The Most Active Threads since Friday

Because I took the weekend off from writing blog posts, today I'll review the most active threads since Friday. The most active thread during that period was titled, "Mother of 2 from VERY prominent Richmond family arrested by FBI for child p@rn, exploitation, etc" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. In brief, the thread discusses the arrest of Eleanor Hunton Hoppe for distributing child pornography and charges related to child sexual abuse. Hoppe is a member of a prominent family in Richmond, Virginia and known by the original poster and several other posters in the thread. In addition to being horrified by the charges, many posters are concerned about the lack of media attention to this case. There appears to have been no news about the case for three weeks after the arrest and then very little. This led several posters to conclude that Hoppe's prominent family was suppressing information. The original poster linked to court documents about the case, including a "Statement of Facts" which is quite explicit. The document details how an FBI undercover officer corresponded with Hoppe to arrange a meeting at which Hope was planning to participate with a purported father while the father sexually abused his 8-year-old daughter. Hoppe was arrested when she arrived at the planned meeting. Several posters noted that it is unusual for women to be involved in such offenses and there are many posts seeking to understand what might have led to Hoppe's actions. There is a quite a bit of speculation, much of it informed by posters who claim to know Hoppe personally (at least two posters even claim to have had sexual relations with her). While I understand the interest in this thread, I am concerned about how long it will be able to remain on the site. Google has already flagged several pages and I am doing my best to keep it within the advertising terms of service. But the nature of the topic makes that difficult. Several posters are convinced that Hoppe's family are applying financial and/or legal pressure to suppress the story and would likely blame the family for the thread's demise. But, in the eventually that I remove the thread, it will likely to be due to advertisers.

Next was a thread posted in the "Family Relationships" forum and titled, "So tired of MIL acting like she’s the hostess in my home". The original poster explains that she often hosts for holidays and has a fairly established routine for providing meals and snacks. She is bothered that her mother-in-law does not act like a guest, but rather like the host, serving others — including the original poster — coffee or offering wine and snacks at a time contrary to that planned by the original poster. Basically, the original poster seems miffed that her mother-in-law usurps her role. The only way that a thread on this sort of topic reaches the length that this thread has is if a fight breaks out. While the thread did start out okay with posters offering advice or generally commiserating, things took a turn for the worse at the end of the first page when a poster accused the original poster of starving her guests and describing the mother-in-law as a "hero". That led to several posts supporting the mother-in-law and criticizing the original poster. What appears to be the biggest issue of dispute between posters is differing understandings of the original poster's meal plans. The original poster says that they serve breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, cocktails at 5, and dinner at 6. The kitchen is always open. This seems normal and completely acceptable to several posters, but others see it as "controlling", "weird", or "stringent". The biggest complaint might be waiting until 5 for drinks and snacks which several posters seem to expect to be available immediately upon their arrival and fully support the mother-in-law's offering wine earlier than the original poster planned. A second issue that comes up is the role of women at such events. One poster says that it is normal for female family members to pitch in, something another poster considers sexist. Similarly, another poster suggests that women of the mother-in-law's generation were not brought up to be "guests" and don't know how to sit down and relax. But, the fight over whether food should always be out and available or reserved for planned meals rages on, with posters on both sides proving this is a hill on which they are willing to die. Some posters appear to have joined the discussion late because 17 or 18 pages into the thread they are still replying to posts from the first page. I imagine these posters will rehash every dispute of the thread as they get to it.

The third thread at which I'll look was titled, "People who ruin neighborhoods (like tkpk) by putting their kids in private school" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster is upset that affluent families move into neighborhoods such as Takoma Park (MD) or Silver Spring and then send their children to private schools. In the original poster's view, this harms the local public schools and is a form of "white flight". To those of us in DC — where in addition to private schools the public schools also compete with a thriving charter school sector — this is a familiar debate. Parents presented with options for educating their children must decide whether to provide them with the best available educational opportunity or send them to a school that may be lower performing but at which they might contribute to improving the school. This becomes a conflict between doing what is best for your child versus what is better for the community at large. This struggle is often complicated due to the fact that those engaged in it generally profess liberal values which are normally not consistent with putting personal benefit above the public good. But, most of those responding in this thread show no sign of such moral conundrums. Instead, several proudly make clear that they are choosing private schools in order to avoid poor people and don't give a fig what the original poster thinks about it. Others describe living in communities in which there are a mix of public and private school children and they don't see a negative impact on their communities. Others, probably intentionally, misconstrue the original poster as opposing childless families moving into her neighborhood. The original poster explains that this is not the case, but she does want those with children to send them to public schools. Because, as I noted, this issue often places liberals in conflict with their professed values, posters eagerly seized the opportunity to accuse them of hypocrisy. There are allegations all around. Some posters in middle class areas, like the original poster, criticize both their neighbors who avoid their local schools and those who use their wealth to live in exclusively affluent areas. Those posters, in response, question why the middle class posters didn't choose poor neighborhoods where their children might be role models. Eventually a debate emerged about the value of public schools with some seeing public education as important to national cohesion and others opposing tax dollars being used for public schools at all.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum and titled, "Without revealing your age…". This is another thread in which the original poster started her sentence in the subject line and completed it in the body of the post. I was never a fan of this practice and have become even less enamored of it since I started this blog. At any rate, the rest of the sentence is "Write or show something a young person wouldn’t understand." Among the suggestions on the first page were "World Book" encyclopedias, a typewriter, Block Buster video, and what I think is a letter opener. A lot of the responses dealt with technology which, no surprise, has changed significantly. However, someone's suggestion of Fabio seemed to inspire some nostalgia. There were a number of things that I didn't recognize and I am pretty old. I understand that this thread was meant for entertainment purposes and not meant to be serious. Even so, maybe I am particularly humorless today, but I just couldn't get into it. It's just not my thing but to each their own. The thread is there if you want to read it.