And the new guy likes to get high.

* Ben’s Chili Bowl turns 50, remains more delicious than my parents.

* Liz, the new hater over at why.i.hate.dc, hits on a topic even trolling commenters can agree on: the meter system’s bad cabbie fallout.

* Daily Campello Art News introduces you to D.C. artist Chawky Frenn’s still life with animal carcass.

* Forget Phelps. BYT gives big ups to the foreigners in Speedos.

* This time in local writer Holly Jones‘ monthly McSweeney’s column, Dispatches from the Anacostia: Gemini gets a new tooth.

* Upset the Setup gets upset about D.C. voting rights.

* Pick up a paper: Our Education Issue gives you the scoops and scandals from six local college rags.

Photo by wfyurasko

why.i.hate.dc’s Liz is right–she did reply to my interview request, but I missed the e-mail among my daily barrage of spam. We’ve exchanged a couple of e-mails since I wrote Thursday about the the nasty comments on her site, where she seems to have replaced D.C. as the object of some readers’ hate.

Liz didn’t know the blog’s previous author, Rusty, before she entered the contest to succeed him. After she won, Rusty’s girlfriend, Liz says, “wrote me to describe some of the things the trolls had done to she and Rusty. She told me to be careful.”

Hence the paucity of personal details. In one of her first posts, Liz says, ” I did answer a commenter who asked about me with some general answers ‘I’m from the midwest, I moved to D.C. because…’ and they spent the next forty posts dissecting that information and speculating about what I wear. After that, there was no way I was going to give them anything. They still post things every day like, ‘You’re fat, arent’ you? Aren’t you!’ (I delete those comments) trying to get me to say something about the way I look, and it’s very creepy. No one ever asked James what color his hair was…”

Liz says she uses “use the same criteria for trolls that I always have for dates….if everything they say is negative and personal, if they yell or call me names, then they’re out. I delete the comment and move on. Some trolls have ended up being interesting once they stop yelling. Most of them, though, are just constantly whining and then whining about the fact that I removed their last whine. It’s boring.”

I asked her whether she thought the trolls are former fans of the blog or if they’re the same people who Rusty’s girlfriend warned her about. She says her “worst offender” is the latter but that one of her “most persistent” detractors says he was a friend of Rusty. “Both of them sounded like first-class jerks though,” she says.

Finally, I told her I was often surprised at the tenor of the comments directed at women online. Nobody talks about Cherkis‘ looks or his ethnic background when he pisses them off. But, well, check out some of these charmers.

Liz isn’t buying such facile explanations, at least not in her case. “I don’t think I get anger for being a woman. However, I think the anger I do get is more likely to be expressed in a certain way because I’m a woman. When trolls comment about women, it seems like stereotypes provide a common thread that different people can relate to.”

After all, Liz says, “trolls just want to be heard no matter what. Rusty left up all comments, so they posted death threats. I took down the death threats so then they posted personal comments. I took down the personal comments so THEN they posted complaints about the writing. I left those up, and they started posting personal comments paired with complaints about the writing.”

In the e-mail before that one, I asked her if she in fact hates D.C. “I think something the trolls respond to is that I tend not to deal in absolutes,” she says. “James was very much, ‘You sir, are a MORON, if you don’t agree with me.’ I’m more, ‘Sheesh. This is such a mess…’ But the one time I use the word ‘Moron,’ (I was just feeling grouchy) the trolls fall all over themselves to say my writing has improved?”

Turns out there was something about D.C. to like. Fans of recently departed why.i.hate.dc blogger Rusty really miss posts like “Guess Who Got Hosed by Metro This Weekend,” “DC Baseball Still Doomed,” and “Man of the People My Ass.”

Sadly, Rusty (who besides his mainstays of public transportation, Laura Sessions Stepp, and the D.C. government, often turned his attention to this paper) has left the city he hated so much for the totally superior town of Columbus, Ohio (his predecessor, blog founder James F., at least went to Seattle). And his replacement, the similarly one-named Liz, is driving Rusty’s loyal readers coconuts, just coconuts!

For starters, she didn’t even do an introductory post, just fired off about the Post’s Chandra series. That went sorta well till she started deleting comments the same day. Then the howls began in earnest.

One day on the job and you’re already deleting comments? Geez, it wasn’t even that bad (and no, I didn’t leave it.)

# posted by Anonymous : July 14, 2008

Stop deleting comments. Rusty hardly ever did that. Your views will decline drastically if you decide to go that route.

# posted by Anonymous : July 14, 2008

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

# posted by Anonymous : July 14, 2008

THEN, Liz started answering commenters. Semi-cryptic posts like this one prompted replies like, “What is your point here?…I’m also unsure as to how this all fits in with the ‘Why I Hate D.C.’ theme.”

She changed the blog’s mission statement. She blogged about stuff she read in the Guardian. She made fun of the commenters’ ire.

And suddenly, all the hatred in D.C. had a new place to live.

Yesterday, Liz hit her haters with this:

You guys are idiots.

You moved to this city because you thought finally you’d be around people who think you’re cool. And you realized that your pose of, “I’m SMART” was just compensation for not having anything else. You’re not as smart as the bar tenders. You hate everyone for not appreciating you. And somehow that’s everyone else’s fault. So you bitch and bitch and bitch.

Not about anything that matters, just about all the other people who aren’t as cool as you. I don’t care that you “lost” some blog that was supposed to make you feel better. You should feel bad. You suck. Fix that and get over everyone else.

Then today she blogged about the Late Night Shots reality show, and why it’ll suck because it’s set in Georgetown, and Georgetown’s for idiots.

The commenters are happy again.

best post yet. More like this and I won’t stop reading after all.

I’ve e-mailed Liz asking for an interview, but I haven’t heard back.