Do you remember Jeff Davidson? Jeffrey P Davidson? I told you about him last week.
He's the self-help author who threatened to sue me because two years ago, in December 2007, someone - the Money Honey - copied paragraph headings from another site and posted them on my group blog. It turns out that this stuff came from one of Jeff's articles.
She posted a link back to the original site and his name wasn't on the article she quoted but that didn't stop him from going rangees on me. Do you know what Rangees means?
A friend of mine used to be a counselor at a children's camp and rangees is what they called it when one of the kids went berserk and they had to hold him down.
Anyway, I warned this guy's intern that she shouldn't send me his nasty letters because I was going to publish her email with her name on it.
But she didn't take that opportunity to apologize. Instead, she sicced Jeffrey P Davidson on me and he sent me another email in which he threatened to sue me if I published the original letter.
I told him I wouldn't publish the letter if he promised to take a different approach to his problems in the future. But do you know what he said? He said: "Don't lecture me". So I published.
And now he's left me a voice mail complaining that my response to his threats was disproportionate.
And why's that? Because when I got these threats from the intern and from him I asked people on Twitter what they thought. And I mentioned his name and I mentioned her name. And now when you search her name on Google that's what shows up.
And, then, my blog posting was picked up by a number of feeds and they appear under her name as well.
So, in that voice mail, Jeff started playing the psychologist. He said that his email set off alarm bells in me related to my childhood when I was in school with bullies. And you know what that means, don't you?
He's saying he attacked me but my emotional response was irrational and he attacked me but my self-defence is overkill.
He says he cares about his intern like she's his own child but you know what it looks like to me? First he puts her on the firing line doing his dirty-work and now that the bully is on the run he's using her as a human shield.
Any normal person would ask Jeff for an apology but how can I when he just keeps telling me that I'm the aggressor and he's the victim?
But if you want pity, Jeff, you've come to the wrong place 'cause now you're on The Recruiting Animal Show!
It's not over. Part 3 coming soon.
