Inside Higher Ed: Crossing A Line
“I enjoy writing things that inflame, mock and infuriate the right,” Deborah Frisch said in an e-mail interview Sunday in response to a question about her online activities. By any measure, she’s achieving her goals — and she’s also out of a job.
Frisch posted a comment last week on Protein Wisdom, a Web site known for its no holding back conservative commentary, frequently with considerable mocking of liberal academics and ideas. Frisch, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Arizona until this weekend, said in the posting that she would not be sad if the 2-year old child of the site’s founder, Jeff Goldstein, was “Jon Benet Ramseyed,” and she reportedly posted other questions of the sort a Ramsey-inspired attacker might ask. (Goldstein lives in Colorado, where Ramsey was killed.)
Although Frisch apologized for the remark, which she called “nasty,” numerous conservative Web sites over the weekend traded stories about Frisch, saying that she had physically threatened Goldstein and his child (she denies this and says that however inappropriate her comments were, they weren’t threatening); that Frisch is Churchillian, as in Ward, not Winston (she agrees on some counts and has defended the notorious “little Eichmanns” remark); and that Frisch organized an online attack on Protein Wisdom (she denies this). They called on Arizona administrators to fire her (e-mail addresses were provided).
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