My first angry comment!

You know you’re moving up in the blogosphere when people start leaving angry comments on your articles. On August 18, a reader by the name of “eb” had this to say about my second post on Joyce Bernann McKinney, the former beauty queen turned dog-cloner who was accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a Mormon missionary 31 years ago:
Your sick comments are false and defamatory slander about a INNOCENT woman who was falsely accused by a spineless MORMON cult recruiter who was afraid of excommunication. Her life destroyed by slandermongers and gossips like you, Miss McKinney has already won a lawsuit against another party who said exactly what YOU printed. So you have opened yourself up to a lawsuit! Also, she is currently suing–with a twenty million dollar libel action against people who are the source of resurrecting this libelous Mormon sourced story which was a lie 30 years ago and a LIE now. You yourselves will be tracked down and subpeoned to court, to illustrate how people how STUPID enough and DISHONEST enough to propagate a “myth” which had such tragic effects on her and her family. (Do you really believe that a 300 pound 6′5″ Mormon cult recruiter was “raped” by a gorgeous blonde lady who once ran for the MISS USA beauty crown?? Oh and, please don’t call him a “missionary”–that’s someone who is serving Christ and not a false Prophet as Mormons do.) Don’t tell me you are THAT stupid. Are you Mormon CULT MEMBERS YOURSELVES, or just GOSSIPMONGERS?) Moreover, it is CRIMINAL LIBEL to print that a person was CHARGED with a crime they not only NEVER COMMITTED, but which they were never even CHARGED with. You uneducated nuts know nothing about libel law, obviously: It is also libel to imply that a person is sexually impure. In the REAL WORLD, Miss McKinney, was in fact a virgin when she met this Mormon who CHASED her to death to beg her to marry him. He was a overweight Mormon boy and Mommy’s boy and she was a model and MISS USA contestant completing her PHD when she met him. Who do you think chased WHOM? His Mormon Mammy was against their engagement from the beginning because Miss McKinney chose to leave Mornonism and went back to Christianity. All of us who knew them back in the 70s know this. WHY haven’t YOU researched the TRUE facts? ARE YOU MORMONS helping spread the “rape” myth via the internet? You are SLANDERING Miss McKinney maliciously. REMOVE THIS OFFENDING MATERIAL OR IT WILL BE TURNED OVER TO HER LAWYERS! Also, you better get your suit pressed as you’re going to court either way as an example of FOOLS who believed–and spread–the libelous filthy original MYTH SKILLFULLY ORCHESTRATED and propagated by Mormon PR teams trying to cover up a love affair which would have destroyed their multi-million dollar “image”. And when you get to court, you’ll be required to submit a “charge sheet” saying she was CHARGED with “RAPING A MAN”. Since one DOESN”T EXIST, you’re in trouble. (PS Hope you have a lot of money to pay damages!)
Wow. That comment was so loaded with crazy I didn’t even know where to begin.
This was my reply:
It would appear that Ms. McKinney’s fans are every bit as crazy as she is.
This is an opinion blog, not a news firm. I’m allowed to express my opinion that the person in question is guilty of what she was accused of just like you’re allowed to express your opinion that Mormons are cultists. You might want to check into the first amendment, it covers all that.
Furthermore, I’m not Mormon, I’m an evangelical Christian. As such I have zero interest in your crazy Mormon conspiracy theories, though your screeching about it is good for a laugh.
Now, my experience with crazy people on the Internet who go around screaming about cults and lawsuits with broken capslock keys is (1) they are very, very stupid and (2) they’re bluffing about lawyers and lawsuits. So I won’t be removing anything from my site, though I have made some minor edits to clarify that I’m expressing an opinion and not stating known facts. Good luck depriving me of my first amendment rights.
One more thing: as far as “gossipmongering” goes, the biggest gossipmonger in this story is Ms. McKinney herself. Or do her fans think she posed nude for the media on accident? Innocent virginal Christian my ass.
I might also point out that even prior to edits, I never claimed anywhere on this blog that Ms. McKinney was formally “charged” with rape; I said she was accused of it, which is a fair take on what the media has reported of Kirk Anderson’s account. Essentially I’m just repeating and agreeing with Kirk Anderson, and if she wanted to sue anybody for libel or slander it should have been him, 31 years ago. Anyways, I haven’t found any news stories about her suing anyone recently nor have I been contacted by any party with a credible link to her camp—this “eb” claimed to have inside ties, but she’s obviously a crazy woman. If I hear anything of her taking legal action against anybody, you can be sure I’ll post it here.
Finally, I sometimes post over at MormonDiscussions.com (a forum that tends to be heavily populated by critics of Mormonism) and we had a thread on this subject wherein a few posters claimed to have met Kirk Anderson back in the 70s when this all went down. I’m not giving these accounts any more credibility than “people on the Internet said this,” but it’s still an interesting read.
As I reported in my first post on the subject, a poster named “gramps” had this to say on 08/08/08:
When I arrived at the mission home in Epsom, Surrey, circa 1978, I met Elder Andersen. He was the Mission President’s secretary at the time. The events mentioned above had happened shortly before I arrived.
He looked terrible. He was thin, his pants falling off him. Really, he looked bad. But, he was the nicest guy. And I really enjoyed talking with him.
I hope he is doing well now.
A poster named Miss Taken added on 08/10/08:
I’ll go with Gramps on this one, Kirk Anderson was in our area just before this happened to him, and he was a quiet, regular, good, dedicated missionary. He was nice, not flirty, not arrogant..that’s how I remember him anyway.
He was kidnapped at gunpoint, and in my opinion was not a willing party to any of this (they also had used chloroform on him).
He was a 19 year old kid, despite his size and she was 26, old enough to know better. I wonder what possessed her accomplice to help her out…really weird.
Joyce McKinney consistently lied to police and eventually jumped bail, despite arguing that she wanted to clear her name through the British Legal System. Everything about her actions suggests she was and still is a bit ‘unhinged’. The clone dog thing is as strange as the 1970′s stuff.
Then gramps added again, also on 08/10/08:
Here is what I know: I arrived in January, ’78. Stayed in the home next to the temple for an evening and did some tracting. The next morning we were driven to the mission office. The first Elder I met was Elder Andersen. We had already been told about the story by the APs the night before and the next morning.
It was a bit of a shock to see him. He didn’t look good. None of his clothes fit him.
Now, what the APs told us about the whole thing: He was really, really grilled in interviews by a lot of different top brass (apostles, seventies, etc.) They asked him everything. Everything.
He wasn’t allowed out tracting. He worked in the office and then stayed at home in the evening or went to members’ homes. The APs did not take this seriously and were making some really crude jokes about the whole thing. I once got the impression that the whole gang of the APs and the mission office guys, who all lived in the same flat, were having a pretty good laugh over it. I mean, including Elder Andersen.
This was my first day in the mission field. LOL
But, that is only an impression from no more than 24 hours spent with these APs. Who knows what happened? I can say this: Elder Andersen, the one I knew at the mission office, was a really nice guy. Definitely humbled. But, genuinely a good guy. He didn’t grow up so far from me. Skyline High School and East High School. Just across the canyon. We had a lot to talk about for a few days until we were sent off to our first assignments.
So there you have it.
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Comments

