Skip this if you don't care; if I wasn't directly involved, I'd skip it, too. I'd like to preface this by saying that Mr. Schluessel told me last night that he was "paying me the courtesy of not responding in public." I thank him for paying me that courtesy, and I will return the favor with my own public non-response. Edmund Schluessel: <<Earlier tonight, I told one of the creators of the list that it offended me. Granted, I was more upset than I should have been going in; more than that, I was angry. But in the discussion that followed, she rejected what I had to say out of hand, so I'm bringing it here.>> Obviously, I am the "one of the creators of the list" with whom Mr. Schluessel spoke last night. This conversation consisted of several hours of Mr. Schluessel trying to bully me into posting an apology for the list, and then finally, trying to make me apologize to him personally to assuage his hurt feelings upon not being included. This bullying was interspersed with attacks of an extremely personal nature which I will not describe here. In this discussion, I realized that Mr. Schluessel was of the opinion that everyone who was not on the list was being insulted in some way. This is summarily incorrect. Praise of a few does not imply reviling of the many. If you take one thing from this message, please understand that the list was posted entirely in fun, with no malicious intent. Anyone who found any malice in the list put it there him/herself. Finally, Mr. Schluessel, in attempting to push me toward an apology, tried to get me to take responsibility for his reaction to the list. That is something I refuse to do. I will take full responsibility for my words, and so will my collaborators; we wrote them and we'll stand behind them. We will not, however, take responsibility for that which we cannot control--the emotions of others. If every writer censored herself because she was afraid of reactions to her writing, we wouldn't have much to read. Know this: the list was written, as stated before, by some bored qb chyx (exactly three, not four as someone else said) as an interesting, amusing diversion, something that might give people a few giggles. There was no harm intended to anyone in its writing. FWIW, the list was chosen on the basis of people whose company we enjoy, not on "clothes or muscles." I never expected to have to stand up on my soapbox and defend a little (admittedly juvenile) giggling over a few guys, and I certainly never expected to have to invoke the Constitution in doing so. That said (and most of my pompousness expended), I'm getting off it, and neither I nor my collaborators will return to it concerning this issue. If you want to take issue, you're more than welcome to email us privately at some_bored_qb_chyx_at_... --nothing posted on the club will get a response. Ever so respectfully, a bored qb chyk speaking ex cathedra
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