Until a few short days ago, I think members of my family (um, usually just my dad) and maybe one or two people from twitter were the only ones who read my blog. That changed when I got angry Friday night after reading Daniel Negreanu's comment about Annie Duke.
Acting in haste on my anger and using my fairly anonymous blog - where I'm typically writing about my quest to become a better, more disciplined poker player - I vented my personal anger at what I felt were Daniel's inappropriate comments. I did that here and here. Mouthy, spouty that I am, I came home from dinner/drinks with family and made a poll about it, that I'm not sure I'm very proud of, which you can take here.
I got a few ugly things thrown my way, I think mainly because I find comparable the ugly offensiveness of the use of the "c" word toward a woman to the ugly offensiveness of the use of the "n" word toward anyone.
All I can say in response is that I come at this with my own filter and life experience. I find them both reprehensible. I find them both wrong. I'm not from Europe. I am a woman; I am not, however, a person of color. Does that negate my right to find them equally ugly? Does it make me wrong for making the comparison? Does it make me overly sensitive and a soon to be member of the *gasp* PC police? I don't think so, but some people do. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the subject because I can certainly stand to learn a thing or two.
Annie Duke certainly doesn't need (much less want) me to side with her or fight her battles. She's perfectly capable of doing that on her own. I'm equally a fan of hers as I am of many poker players, male and female. That some of them have beef with each other - that's their thing, not mine. I took offense to what I read and I voiced my opinion about it. That's probably never going to change.
As an attorney, I defend companies where such behavior for non-public figures often costs them money and causes offenders to lose their job. It's my experience that juries and/or judges (fact finders) don't like it when they see, in print, words like "c***" or "n*****" or "b****", etc. When faced with such facts in evidence, it makes my job extremely difficult to defend a non-discriminatory position because juries are made up of people of all colors, all backgrounds, all filters and personal biases. And as you likely already know, there's no guarantee how 12 people on a jury are going to respond to such evidence - much less upwards of 100s of people on twitter.
Here, we're not in court and this ain't no capital offense. The poker community is, however, on center stage at the moment. As a poker player, this kind of publicity is not what I want certain members of Congress or the Senate considering before a vote on whether to make on-line poker legal.
I'll give you this - if I'd spent even half the time on my pokers as I did on this craziness this past weekend, maybe I'd have won some damn money at the tables. On that note, I'll say goodnight - my daughter's got her first day of school in the morning!
Um, I also love Brandi Carlile and have not taken time to say near enough about her, as she deserves!
With that - good luck at the tables, peeps.