My first angry comment! — 8 Comments

  1. Hello again!
    So after reading your frist hate mail ( I’m working on an engraved plaque) i had to go back and read over exactly what you said, since the OP didn’t highlight specific passages. Firstly a few things to get out of the way.
    “Criminal Libel
    A criminal offence; deliberate publication of defamatory lies which the publisher knows to be false. ” —http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/C/CriminalLibel.aspx
    The ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) recognises the right to freedom of speech as “the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression”.
    Freedom of speech is governed by its effect on the fundamental freedoms of the parties involved. Typically items such a hate material are considered violations of such i.e. Direct condemnation of one’s religion “who is serving Christ and not a false Prophet as Mormons do”.
    It would also be helpful if people looked into First Amendment to the United States Constitution before posting garbage. Some useful, American case law on the topic of libel can be found within Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974) Which says opinions could not be “considered defamatory” and that because she is a public figure she has lower standard to prove libel (basically since she is famous or atleast in the public eye she has a greater opportunity to defend herself)…among other things.
    Granted there is also Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990) a case that was less about protecting opinion, and more about the state having to prove that the statement was “falsifiable”. Regardless of caselaw, [BJM] would have to demonstrate “actual malice” in order to even be considered for libel. I highly suggest looking into “actual malice” before posting a response to it.
    Now back to the topic at hand. Examining your first post, you’ve said nothing beyond she (Joyce “Bernann” McKinney) was accused of crime A and B. Your second follow up post also never said anything about her actually having raped him beyond the title “Dog-cloning Mormon “rapist” ‘fesses up”.
    She was indeeed charged with some criminal offenses as it related to the initial, alleged abduction.
    http://www.gurdian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/usa
    The only issue i see is with “rapist”. Its in quotations and in my opinion, simply an allusion to all the buzz around whether or not she did infact sexually assault this man.
    BTW wall of text crit me 1337 when i read this.
  2. Well Zack, if you’re a female blogger like I am, you haven’t hit the top until someone calls you a whore. So I’m still on my way up! If you want to piss people off, write about Mormons. LDS and anti-Mormons, they can both be very temperamental crowds.
    Patrick, thanks for the analysis, wall o’ text and all. After initially reading eb’s comment I checked out some of the articles on Internet libel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site, and it did look to me like I have a pretty safe case from a legal standpoint. Of course I could still be sued, which would be costly to me even if I’m innocent, but that would not be good for McKinney’s image. I may be small, but I’m a very loyal reader and commentator on several bigger blogs, and if I were frivolously sued over this the rest of the blogging community would descend in force with the negative publicity to McKinney being even worse than it already is. Nobody likes a cyber-bully, and once you kick the blogging beehive you get ALL the bees after you.
  3. I want an angry comment! I got almost 300 comments and no angry ones. Sigh. I need to do a post about Holocaust denial or something.
  4. I haven’t even been called a whore. Damn. I’m too awesome and right all the time, and thus never get insulted.
  5. I got the same comment, nearly verbatim. What was funny is that it wasn’t even on either of my posts about Ms. McKinney. It was like “eb” (who I’m guessing is really Ms. Crazypants herself) read my entries, but then left the comment on my most recent entry. Which was about what I had for lunch that day, or something.
    My response wasn’t nearly as reasoned as yours. I think I said “Oh noes, the crazy lady is going to e-sue me in internet court! I better call my virtual lawyer!!”

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