"==Why I don't edit often anymore==

Back in the day I used to edit wikipedia on a fairly regular basis. One of the pages I edited was the eXile. One detractor of the eXile, Peter Ekman, was so pathologically obsessed with discrediting the periodical, that he would devote weeks at a time to blanking and otherwise vandalizing the eXile article while launching reckless accusations at everyone who ""defended"" the eXile. Although many editors did our best to contain Mr. Ekman, eventually he wore me down. It just wasn't worth it spending my free time containing the vendetta of some aggrieved middle-aged jerk.

As a parting bow in my too-long Ekman drama, I wanted to post here a summary about Mr. Ekman's character and the original wiki text that prompted Mr. Ekman's crusade.

About Peter Ekman

Peter Ekman is the aforementioned hack journalist who crusaded against the eXile. But once upon a time Ekman actually had an impressive sounding job working as an editor for the Moscow Times and dispensing right-wing platitudes in the heart of the former communist empire. Moscow in the 90s was a place where failures didn't fail. And for a long time Ekman didn't fail, despite his total lack of social graces and limited intelligence. Eventually his columns attracted the ire of the fellow Moscow publication, the eXile.

Originally the eXile was planning only on criticizing Ekman's written work, but Ekman's response was righteous, menacing, and hinted at violence. So the eXile's added a personal detail: they included the account of a female employee who had been subjected to unwelcome sexual advances by Mr. Ekman. Mr. Ekman had groped the employee while inviting her to a weekend get-away while his Russian Bride was out of town. Ekman responded with the same witless ape-shit animosity that I have since personally witnessed many times on wikipedia. Ekman attempted to get the eXile banned from Johnson's Reading List by declaring the eXile was a fascist, neo-nazi periodical. Ekman's evidence for such nazi sympathies was a spoof fashion piece entitled ""The eXile's Third Reich Uniform of the Week,"" in which a fictional gay fashion designer breathlessly reviewed the 1938 version of the Nazi Field Bishop uniform.

Eventually Ekman lost his position at the Moscow Times. Since then he's occasionally surfaced as a professor of finance at various 3rd rate universities and, of course, here on Wikipedia.

The following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia Article on the eXile that prompted Mr. Ekman's crusade:

Peter Ekman, Johnson's Russia List, and an Unsubtantiated Groping Allegation
In November 2000, in Issue #23 of The eXile, Matt Taibbi published a press review entitled Peter Ekman Groped Me.  The article ridiculed Ekman, then newly appointed editor of The Moscow Times, for his approach to the economic and political development of Russia.  Taibbi characterized this approach as high-handed, condescending, and arrogant, and went on to mock Ekman personally as a pompous hypocrite: ""Ekman has only one idea (""Russia has a lot to learn from America""), which he tries endlessly to sell and resell as a varied package of ribald wit and insight.""  The article also ridiculed Ekman for describing himself as a ""financial educator,"" and described him as having ""a head seemingly worn bald from improper use.""  As a finishing touch, Taibbi recounted an as-yet unverified account of sexual advances made by Ekman to an eXile employee, made at late at night at the Garazh nightclub in Moscow during a visit from Ekman's mother-in-law.

Ekman responded by writing in to Johnson's Russia List to claim that ""the eXile is fascist and racist,""  that ""every eXile issue contains unverifiable stories that smear someone's reputation,"" that The eXile ""is associated with the fascist party of Eduard Limonov."" The accusations of fascism were discounted by many in part because of the eXile's Jewish roots - Ames, along with the eXile's publisher, deputy editor and several contributors are all Jews - and because of the paper's satirical editorial bent. It remains unclear as to whether Ekman did in fact make advances toward an eXile employee, or who that employee may have been.

Old Stuff
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