Scott Taper Ain’t The Boss of Me
There seems to be a full moon tonight. I know that this was supposed to bring out werewolves and the crazy folk, but is it also a jackass attractant?
I know. You’re wondering where’s she going with this and who the heck is Scott Taper? Well I’m getting to the former and the latter is the jackass at the center of this story. Fine, fine…I’ll spill.
About a decade ago (gee, has it really been that long?) I encountered the pompous ass Scott Taper as just another name on the Black-Ivy listserv. Back when I was younger, single and childless, getting into deep conversations with the negrorati was one of my favorite pastimes. Since most of the listserv members were youngsters, I noticed Scott’s name simply because he was one of the few who was older than me, by at least a decade. If his posts stood out in my mind in a positive way, I’m unable to recall even one of note. Yet his reply to me on one occasion prompted the classic eye-rolling nausea that happens when faced with burning stupid.
I had written the list to process my dating philosophy with the brown eggheads. Was I being race-conscious or consciously stupid in having decided some time before that I would only date black men in order to model for my patients that there can be successful, positive, communicative, respectful relationships between brothas and sistas? The majority of my black patients did not believe such relationships existed, having never witnessed them in their almost two decades of life. Yet, at 37, I was still single and sleeping with my cats.
At the time I wrote my message to the list, my most recent relationship with a scary-smart brotha (who also happened to be broken and a tad nuts) had just ended. He was smart in a way that I hadn’t encountered well, in almost a decade. That relationship was making me question which should be higher on my list of “must haves” for a partner: scary-smart intellect or being black like me? It’d be great to find both, but perhaps if scary-smart is truly the most soul-elevating characteristic of the two, maybe I shouldn’t look for it in only one ethnic group. So with my black-only dating, was I being race conscious or consciously stupid?
Man that was a great discussion! The brown eggheads were weighing in with feeling. “Props to you for wanting to model something positive to our kids, but you don’t need to carry the weight of the race on your shoulders.” “Maybe it would be just as useful to model to them a successful partnership no matter what race your partner.” “You don’t need to martyr your happiness in order to be this type of role model.” Sure they were giving me permission, so to speak, to broaden my dating horizons, but it came with a thoughtfulness and not a knee-jerk reactivity sometimes found in the Blacker Than Thou Contingent*. And then Scott weighed in and it all came crashing down to earth.
I’m not going to directly quote his words (it was almost 10 years ago) but it came down essentially to this: You’re probably being too picky. You should lower your standards for brothas and date some janitors or garbagemen who never went to college. What’s important is their heart not their intelligence. Yeah forget dating outside your race. Just lower your standards. That’s the ticket. Eye-rolling nausea, I tell you. Not because I think I’m too good for a janitor or anything classist like that (which is where his little brain automatically went), but because our preferences for partnering should be left alone. It’s not for anyone else to judge another’s preferences. If you tell me that you only want to date people 4’2″ tall who play the mandolin, well you know what, that’s your preference and it’s none of my damn business.
So I had just finished saying that I’d come to realize that intellect was what got my juices going; how cool it was to be with someone who got me and didn’t ask, as so many men I’ve dated have, “do you have to think so much?” And this clown Scott decided to tell me that I shouldn’t want what I want. I should instead want what he feels I should want. Yeah Scott, when you come back reincarnated as me, you can date whoever the freak you want to date…until then…GTFOH
So honestly that’s all I remember of Scott. Nothing else was deep enough to resonate one way or the other. Yet we must have e-mailed each other off the list a couple of times because his name came up when I joined places like Plaxo and LinkedIn (or maybe he had added me…I don’t even remember, so little was the impression he made). The net of it is (and back to the point of the story) that Scott was a primary connection of mine on LinkedIn. At least until today.
I get to work today having spent yesterday up at West Point…yeah, the military academy, giving a presentation. I’m going through my thousand e-mails and found one from Thursday morning sent from LinkedIn. It was a comment in response to my tweets Wednesday about the Banana Splits (I must have been having mini-strokes to get the Banana Splits theme stuck in my head that day.) And yes, it was from the no-interaction-with-in-ages Scott Taper.
