Low Blow

I have been engaged in a cordial email correspondence with Orthomom. She was none-too-pleased with my recent nasty and sarcastic post calling her latest post about Lawrence School District 15 the most tedious post in the history of J-Blogging.

I apologized privately but I also think that it would be right to apologize publicly in the same forum in which I dissed her.

So, here goes:

I apologize for the low blow. I let my general sense of sarcasm go too far. Obviously, the post was not the most tedious in the history of Jblogging. In fact, most of my biking posts are far more tedious.

Most importantly, I should have explained what I meant and not just put it in one nasty sentence.

Ironically, I have been a big supporter of the efforts to take over SB 15. I am very close to many of the people who led the effort to take control of SB 15 and I actually helped coordinate the effort at my shul and helped persuade the Rav to lend his strong support.

Having said that, I have been very concerned about the hubris and lack of tznius that seems to have resulted from the victory (The most egregious example of which was the idiotic effort to run for the sanitation seat). The board, and the community, IMHO, should now keep a very low profile and just do its work.

In terms of the vote for the sale of the No 1. school, I have a few thoughts. First, I am very skeptical that the sale will ever happen. I have been a lawyer for traders for the last 20 years. When the cover bid is so much lower than the winning bid, as I understand it was in this case, it usually means the winner mispriced its bid.

Second, I am actually somewhat sympathetic to the idea of keeping the school as a school. Clearly, there is a screaming need for the yeshivas in the neighborhood for those buildings.

Third, I think that there was virtually no chance the vote would go down.

Finally, I made my sarcastic comment about the post in the context of what is going on in Israel. Put in that perspective, all the arguments about SB 15 seemed to me silly and, yes, tedious.

Nevertheless, OM was correct that my post was a low blow and for that I apologize. I am a regular reader of her blog and, in spite of my few nasty comments, generally an admirer. I just think she should drop the SD 15 posts already and move on to something more interesting, like, for example, biking.

The good news is that OM accepted my apology and we are now blogging buddies. She also responded to my individual points but, since it was a private conversation, I leave it for her to respond publicly, either in the comment section or on her own blog.