As long as I’m dumping on the Mars Society, I might as well bring up this little gem, seeing as how it contrasts nicely with how Bob Zubrin’s obnoxious and nasty comments are handled.
Three or four years back, when I was running this blog on the Louisiana Mars Society website, some space nutter got my email address from the site and was pestering me about some crazy thing or other. I finally got fed up with the guy, and told him firmly but (I thought) politely that I was not interested in the foolish garbage he was talking about and didn’t want to hear from him about it again.
Shortly thereafter, Maggie Zubrin forwarded to me a copy of the exchange. Like a schoolmarm, she took me to task for being rude to the guy, which she was not about to tolerate considering I was speaking essentially on behalf of one of the chapters. Now, as much as I resented her tone and thought her reaction far exceeded the seriousness of the matter, I couldn’t argue with her perception that it was her place to criticize me for doing something she felt might reflect negatively on the larger organization.
One wonders where that desire for circumspection at the Mars Society is when it comes to Bob Zubrin’s screeds.