Pete George (yes I know none of you has ever heard of him) likes to pretend that he has a higher standard of ethics than other bloggers. But here is just a sample of the kinds of comments that he allows on his tumbleweed blog site, where ex commenters from well-moderated websites go to bitch in a nice little circle jerk of nastiness.
Over the years I have chosen to ignore his many defamations of me personally as well as of my husband, but today I am choosing to shine some sunlight where it is much needed. He has crossed the line once too often and thinks that he can do so with impunity.
No comments like the ones above would ever be allowed on The BFD. Our moderation team does a sterling job under often trying circumstances. As a News and Views website, The BFD’s well moderated and respectful comment section has nothing in common with most NZ media sites and their Facebook pages.
Pete George is a sad and small little man consumed with a pathological hatred and rampant jealousy that he shows by allowing falsehoods and wishes of physical harm against my husband to remain on his little blog.
Cam has given you all a peek into what it was like for him but until now I haven’t said anything about what it was like for me. I am not going to go into detail about a very difficult part of my life, but I will say that in order to cope I had to make sure that I didn’t read any of the defamations and lies being published by both the legacy media and nasty little blogs like the one belonging to Pete George. It was only over a year later when the dust was starting to settle that I had a quick peek at what had been published since his stroke. It was APPALLING.
I believe they all did it secure (they thought) in the knowledge that a powerful voice had been silenced forever and was now in no position to fight back. They forgot about me. I had been working as a sub-editor on Whaleoil for two years and was able to step up and into the editor’s chair with the support of an incredible team of volunteers who kept me going day after day even as I battled sleep deprivation and the fear that my husband was going to die.
Even now as the Media are smearing The BFD with gay abandon over a little photo, they have forgotten about me. I am the editor of The BFD and it is my team that I work with day after day to put together the content that you all enjoy. If you only read what the media say, I don’t even exist, because it does not fit the narrative they are trying to feed everyone. They don’t seem to think that a woman can be powerful and determined and prepared to work seven days a week to keep a roof over her family’s head. They don’t seem to think that a woman might fight back.
The media no doubt think that they all are feminists yet a female editor has been treated as a nothing, a mere speck in the narrative that they want to spread about The BFD.
They all thought that they had won and that a powerful right-wing voice had been silenced forever. They toasted each other and joked openly online about Cam being a vegetable while at the same time claiming he had faked his stroke and that there was nothing wrong with him.
During the Dirty Politics saga, people like blogger Martyn Bradbury openly expressed the hope that the pressure would cause Cam to kill himself. After Cam’s stroke the people who were the source of the stress that caused his stroke were not satisfied. They wanted him dead. We told them that he was too ill to be dragged into court but they showed no mercy. They would not delay the court hearing, they wanted to cross-examine him for hours and hours at a time and didn’t care that his doctors had said that the stress was highly likely to cause another stroke and kill him.
I was terrified that they were going to kill him by forcing him into court so soon after his stroke. They had backed us into a corner and with Pete George’s help were spreading the lie that there was nothing wrong with Cam despite the medical evidence to the contrary.
With no other options left to us under extreme pressure, we chose to protect Cam at any cost as they had refused to show him any mercy. In fact, they redoubled their efforts to get him into court, so eager were they to finish him off – and yes by finish him off I genuinely believe that their end goal was to kill him.
I look at those comments above and think of the months and weeks and days and hours of rehabilitation and pain that Cam has had to go through and the sheer guts and determination it took for him just to get out of bed in the morning. Those who continue to lie about him and to defame us both have made a fatal mistake. They didn’t factor me into their savage little equation.
I am the editor of The BFD and my team and I are building it brick by brick so that when Cam is ready he can return part-time as a podcaster. His dream of a new media site with podcasts and radio is going to become a reality and little piss ants like Pete George are not going to stop it while I have breath left in my body.
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