…Always an asshole!

A couple of columns ago I attempted to set the record straight with regard to Mykel Board’s status at MRR, both historically and currently, according to my memories. Much of that column related to Tim Yo’s misunderstood legacy, whereas only a fraction involved Mykel’s more recent ugly behavior. I tried to equate this to “suicide by coordinator,” but I failed to liken it sufficiently to “suicide by cop,” a well-known phenomenon in which individuals subject to lethal police violence provoke the cops into killing them. Certainly, innocent victims of police violence exist, as do trigger-happy cops. Yet, on occasion, a person intent on killing himself does use the police to conduct a suicide by proxy. This was a rather secondary point in my column. What’s more, I tried to keep communicating with Mykel before, during and after the column went to print, even sending him a copy of said column. But Mykel, hell-bent on wrecking his relationship with MRR and everyone associated with it, kept trumpeting the righteousness of his criticisms of MRR while accusing the coordinators of deliberately lying about him. Eventually, Mykel stopped emailing me altogether, instead choosing to post my private “suicide by coordinator/cop” analogy—anonymously—on one of his websites. He claimed it was equivalent to “blaming the victim.” Imagine Mykel, the dude who disparages “victim culture” and makes fun of women who insist they are victims of rape regularly in his columns, now claiming that I am blaming him as the victim. Up until that point, I thought the whole thing between Mykel and MRR’s coordinators was “he said, she said,” with vague evidence all around. Now, I’m convinced that no one lied to Mykel, that in fact it’s Mykel who’s been lying. In an early email, Mykel wrote: “I just hope you don’t think I’ve become a ‘reactionary rightwing’ and I’ve always been an asshole.” Damned straight, Mykel Board is a motherfucking asshole.

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