Scott Taper has just left a comment on your status, “This version’s better but starts after 28sec (he’s shows 45 image 1st on YTubeVid) The Banana Splits “The Tra La La Song” ? http://twt.fm/367622“
“Liana, this is not a chat forum. There are groups within linkedin where you can post comments about Utube and other observances.”
Now excuse the freak out of me, but when did Scott Taper become the hall monitor of LinkedIn? I, as a free adult of 46, chose, in full compliance with LinkedIn’s options, to use my Twitter updates as my LinkedIn updates. And if I want to tweet about the damned Banana Splits, that is my prerogative (as a free adult of 46). What would possess this jackass Scott Taper to decide that it was his role to inform me of what should or should not be in my status updates? Who the hell does he think he is?
If he disliked my tweets about the Banana Splits, there were many other options…better options that he could have chosen to employ. For example, he could have:
- Feigned selective blindness when my tweet appeared
- Posted a status update extolling the Monkees over the Banana Splits
- or, the best option: removed his connection to me entirely! Tweets about the Banana Splits are no more.
Yet this jackass (I keep returning to that descriptor) ignores the most obvious choice and instead displays egregious hubris by deciding to teach me what I should be doing with my tweets. Well Scott Taper let me tell you something. You’re not my boss, my father, the hall monitor or the president of LinkedIn. I will post whatever I deem fitting for my status updates without your vetting. And yes, I did something you didn’t possess the intellect to do: removed our connection. Now if you don’t mind (and even if you do), I’ve got some Banana Splits to watch. Tra la la…
ADDENDUM: This is just too funny not to add. Scott continues to send me supercilious e-mail replies justifying his jackassery in the face of my critiques. This last one was the most perfect (and I left in all the spelling errors):
I am starting to understand that the stuff you send out is relief vavle [sic] for the pressure of whatever your life is about. the pressure must be immense trying to appear on the top of your game all the time. It seems to me that there may be a traumatic event in your life that manifests itself in the abrpt behavoir [sic] that cahracteristic [sic] of PTSD [sic] patients, particularly those observed in returning military personnel from the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would recommend that you seek some kind of treatment to temper the overeaction to comments by others. My initial comments to you were actually in the interest of helping you protect your professional image on LinkedIn which has many people who use it for recruiting and evaluation.
So according to Scott My SaviorTM, having an angry response to an unwelcome intrusion and unrequested paternalistic intervention from someone who is neither friend nor even acquaintance qualifies as a PTSD response. No, your saviorship, that response is a) letting you know how unwelcome your jackassery intervention was to me and b) setting a boundary that I would not tolerate such unwelcome behavior from you again. I realize that I was supposed to genuflect and say, “Thank you Scott My SaviorTM for saving me from myself.” But you know what? My professional reputation survives on one thing: a resume filled with unique education, training, degrees, positions, skills, and awards. Tweets about the Banana Splits have not deterred the myriad recruiter calls I get every week even though I am not looking for a job. Again Scott my would-be savior, I recommend that you STFU and MYOB.
Oh look, more Banana Splits!
*Blacker Than Thou Contingent: Those in the community who decide what is or is not officially black. And yes I am being tongue-in-cheek about this.
You forgot the best option for Scott. It involves some contortion, but if he’s well-endowed, he could manage it.
Deesha´s last blog ..…and I’m Worth It.
I should have listed that one. You are absolutely right. But considering his delusions of grandeur, the well-endowed part is probably a teeny-tiny if.
Very funny. . . Love your acronyms my dear (-:
BK! Didn’t know you knew where the old blog was. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
I respectfully submit that Mr. S. Taper is, well…let’s just say it’s a word that ends with “bag” and leave it at that. The ironic thing is that his intervention is based on a false premise. Being a fan of The Banana Splits only INCREASES your pofessional reputation because it shows your obvious good taste. Personally, I also liked H.R. Puffinstuff and Captain Kangaroo but I digress.
See, you are just the right type of person to hang with me on the blog!