Wednesday, June 22

Still naked after all these, uh, weeks.

For all of you who've been following the ongoing (well, more accurately, not-going) saga of Whatever Happened to Naked Furniture?, found this today in the Indianapolis Star:

BLOOMINGTON -- Doctors at Indiana University successfully re-inserted a feeding tube into Naked Furniture, a blog started by an IU law student, following an executive order issued by Gov. Mitch Daniels on Tuesday.

The blog was started two years ago by Mary Spears, who abandoned it in April to focus on her law studies. Spears claimed the blog had told her that, in the event of a catastrophic injury or computer crash, it did not want extraordinary efforts taken to preserve its life.

However, Spears could produce no written evidence to support this claim, and the dying blog quickly became a cause cel?bre for bloggers and activists outraged that a blog still capable of expressing intelligent thought and original ideas would be allowed to expire. Those activists heralded Daniels's order as a "historic victory" on Tuesday.

"Thank God that we will no longer have to sit and watch helplessly as Naked Furniture withers away before our eyes," said Keith Simmons, executive director of the National Right to Blog Committee. "We hope this will send a message to the rest of America, and the world, that every blog is precious."

Simmons and his fellow activists assembled a unique coalition of pro-life conservatives and liberal bloggers in the effort to have Naked Furniture revived. Together they kept up a near-constant vigil outside Spears's Bloomington apartment for nearly two months, protesting the removal of the blog's feeding tube. Several protestors were arrested trying to forcibly enter the apartment to post to the blog themselves or install additional memory on Spears's computer.

The controversy garnered national attention when the blog's cause was taken up by Republicans in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a licensed physician, even issued a diagnosis of his own from the floor of the Senate, saying, "I've monitored the blog's SiteMeter continuously over the past week and the numbers continue to creep up. Clearly, that means new posts and ideas are being expressed on this blog, even if we can't, you know, find out where they are."

Neither Spears nor her attorneys made any statements to the press in response to the governor's executive order, so it was not known as of Wednesday whether they would submit to the order or attempt an appeal to federal court.


You know, as someone who's had to make the unbelievably wrenching decision to pull the plug on a blog, I can definitely sympathize with Mary here. I can remember the days and weeks after I allowed GWBWYPGN?! to die a peaceful and natural death -- all those people calling my cell-phone to tell me I was a murderer, that I had committed "blogicide," that I was going to receive harsh judgment from God when my day finally came. Some of them even accused me of having started this blog in secret before GWBWYPGN?! had officially ended and accused me of killing the old blog just so I could spend more time working on the new one. So I know what Mary has been going through, and I don't think we should judge her. Still, it's nice to know Naked Furniture will be back.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will forever wonder though that if the blog had been allowed to die, would the autopsy reveal the snark center to be twice the size as those found in a normal blog?

Mary said...

Aw, y'all. Aw.