Dear Joe Carnahan,
In all the interactions we had over twitter during the previous few weeks you finally said something I agree with. You’re right. I’ve been using you and your platform to accomplish several goals…
You see, in addition to being an outspoken activist on behalf of wolves and other living creatures I’m also a social media professional and I’ve been preparing for a presentation at Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
As part of this presentation I decided to document how one outspoken individual, with a relatively small platform and a few clever tweets could easily leverage a public personality to accomplish a larger goal.
Thanks to you this was incredibly easy to accomplish and I have to say my documented study is one I consider a success.
Not only was I able to bring considerable attention to my cause (to initiate a successful boycott of your reprehensible film) I was also able to leverage your platform to make your friends, followers and the media aware of what a small minded, dishonest and easily manipulated person you happen to be.
In fact, having only expended a very few minutes of my time over several weeks, I was able to unmask you as a liar, a hypocrite, a bully and an egomaniac and all for the people that are most interested in what you have to say, to see.
Through your own words and your attacks on me (a person you’ve never met and whom you know virtually nothing about) you made it clear exactly what kind of a person you are.
Even better you proved for anyone that has a twitter account and who was interested in our conversation, that you don’t even have the courage of your own convictions as you frequently said profane, dishonest or ridiculous things and then quickly deleted them having realized exactly how bad you had made yourself appear.
But don’t fear…having failed to grasp one of the principal rules of engagement — know your enemy – you made it absurdly easy for me. Every time you made an ad-hominem attack on me instead of addressing the points I was making or the questions I had asked, I simply captured your remarks and have presented them in the actual order they occurred. Didn’t anyone bother to tell you that on the Internet, everything you say is forever?
Frankly I had really hoped for a more intelligent dialog but then it isn’t really all that surprising to me that instead of taking a higher road or accepting that perhaps you did some stupid things making your repulsive film – and let’s face it, using actual animal carcasses was incredibly stupid — you stood your ground like a petulant child denying he’d done something wrong even while the photos of you with your hand in the proverbial cookie-jar were circulating around the Web at light speed.
Even more laughable is your ridiculous contention that consuming wolf was in some way an exercise in “method acting”. Even for a non-actor, non-director, non-Hollywood anything like me it is painfully obvious that this is a ludicrous claim.
Nothing about “procuring carcasses” and having a “fancy chef” prepare a wolf-meat stew (which was how the man who killed the wolves you chose to eat, Dick McDiarmid, described what you did) in any way resembles the process of method acting outlined by Stanislavsky. But to be sure I asked a friend whose own father worked with Stanislavsky himself. Her response “he’d roll over in his grave to hear his methods compared to what that guy did.”
But did you just come out and say, “you’re right, we blew it. We got carried away and did some terrible things. And then take aggressive action to make reparations? No. You dug your heels in and tried to convince the world that what you’d done wasn’t awful.
Then, realizing this wasn’t working you went on the offensive – in one instance claiming your film had done “more for wolves than anything I’d ever done” and that your movie “had suddenly made wolves part of the national discussion.”
Do you have any idea how ridiculous these things sound? How arrogant? How totally out of touch with reality?
Wolves have been part of the fabric of this country since before the white man invaded it and took it for himself. Native Americans have revered the wolf for countless generations, and then the white man so feared and reviled the wolf that it is an animal that to this day lives in infamy across much of the country.
To hear someone like you claim that you had a significant role in helping the wolf by once again making it look like the bloodthirsty villain of mythology is so ridiculous it would be funny, if it weren’t for the case that you actually seem to believe what you are saying!
Of course, I’m not the only person that feels this way. PETA, The Humane Society, Defenders of Wildlife, WolfGuardians and countless other organizations large and small have taken a stand against your film and your own reprehensible actions. All this in addition to the tens of thousands of people that actively pledged to boycott your film, a number of whom even went so far as to actively protest it in front of theaters where it was showing.
I’m sure this community collectively rolled its eyes when you challenged my record on helping wolves by stating you’d written 10 emails! Were we supposed to be impressed after learning what you did to wolves in the interest of your b-grade motion picture?
When I suggested that if you wanted to do something that truly benefitted wolves you’d donate what you made from The Grey to wolf-related causes and post your tax return to prove it, you immediately responded with insults and more ridiculous claims.
Given how you’ve responded to me, (and let’s face it you’ve embarrassed yourself at nearly every turn) my effort to call you out and make a case study of you and your behavior has been an unqualified success. After what appeared to be an auspicious opening your film dropped off marquis like a stone as people saw you and what your movie was at face value. Last week alone over 400 theaters moved on to other movies and this after just three weeks!
Of course insulting animal rights activists and journalists who were critical of what you’d done didn’t help your case any either. Although it has certainly made for interesting reading and a case study I’m sure my audience will find engaging.
In short, thanks. Thanks for being a complete buffoon. You made my job easy. With just a few tweets you’ve managed to destroy your own credibility, expose yourself for your what you really are, insult a huge community of people that are now sure to monitor your every move and expose every bad action you take AND you’ve let me use your very own platform against you. Bravo!
I’d like to commend you for being a worthy opponent, but the truth is I think my Malamute, let alone any wolf, would have eaten you for lunch just as easily as I have.
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