Hurting so good

Reader-submitted complaint: I don't understand your jokes about that writer in Toronto.

Hmmm. Well, they're partly inside jokes, but I thought they would be generally understood. Please accept my apologies. I will explain.

I think you mean this "writer". She is not well known outside certain Canadian journalism circles, and even then, only as a joke. She has no talent, but was somehow able to work as a columnist for both of our national newspapers. Over the years, she made more than her share of enemies among her co-workers. I believe some of them read this blog: perhaps they would like to expand on this point. I personally have never worked with her.

She started blogging a couple of years ago, and it was the first time most of us had read her unedited copy. It was horrifying. I've said before that copy editors are angels, but the ones at the Post and the Paper of Record deserve extra kudos for turning her dreck into something that was merely very bad.

Someone started an anonymous parody blog. I've been asked several times, so I will confirm again that I was not the anonyblogger. It became immensely popular and began to attract dozens of commenters who shared their stories of working with her at the Post. This was all done anonymously, which I disliked. I think that if you are going to criticise someone in your industry, you should do it using your own name.

Every once in a while, a comment would appear that defended the writer. Some were from real people; most accused the anonyblogger and his or her fans of being "jelous" of the writer's fame/talent/money/thinness. But some were clearly from the writer herself, although she was posing as her own biggest fan. These comments were consistently terrible: poorly punctuated and rambling, with lots of swearing and veiled threats. They were easy to pick out and appeared more and more often as time went on.

When I write about her, I write as her biggest fan.