Subscribe to this blog's feed4-7-07 UPDATE: Today, Dave of Vote For The Worst responded to the outpouring of support on this blog . I have been unbanned from the Worst, but whether I can recover from the initial shock of being banned is another story for another blog entry. Dave and I corresponded on email, and he told me to tell my friends to stop sending them "annoying" emails.
A couple of days ago I joined the Sanjaya rallying site, VoteForTheWorst.com, and posted about my selfless bid to rally the AIDS community around young Sanjaya.
Of course, I couldn't resist linking to my main site, but c'mon; there's a sweet write-up about Sanjaya there. So it wasn't complete and utter self-promotion. The heart of my post was this kid's inspiring rise to the top, not my highly-acclaimed cult classic memoir.
Really, if you think about it, getting kicked out of somewhere due to ignorance is somewhat poignant. This month marks my twenty-year anniversary of testing positive for HIV. In '87 I was just a kid– infamously booted out of school– whom no one gave much of a chance of survival to. And, today, nobody's giving Sanjaya much of a chance to actually win. I haven't survived all these years to idly stand by and watch some kid's Idol dream get crushed.
So Vote For The Worst doesn't want me, eh? They think that Sanjaya can continue to ride his wave of momentum without the AIDS and hemophilia community?
Well, they may be right. But I'm not going to let them slow me down or ruin my anniversary. And, if you've been inspired by this blog, you can email them on my behalf, and I've even constructed an e-model below for your convenience.
Positively Yours,
Shawn
COPY/PASTE this message courtesy of Shawn Decker on behalf of Shawn Decker (Copy after this sentence ends, by the way.)
Dear Vote For The Worst,
I can't believe you banned Shawn Decker from your site for having AIDS.
Sincerely,
*insert your name*
Hi, my name is Dave and I run Votefortheworst.com. I have received maybe 3 or 4 letters about you being banned, and I had no idea what these people were talking about. Now that this came up in a Google search, it makes slightly more sense. But don't you think a mature thing to do would be to talk to the site's administrators and ask why you were banned, instead of whining about it on your blog? I'm not even sure why you were banned, but it's probably because you spammed your site over and over. Feel free to write to me about it, but spamming your site on our board and then whining when you get banned because you didn't read the rules seems a little immature, don't you think?
Dear Dave...
i dont think it is inmature from Shanw's side, it is his right to complain. Actually you should have been the ones offering an explanation or warning about why he was banned.
Don't you think that is good client service?
I really hope you get Shawn's un-banned and into the site again, he is really up for Sanjaya.
Otherwise i have my email ready to be sent and i know lot more people also ready to shoot ;)
You know.. it is time for all of us to work together, everybody.. black, white, chinese, poz people, non poz people, everbody cause there is not harm in it... and well, i guess we can make something good in helping Sanjaya.
cheers.
We did unban Shawn just a little bit ago ;-) All I'm saying is he really could have written to me and I could have looked into it rather than complaining on his blog. I looked into it and felt he was banned prematurely, so he's free to post on the site. See, we're not bad people, lol.