Dance, Chicken, Dance

Summer’s over, I guess, and it’s time for me to haul my sorry ass back here. I’ve been horrendous about posting this summer, and more than a couple of you have emailed and reminded me that I have a quota of Chicken Liver posts to write, and I suppose it’s time for me to get on with it. No better time than now, since Chick has gone and stepped in the proverbial poop. If you’ve somehow missed this delicious drama unfold, our Chick has had a rough week, what with being outed by Dooce, The Mighty #26.  Outed and threatened with legal action by another. If I weren’t so damned gleeful about the whole episode, I’d almost feel sorry for her. Almost. But not really.

 Dooce has been her main target since she started Poop on Peeps three years ago. Sure, there’s been some equal opportunity hate thrown in for The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, and a few lesser known bloggers, but methinks that’s simply filler until the next Dooce post.  Jealousy is the oft touted opinion as to the source of the hate, but I’ve always likened it to a junior high, with the outcast taking revenge on the popular kids by scrawling spiteful statements on the bathroom stalls.

But as the saying goes, living well is the best revenge. And Dooce has taken this philosophy to a new level, deciding to Monetize the Hate with a new section on her blog, absolutely swimming with ads, where she’s publishing some of the hateful comments and e-mails she gets. And many comments left at Poop on Peeps.  Clever. I hope she makes bucket loads of money from it.

The ironic thing about this story is that Dooce may never have actually named Chick if her followers hadn’t started bitching about it in comments, or if she hadn’t taken to Twitter to accuse Dooce of stealing her content.  Initially, Dooce didn’t credit the comments at all. She’s pretty much just let her readers believe these are comments she received in email. Since comments become the property of the blog owner, she’s attributing all the comments to Chick, regardless of who actually wrote the comment. To her readers, it really looks as if Chick’s a deranged lunatic, spewing hateful e-mails continually.  Dooce has not linked directly to Poop on Peeps and it seems most of her readers are still unaware of the connection. I’m sure that will change.

I think it’s brilliant. Chick is running ads, making money indirectly from Dooce. Likely an insignificant, paltry amount. Dooce, on the other hand, The Mighty #26, with her millions of followers, might stand to make a small fortune indirectly through Chick. Of all the slaps to the face that could have been delivered, this must be the one that stings the hardest. Dooce’s Alexa stats are way up lately, and she’s been riding a wave of publicity. Traffic to her Monetize the Hate section is likely more than most blogs will ever see.  The Alexa stats for Pooponpeeps.com are down and the comments there are dwindling in numbers.

Dooce profiting from Chick’s hate wasn’t even the worst part of her week. Her Collecting Children  entry was a largely incoherent ramble about Michelle Duggar, people who have 26 cats, The Jerry Springer Show and Sandi Benson of Lucky Thirteen and Counting. She was far less than flattering in her assessment of Sandi Benson, calling her out on her parenting skills, her appearance, her over-sharing. Pretty typical chickenshit attack. Pretty lame,  considering that Chick herself is guilty of much of what she rages against Sandi for, minus the kid collecting.

Sandi was somewhat less than amused by the experience, though, and posted a very pissed-off  rebuttal, stating her intention to pursue legal action against Chick.  Taking the expose Chick theme one step further,  she posted Chick’s name (slightly wrong again, though!), hometown, several email addresses, and even Chick’s sister’s names. From all accounts, the Bensons might just have the financial wherewithall to engage in a legal battle with no guaranteed outcome. It’s hard to imagine what outcome they might be expecting, but if legal action is pursued, life at Poop on Peeps is guaranteed to be affected. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Chicken Liver’s identity has been thoroughly exposed. While Dooce has not connected Chicken Liver of Poop on Peeps directly to the Michele she credits for many of the crazy ass comments about her, people are now furiously bombarding Google with searches for her. Her name is all over Twitter. She may have legal problems. It’s only a matter of time before people connect the dots. If you Google the name Dooce gives, the link for Lucky Thirteen comes up, and there you get the dirt. I  hope for her sake that Dooce’s fans really aren’t the mindless minions that Chick has always maintained they are.