feel fear. I took the phone off the hook.

I woke up Sunday to more hate mail, more comments to delete and, finally,

PERSONAL RAGE.

If I ruled my own house, I would have spent the day swigging gin & tonics and She-Hulk stomping through the house screaming obscenities. But I don’t rule my own house. I have a family—who, incidentally, didn’t ask for any of this, so I went grocery shopping to get fancy foods for us to eat while we watched the Oscars. Yay Hurt Locker!

And then I wrote my resignation to Ree. I explained that I could deal with cruel comments because, hey, that’s blogging. I explained that I could handle the emails because, hey, at least they’re contained, right?

But handle the phone calls, the violation of my family, The insult to my hair?

No.

Ree finally weighed in on the whole situation late Sunday afternoon. You can find it in the homeschooling section four posts down—it’s comment 207 of 222. {PWSux editing note:  actually you can’t because the chickenshit “Keepin’ it Real” Queen of Bullshit, Ree, deleted the entire thing in what we like to refer to as, The Image/Brand Cleanup.}

Along with the bashing, it was equally disturbing to receive emails from readers (hers and mine) who insisted their supportive comments weren’t getting through, weren’t being published. Apparently the comments section was being carefully orchestrated to create a vibe that was palatable to those who were offended and those who were not.

When I resigned, I wrote the following:

I know you can’t be responsible for the hundreds of thousands of people who read your blog, but I’ll tell you this: I would have made a request to my paltry readership to perhaps relax and take it easy rather than leave an easy breezy comment (I truly get that you don’t want to offend anybody) at what is hopefully the end of this unpleasant journey of hate or, as you put it in your comment ‘anonymous shenanigans.’

And I would have.

Tagged as: homeschooling, Mrs. G, pioneer woman, ree drummond