I am closing this blog.  I have done some introspection, it is Elul after all, and I have decided that as much as I disagree with DovBear and his style, it is probably not the best thing to base a blog on attacking him.  The level of sarcasm and frivolity engaged in here by me was probably unnecessary.

I also don’t like what having an online persona does to me personally and the amount of time I need to put into the task of running a blog is  considerable and pulls me away from the more important things in life.  I would ask all bloggers to ask themselves whether they are allowing their own blog or the blogs of others to encroach upon their respective precious time.

To DovBear, if I have stepped over the line, I apologize.  I wish you and all who read this a kesiva v’chesima tova.

You might have noticed that DovBear has been adding contributors to his blog. In general, that’s not a bad thing; maybe we will get a more balanced viewpoint. That’s not to say that DovBear isn’t entitled to his opinion, after all it is HIS blog. But it does get tedious reading the same thing over and over again. It’s almost like reading Mad Libs with the following instructions: Insert pejorative adjective here, insert revered Jewish sage here, insert right of center politician here, insert improper grammar here.

Unfortunately, most of DovBear’s “et al.” crew shares the same derisive writing style and improper use of grammar. Akiva from MPaths seems to be an exception. This morning, after putting on my protective goggles to peruse DovBear, I noticed that Akiva had been removed from the list of contributors. However, I had already thought of the cutesy title for this post, so I will write this anyway.

Anyone who has seen Akiva’s site Mystical Paths knows that he writes on things that DovBear can’t stand: segulos, end times, moshiach, geulah. DovBear makes a living (or detracts from his making of a living) by ridiculing these things. Why then would Akiva agree to contribute to DovBear? Maybe to take advantage of DovBear’s wide readership (kind of like what we are doing here). Maybe to soften the tone of DovBear. Who knows.

Now, it seems that Akiva is gone from DovBear. Perhaps cooler heads prevailed.

One of DovBear’s new minions, aka “et al.” is someone who goes by the name “Conservative Apikorus”. I’m not sure if that means he is a Conservative Jew who is an Apikorus or an Apikorus with a politically conservative bent. It matters little, anyone who proudly proclaims himself an Apikorus is not worthy of the time necessary to discern the true intent of his vague moniker. Besides, one might actually have to check out his own blog to determine this and, really, who has the time or the inclination?

This Conservative Apikorus (hereafter “CA”, not to be confused with Computer Associates which also goes by CA but which is neither conservative nor an apikorus, I think) has recently posted on DovBear “A Chance to Rewrite the Bible“. This piece is a perfect example of my typo pet peeve. As mentioned before, typos and spelling errors in comments aren’t such a big deal. On the other hand, when a post is replete with grammatical and typographical errors, it is clear that the author couldn’t care less about the content of his post. Why, then, should we? There are five glaring typos in the first two paragraphs of this piece. After that, I stopped counting.

Let’s look beyond the typos and examine just one of the inane points of the the piece. CA asks the question:

” why did the authors (whether it was God or a commttee (sic) of Judahite scribes insist on basing their Holy Book on factual history?”

OK, try to ignore the hanging parentheses and the typo. I know it’s hard. The strange thing about this question is if G-d did write the Torah, which CA (to his credit) posits as a possibility, doesn’t it follow that He knew what He was doing? I guess in CA’s world it’s possible to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and pretty much omni-everything but not be as bright as JRR Tolkien.

Then CA launches into the most transparent of traffic cries: So here’s my challenge to all you fan-fiction fans: How about rewriting the Torah (oral and written) to be rest (sic) in the world of Middle Earth?

This post is so laden with typos and grammatical errors, so lacking in intellect and ends with such a typical DovBear comment begging request that one has to wonder if DovBear and CA are two different people. Has anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time? Please let us know in the comments, all two of you who are now reading this blog, that way we might just get 30 or so comments.

DovBear is an expert at playing the race card; he should bring that game to the Celebrity Blogger’s Championship Poker Match. He is all too willing to pick up the talking points of the mainstream media when they call someone on a race related issue. Republican Sen. George Allen has been called to task for calling his opponent’s aide a racial slur. Allen was wrong, Allen should be chastised. The media got this one right, it happens sometimes.

But DovBear cannot simply point out that Allen’s lame comment that “people” don’t care about this issue is stupid and shows further insensitivity. No, no, that wouldn’t be good blog fodder. Instead, he’s got to ask:

Which people?

1 – White people?
2 – Rich people?
3 – Southern people?
4 – Confederate people?
5 – Inbred people?

You see in DovBear’s world all Southerners are racists. Yeah, yeah, he’ll spin it some other way and I’m sure some of his best friends are Southerners and his favorite television show is the Dukes of Hazard. But those of us with both eyes open know the drill. While I, rightfully, take a stand against a racist remark, I’ve got my feet firmly planted on your “redneck”.

In these turbulent times, what the world needs most is yet another J-blog, no? Ok, ok, maybe not. But that won’t stop us. First things first, we are not related to DovBear (though by the time we get rolling, we bet he’ll wish he was). We are not going to “out” DovBear for two reasons. First, we think anyone who wishes anonynimity should have it. Second, we don’t know who the heck he is. Ok, that’s who we aren’t. Then, who are we? Well, let’s not get all exestential on the first date.

This is a blog in progress, blogress, if you will (and even if you won’t). Therefore, we will start out in one direction, we haven’t exactly figured out what that direction is yet, and may end off somewhere entirely different. Hey, that sounds like a road trip we took to Canada a few years back but that’s a story for another time.

Perhaps, we should just copy and paste our “Profile” statement from this blog and leave it at that:

We don’t read DovBear any more. He’s tedious, curmudgeonly, virulently pessimistic and the guy can’t spell. Even if his intentions are good (which we suspect is not always the case), his childish approach leads one to believe that he just enjoys making fun of, well, anyone who views the world differently than he does. Sometimes, that allows an important issue to be denigrated to pointlessness, which is a shame. Now, he is shlepping others into the game, miserableness loves company.

So, what will we be doing here, other than capitalizing on the curious ability of DovBear to draw copious amounts of traffic? We will try to present a less jaundiced, less derisive view of the world, politics and Judaism while maintaining a sense of humor. In doing so, we probably will have to begin reading DovBear again (what we won’t do for you) and we just might step on DovBear’s foot so we apologize in advance.