Ahem…
See. What had happened was…
I follow @SonofBaldwin on twitter. He’s a writer who pens insightful stuff on racism, queer issues, and TV/movies/comics. He’s one of these people where even when I hold a contrary position, he challenges me to re-visit it. He wrote a piece on October 6th. Short version: it’s about a Black friend in a gentrifying Manhattan neighborhood who got a snarky note on his door about being too loud from White neighbors.
I don’t know how loud he was. But, this wasn’t about music or instruments. This was about talking. We’ve all been in scenarios where we thought people were being too loud. I lived in apartments as a kid and as an adult. I worked in residence life for five years on two different college campuses. I can assure you. The way to NOT get a noise issue resolved is to leave a snarky note. That’s really opening things up at Defcon 3. So rather than say, “Can we chat later?” Mr. Snarky Note lead with a version of “and next time I’ll call the cops.” Who thinks that making a criminal complaint for something that is annoying but almost certainly not a criminal trespass is a thing that you do? And, that it’s likely to work?
Dude’s response letter to Mr. Snarky Note was, to put it mildly, hilarious. Read it, seriously. The brother just returned his neighbor’s snark with extra hot sauce. I replied thusly—on October 6th: That was some hilarious ish right there. It was. I do not apologize nor regret putting it in print. I continue to chuckle about it, even until this very day. That’s all it ever needed to be.
So, you can imagine my surprise when, on the morning of October 12th, as I sit for breakfast at a local eatery, minding my own business, scrolling through my twitter feed while biting into some buckwheat pancakes (one of which was not done), I see the following (NOW EDITED) tweet.
The original tweet added, “You can use a sports analogy since that may be intellectually easier for you.” That bit is now gone.
Now, see. They done already messed up my pancakes. (I ain’t mad at ya, Eggs Up Grill, but I do NOT like doughy pancakes.) But, Laura got me straight. They were making me some new ones, so cool. I’m like, “Okay. We can do this.” You can see a series of my tweeted replies in the image below (start at bottom) that went to Mr. Makone (blue underline), Son of Baldwin (red underline), and the author of the response letter (yellow highlight).
The table includes his comments and my remarks about them with numbers to the corresponding tweets.
| Numbered Tweet (red box) | His reply and my commentary |
|
1 |
The first part of my two-part reply addresses why I found the reply letter funny. It was a classic case of someone taking unwarranted liberties, then getting what was coming to them. It’d be different had Snarky Note come to the guy personally and been rebuffed. Nope. He chose to issue the cop threat. Then he got one-upped, like nobody else can call the doggone police to issue a nuisance complaint. Evidently, the butthurt inspired someone to step forward in defense of Snarky Note’s honor, you know, lest the heavens fall. Enter Tony Makone. |
|
2 |
In response to my query about whether he had any Qs, he wrote:
Even though the guy took a shot at my intellect, my response in tweets 1 & 2 is, I think, measured. |
|
3 |
I continued on #3 because dude is determined to issue some intellectual challenge, all while assuming as fact the very thing he came to me to discuss—whether police presence is warranted. This is of course begging the question or circular reasoning. He not only offers no proof of his faulty premise, he directly undermines it by asserting that the law in NYC needs greater clarity. Then he presumes to tell me what I should think? So, I checked him by pointing out his fragility (for coming at me with the sports quip that he edited out). |
|
4 |
He mad now. So I must be drunk.
I had to set him straight in #4. Man, if you don’t get the hell outta my mentions and let me eat these pancakes… |
|
5 |
That was exhausting. I know some of our people out here, like Son of Baldwin, Leslie Mac and Feminista Jones, Bomani Jones and Mina Kimes at ESPN, Talib Kweli, and others, spar with these colorblind racist Twitter trolls everyday. I got love for ‘em because I’m quite confident that like Sade said, “It’s never as good as the first time.” |
The Scholarly Fanatic 