Dearest @TwitchyTeam..
I'm not sure why you have such a fascination with the drivel I babble about on twitter, and I'm very happy you brought attention to my new little blog, kjosbigmouth.com, but it's fine by me. Obviously, as you can see by the title of my blog alone, I'm quite aware of my capacity to say incendiary things.
But I did want to clarify something. The broohaha over my tweets re: an actress announcing her sexuality & the hooplah that accompanied it ("I look forward to the day when someone's sexuality isn't newsworthy", which I stand nehind 100%) had nothing to do with why I took a twitter break.
I was sick of the infighting & cruelty I witness on twitter every day, and I wanted time to write.
Plus, I had just received a diagnosis of Lupus, so I was grappling with that.
Because I'm an addict (in recovery thank you very much), keeping my twitter account up & running is unfortunately not good enough. I had to deactivate it. (I've done this a few times before, and I highly recommend it.)
At any rate, to answer your question...no, "Lib tolerance" didn't "force me off twitter."
However, I was pissed off that my point regarding the fuss being made about someone's sexuality was so lost. I'd say 80% of my friends are gay (hey I'm in the theater), and I'm a long time gay rights advocate. I moved to NYC in 1985 just as the AIDS crisis struck in full-force. I went to NYU, and watched in horror as the population of the West Village was utterly decimated.
From that day on, I've done anything possible to raise funds to eradicate this disease & educate people. Last year, I was honored with the "Ally For Equality Award" by the HRC.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid18229050001?bctid=605690599001/2ngm9tu5
Therefore, the fact that my tweets saying that I was troubled by all the hysteria surrounding Ms. Page's announcement were interpreted as me being troubled by the announcement itself was very upsetting to me, and factually incorrect.
I'm not saying you guys are at fault, but your headline "Kristen Johnston ‘troubled’ by reaction to Ellen Page coming out, shares ‘something really private’" didn't help matters.
You quoted me verbatim, it's true. However, you took a word or 2 from this tweet and another from a different tweet...thereby presenting my words and thoughts out of context.
Think about it: if we took one word here, one word there from ANYONE'S twitter feed you could come up with countless shocking headlines. Like Frankenstien, you could create anything. Hell, you could even make Sarah Palin sound witty, using her very own words!! (Oh no she di-int!)
You broke no journalistic rules, and I aint mad atcha. It isn't your fault people glance at a headline, misread it and then have a knee-jerk reaction to it.
It reminds me of this interview I gave with Huff Post. Corey Monteith had just died, nobody even knew the official cause of his death yet. I was talking to them about something else related to addiction, and they asked me my thoughts on his passing. I said something along the signs of how awful it was, and that we didn't know the reason yet. Prompted, I said that if it was indeed drugs, it would be so sad, but I wouldn't be shocked. After all, this is a disease that kills people.
And Mr. Montieths recent struggles with addiction were well documented.
Within an hour, I was getting death threats on twitter. A wall of hurt & rage steamrolled me. I finally figured out why: Huff Post tweeted something like "Kristen Johnston not shocked by Montieth's death"
Was that what I said? Yes.
But it was taken out of context.
I mean, OF COURSE the death of a young man in the prime of his life is shocking.
Sadly, drug OD's kill 100 people a day, many of them young.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I got no problem with people getting mad at me. But I'd much prefer it be over something I ACTUALLY MEANT than a salacious frankenstien headline.
Not to mention, these things are then picked up by other internet sites and suddenly I'm a gay-basher who's blasé about death. You know how it goes....
Respect & all that crap
Kristen Johnston
aka @kjothesmartass