I was so into sexism yesterday that I missed the Superbowl.

Seriously, I didn't know who played or won, but I just looked at the front page of the Inky and I see that the Colts beat the Bears. (Ewww! I don't like the sound of that. It evokes images of mean male guns like Colt 45s and those horrid Assault Weapons shooting endangered Polar bears who sought refuge from global warming, or gentle pandas whose only crime was bamboo munching! Normally I'd be glad to have skipped the whole sordid sexist affair, but I see that I didn't escape being considered a sexist anyway, and that hurts! Especially considering that I wasn't even sure of the sex of my victim!)

Darn. I hate it when I'm forced to be a sexist against my will!

But thanks to a couple of links from commenter "ema" yesterday, I see that my sexism must be addressed. (Maybe even confronted, although I'm the timid sort and hate confrontations, even with my inner child.)

While I don't think either of my posts has been mentioned anywhere at Pandagon, I'm not yet off the hook as a sexist, because Amanda Marcotte has come out swinging in her own defense. (Well, at least, in defense of a defense). In a comment to a post by another Pandagon blogger she maintains that while the disappeared Pandagon posts were actually lost in migration, the primary culprits are sexism, and Michelle Malkin (the latter's "sexist" post is here):

Amanda Marcotte Feb 4th, 2007 at 8:17 am

I did delete and rewrite a post they're trying very hard to misrepresent so that there's no doubt what my official stance is. I wouldn't call it "scrubbing", because my point was that they wanted it to be VERY CLEAR how I felt.

Interesting how Malkin, who has implied that Auguste is sexist in the past, is so willing to go along with an attack on me that 99.5% based in sexism. Anything to score points, huh? Malkin doesn't actually give a hoot about sexism, it's clear. Oh well, nothing shocking about a bad faith right wing argument.

All this said, their entire vendetta against me reeks of bad faith so much that it's crystal clear. Making up rules and then getting angry because your target broke a rule she wasn't aware of is a classic wife beater move, and I'm not surprised it's the favorite manuever of the right wing mob.

The consequences are a loss of credibility, and right now Amanda Marcotte -- and Pandagon -- have zero credibility. Sorry but consequences are not "rules."

I don't think this is sexism, because I think Jesse Taylor is the primary culprit. When he left, his posts were scrubbed, but his blog (which is officially still in his name) continued -- ostensibly under Amanda Marcotte's stewardship. While I joked that he and Amanda might be the same person (they might be; I don't know either one of them), I think they're both "guilty" of post scrubbing, and of changing authorship status. But I placed "guilty" in quotes because there are no "rules" making post scrubbing a crime.

As to the credibility of Pandagon, right now it's about on the level of Capitol Hill Blue. I can't trust anything they say, because for starters I don't know who is writing what or who wrote what. The whole thing is a mess, the archives are next to useless, and there's no way to tell who wrote what. Here's the official explanation from "Lauren":

Yeah, I love my name right at the top too.

The other thing that's going to continue to bring up charges of deleting and erasing files is the move from MT to WP.

As for this crap:
I reported Taylor's move when it happened in October 2005 and linked to his announcement at Pandagon. When I clicked back to Taylor's post in November 2006, it was gone and there was no sign of it in Pandagon's archives. I had to search the Wayback Machine to find Taylor's post again.

Did Marcotte, who claimed ownership of Pandagon upon Taylor's departure, scrub the site of his disclosure, and if so, why? Those questions came to my mind last fall but didn't seem worth asking then. They were just a curiousity.

Unfortunately lots of those files from the Jesse days were lost during the migration because a) I am a dumbass, and b) MT's exports are terribly inefficient. Later on, due to another weird table gaffe, whole posts were lost and comments and commenters were listed as true posts, while the posts were relegated to comments or gone altogether.

I love how using the Wayback machine is now considered investigative reporting.

In the next post (or would it be a comment? The post/comment distinction is elusive with this type of "blog") , Lauren stresses that she had no idea that this would be a scandal:

And for anyone who is confused about my last comment, I'm the one who did the migrations (poorly) and the blog design. We knew the posts Auguste mentions were gone long ago, but hell if I ever thought that would be elevated to scandal status.

Why did the "stupid conservative asswipe" post disappear?

And what has sexism to do with it? Is it that because Amanda attacks men, any criticism of Amanda is sexism? How does a reasonable complaint about missing posts become analogous to wife beating?

If I wanted to give someone the benefit of the doubt here, who would that be? Jesse Taylor? Amanda Marcotte? Lauren?

As to the latter's remark that she "love[s] how using the Wayback machine is now considered investigative reporting," while I don't think she really loves it, she does not dispute that the Wayback Machine archives constitute the only way to determine what was written at Pandagon, when it was written, and by whom. True, the Wayback Machine has its limits. There's no way for it to tell anyone why Jesse Taylor left, whether he left, whether Amanda wrote the posts now bearing her name. It only reflects what the blog said on a particular day.

As such, it's a remarkable resource, and I see no reason why it can't be used to straighten out the problems caused by the migration. Everything that's there can be copied and moved back where it belongs in the Pandagon archives.

So what's the problem? If I decided to "migrate" my blog, and this happened, I'd be incredibly relieved to know my stuff was still somewhere. It might take time, but I would be able to reconstruct it.

Hell, now that I think about it, the Wayback Machine is like having a free backup system!

But instead of using it, the Pandagon people (whoever they are) seem to be offended that other people are using it. You'd almost think the Wayback Machine was, if not sexist itself, at least a tool of sexists.

So, I have to ask: Is it any coincidence that the evil right wing mob of men who try to trap women by holding them accountable for what they said (using a newly made up rule that what she said was actually said) chose yesterday, Superbowl Sunday, to exult in their sickening display of Wayback Machine triumphalism for their male prerogative purpose of trapping Amanda Marcotte?

I think not.

I was so into Wayback Machine sexism yesterday that I missed the Superbowl.

Missing the Superbowl because of sexism?

Now that's way sexist.

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE AFTERTHOUGHT: If the truth be told, my obsession with wanting to know what was actually said might be one of those sexist "guy things." Part of what Amanda Marcotte would call a "perennial male entitlement."

Perhaps there really isn't any need to understand anything after all.

Can't we all just get along and believe what we're told?