I never said I “stay away,” so this post makes no sense.
It only takes a handful of douche bags to get something “all over the Internet,” and I never saw that name used without the person being quickly rebuked for being boorish and creepy. And what you don’t seem to realize is that most of the anonymous snarkers you’re using as a baseline rhetorical standard are about one third your age… and making no claims to fighting igorance.
You’re absolutely right. I got a couple of posters tangled up.
Apologies.
A someone whose wife died eleven years ago, I can tell you that there was a period of time during which her death was the biggest fact in the universe, to me. That period was not a couple of weeks, either.
To suggest, as someone did above, that he didn’t have to mention it is idiotic. The contestants fill out forms, are asked questions. Does the poster above really think no one asks these contestants “Are you married?”? What should Gokey have answered? No?
I’m not saying he shouldn’t have told the producers about it if asked, but he could have asked them not to make it public. When I say “he didn’t have to talk about it,” I just meant on the air.
I’m sorry for your loss.
(I’m not being sarcastic)
Thanks. I’m one of thus un-ironic folks who would have taken you at face value without the disclaimer. 
I’ll refer people back to my previous post - when you want fame, you take the good with the bad. In the public spotlight, people will comment on any and everything. If you want your private life to stay private and not commented harshly on, do what I do - stay unfamous.
It’s not whether or not they deserve it; it’s whether or not you want to come across like a bunch of vicious middle school nerds playing bully on the Internet.
We’re not bullying anybody, we’re pointing and laughing at assholes who deserve it.
Dio, you ought to think a little bit about what the other man’s shoes might feel like before you condemn someone’s actions. You’ve not experienced the death of your spouse, as far as I know, and you’ve never come that close to a big-time musical career, either.
Danny may not have mentioned Sophia using words every week, but he held up his hands in that stupid Lenscrafters heart, which was ostensibly in reference to the “Sophia’s Heart Foundation” that he started. So the idea that he was milking his dead wife for something, whether it be fame, charity, or most likely a combination of both, is not out of left field.
And if Danny Gokey seemed even remotely sympathetic as a human being, I think people would not have accused him of that. Instead, he came off as a smarmy, grasping douchebag. Plenty of Idol sob-stories have gone by without people making fun of them–I refer back to Elliott Yamin again, and his juvenile diabetes. Awful disease, he mentioned it exactly once, and nobody ever really brought it up again. He never came across like he was trying to milk anything about his background for pity votes.
It’s funny, my favorite that year was always Taylor Hicks, but Elliott has totally grown on me in the intervening years.
None of that has to do with the humorless, hateful invective of a few posters that goes way beyond “snark” and into the uncharted waters of unresolved personal issues.
I forgot all about that ‘heart’ thing. :shudders:
This is not true. No one has said, or even implied, that you or anyone else is not wanted here. What HAS been said is that no one is willing to accommodate your personal sense of what is appropriate in an AI thread.
I think all the nice guys should post. I also think that all the nice guys shouldn’t take everything so personally. But I understand if you all find the joking hard to take. Dio (and Lib, when he used to post) sometimes raise my hackles too. So say something. Just like you JUST DID IN THIS THREAD! That you are reading. Right now. See? No one is sending any messages to you. Stay. The message is: stay.
For some reason, AI threads create drama! I remember getting into a kurfuffle with CK Dexter Haven-- who doesn’t even read AI threads-- over them one year.
Chill, val. Read, enjoy, laugh, skip posts, argue. Or don’t. But don’t go accusing people of dis-inviting you.
Mommy?
I’m very much in the middle of this spectrum - I don’t think I rip people too harshly (if I have, I don’t recall it), but I find the snark here funny.
I’ve never seen any of that. Maybe you’re confusing us with some other board. Everything that gets tossed off here is funny and richly deserved.