How to be a Coward

Regular readers of my humble prose might have picked up on a kind of common thread when discussing Conservapedia's group of administrators. Admittedly, there's probably several themes, amongst them stupidity and bullying, but first and foremost they are, to a man, a craven bunch of chicken-livered yes-men who live to lick the shit off Andrew Schlafly's shoes. They know all too well that Conservapedia is the only place where they have any kind of influence, and can pass themselves off as even vaguely knowledgeable - as evidenced by Brian Macdonald/Karajou's frequent 2-day 'I'm leaving and never coming back" stunts - and thus they will do anything to make sure they stay in Andy's good books. All this means is that Andy has a compliant echo-chamber, which serves to reinforce his own special brand of crazy. Another example is where he demanded to know if an editor, who had made the mistake of calling an entry "un-encyclopaedic" possessed a degree in "Encyclopaedia Science," failing which he was not qualified to make such assessment.

Now, I mentioned Brian Macdonald for a reason. This administrator, who is a weird mix of Popeye, Capt. Haddock and Charles Manson, is easily one of the most bullying of administrators. On more than one occasion, he has demanded that editors drive to their library, take out the book they are using as a reference and read the debated passage to him. I kid you not. (If you don't believe me, lookup TZB 670/9f2ce177201fc389.html "Historical matters and Kool-Aid")

Yes, Brian Macdonald is a man who brooks no trouble, has anger-management issues and a hair-trigger temper.

And a yellow streak a mile wide.

That's quite an assertion to make I hear you ask (hopefully?). Well, let's have a look at one example where Brian rolls over and lets his Lord and Master fuck him publicly up the ass. Metaphorically of course. Brain's retired from the navy so that sort of thing probably doesn't happen anymore.

Now I'm sure I don't need to remind you about just how horrible Conservapedia's "article" on Pres. Obama is. Nevermind the fact that Andy bears a personal grudge against his former boss on the Harvard Law Review, it now sports such rubbish as the Presidents's birth name being Barry Soetoro. Nevermind the fact that his mum only met Mr Soetoro 6 years later.

Still undaunted, Karajou decided to take it upon himself to make the article look more encyclopaedic. He wasn't going to actually remove any of the garbage contained in the article, just put things in a better order. For example, one would expect a biography to come before all the alleged scandals.

He also did spring a surprise on anybody. He made his intentions very clear in a message to the Zeuglodon Blues administrators' group, entitled "Obama article changes". In it he says,

So far, I did a re-arranging of half the article, and the other half I'll work on today. This does not involve a reduction of anything in the article itself with the exception of the introductory paragraph,
which I feel should be much shorter in addition to getting right to the point on his socialism.

The new layout is as follows:

Intro
Early Life and Education
Chicago Life (includes early activism, politics, etc)
Illinois state political life and voting record
Personal beliefs (includes religion, socialism, etc)
United States Senate
Presidential run (this includes the birth certificate controversy)
Presidency

I'm going to set this article from the standpoint that he was actually born in Hawaii, as the lawsuit stems from a Democrat who has a history of filing frivolous lawsuits anyway. Conservative talk show host Phil Valentine has come up with the more likely theory that the reason Obama wanted the birth certificate hushed was that he was born as a "caucasian" or "mixed race", rather than as "African-American".

He then adds a second post, saying,

Ok, it is finished and posted.

One of the criticisms leveled against us is articles like what I have just corrected, and not so much in facts posted, but in how the article was previously laid out. State senate stuff added to the US senate topic, the same abortion info presented several different times when only once was enough, etc etc etc.

We do have to take a critical look at many of our articles and ensure that they are presented properly.

Now, nothing wrong with that would think. The only problem is that Andy has so many crazy toes that everybody steps on one at least once. This time was Brian's turn. Andy leaps in and reverts all Brian's work, with the edit comment of "restoring traditional placement; any massive rearrangement that dumbs down the entry needs more discussion before considering it."

Wow. So one of Andy's handy administrators was "dumbing down" an article. It should also be mentioned that besides his TZB posts, Brian also mentioned his changes on the talk-page. But Andy clearly couldn't be bothered to even skim through these posts, prefering to publically slap Brian down.

So, how would the angry one respond? Would he tell Andy that he had asked for discussion? Would he revert Andy's changes? Would he leave and never come back? What would Brian do?

The answer is: Nothing. Nothing at all.

Because he was too shit-scared of offending Andy and possibly harming the only position where he can wield some measure of authority.

And that is why Brian Macdonald, like his fellow administrators, is a craven, gutless coward.