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How to be vile

Words fail me. How anyone can be so callous beggars imagination. Yeah, sure, Jennifer Petkov ultimately apologized, but only after news of her vileness was spread far and wide around the world. Worse, it was one of those “not-pologies” where Petkov said she was sorry “if anyone was hurt” not that she was sorry for having behaved despicably and thereby having caused that hurt, all topped off with an utterly lame and completely unbelievable lie that she “never really meant any ill wishes towards” Kathleen Edward or her family. And, yes, wearing the glasses was a nice obviously cynical touch.

The Scott Petkov appears to be a bit less vile than his wife:

And all this over a birthday party.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

42 replies on “How to be vile”

“Hopefully we can live our lives peacefully from now on.” = “When I was publicly exposed as a disgusting excuse for a human being, people started treating me badly. I hope this completely insincere and insufficient excuse will make them stop so I can go back to behaving like the scumsucker I am.”

Wait a second. All this because two years ago, someone didn’t reply to a text message quickly enough?

I don’t even carry my cell with me all the time. Sometimes I don’t even see a text message until hours after it was sent. Guess that means if I ever have a dying child, it’ll be fair game to torment us all mercilessly about it.

I can’t even begin to imagine the thought processes here. If I wrote a fictional villain who behaved that way, she’d be torn to shreds by my critiquers as an unrealistic cardboard caricature of evil.

The only gripe I have about modern medicine is that it relaxes selection waaaay too much. No, I’m not talking about the kid who has the fatal disease. I’m talking about her neighbors.

A species of notpology: “I apologize if you’ve been hurt.” She doesn’t say “I apologize because I behaved despicably.”

The apology wasn’t just prompted by public opinion: it was prompted by death threats. I’m also going to guess that the vandalism wasn’t committed by the house’s residents.

Some people in that area don’t seem to have gotten the point about fighting on the side of Goodness and Decency — and what it ought not to include.

Gotta love having sociopaths for neighbors. This poor family.

The only reason this creature apologized was because it was starting to have bad consequences for HER – classic antisocial behavior.

Wow. Even if there’s more to this feud than a text message, this is despicable. I don’t care if the girl’s family shot that woman’s dog, crapped on her front porch, and stole her mom’s social security checks, you don’t target kids in arguments. Especially when the kid’s dying and you’re effectively ensuring that a huge chunk of their memories of life are going to be of you harassing them.

Civilized behavior is great most of the time, but when you encounter people like that, civilization is no substitute for going over with a crowbar and taking out a couple of kneecaps and collarbones.

No, rglovejoy, I think she was doing for exactly the reason she said — personal satisfaction. She enjoyed the discomfort it gave her neighbor prior to her death, and is now enjoying the discomfort it gives the poor woman’s widower and daughter. There are people like that. And yes, people who will do this for such trivial “slights”.

We had a guy here in the Twin Cities who was in the press for being a shockingly and terrifyingly bad neighbor. It went beyond Facebook. He was breaking into the neighbors’ unsecured WiFi (moral of the story: always have a password on your router), getting into their computers, signing them up for junkmail, sending harrasing messages to their employers from their personal e-mail accounts, sending death threats…. The neighbors were too scared to call police. It finally stopped when he made the mistake of not only trying to get neighbors in trouble for possessing child porn but upping the ante with a an e-mailed death threat, sent from a neighbor’s hijacked PC, against Vice President Biden. The Secret Service got involved, of course, and he’s in jail now — and for child porn possession as well, since of course he had to get the material for his planned framings *somewhere*.

He went further than this odious woman did. But it’s the same sort of personality. They just hate other people, enjoy the sense of power from making other people squirm, and need very little excuse to get started.

As Elf Eye points out, a non-apology. She apologized to the little girl if she got hurt? And what about the rest of the family? Words fail me too, probably because I have too many choice words I’d like to use about the foul-mouthed white trash.

Not much point getting any further worked up about this story. This woman’s a sociaopath, pure and simple, and not much you can do about that. I’m a little bit interested to see how far 4chan will go towards punishing her. They did vow to go all out.

Unfortunately, there are far too many people like this in the world. All you have to do is check out the daily comments on FoxNews – especially for any story involving a homosexual.

It sickens me that anyone could find this type of behavior acceptable or tolerable.

Gotta love the way Jennifer Petkov can’t remember Kathleen’s name.

A friend of mine had 3 rules for her kids when giving apologies. You have to 1) say the other person’s name, 2) say what you did, and 3) use the word “sorry”. Jennifer Petkov missed on all 3.

The only gripe I have about modern medicine is that it relaxes selection waaaay too much. No, I’m not talking about the kid who has the fatal disease. I’m talking about her neighbors.

I disagree completely. Psycho neighbor is, as far as we know, healthy, fertile, and able to attract an equally psycho mate. She has, currently, no need for medicine at all. It’s only a shame that medicine hasn’t gone far enough that the poor kid could live long enough to move away and have this be nothing more than an ugly memory one day. The moral is that selecting for “healthy” people is not the same as selecting for “good” people and we need to go further with medicine to give more people-whatever their morals-a chance.

“Unfortunately, there are far too many people like this in the world. All you have to do is check out the daily comments on FoxNews – especially for any story involving a homosexual.”

Or on any Daily Kos/Democratic Underground thread’s comments about Sarah Palin. Same difference. The world is full of people who are happiest with they are abusing or trashing others. This particular woman is sociopathic enough that she’s willing to continue doing so in public and only “apologizes” when her back is completely against the wall.

“A friend of mine had 3 rules for her kids when giving apologies. You have to 1) say the other person’s name, 2) say what you did, and 3) use the word “sorry”. Jennifer Petkov missed on all 3.”

What an EXCELLENT set of rules. I work with a few people who could stand to learn them.

Abusive social stress like that does accelerate neurodegenerative diseases. Stress causes low NO, the low NO shifts the setpoint for ischemic preconditioning, so it turns on faster and doesn’t turn off when it is supposed to. Ischemic preconditioning is a low ATP state where “housekeeping” functions are turned down.

That is what causes the neurodegeneration of Huntington’s. Low NO causes low ATP which turns off the pathways that clear damaged proteins. The gene mutation that cause Huntington’s causes a polyglutamine repeat in huntingtin which causes the buildup of inclusion bodies due to insufficient clearance by the proteasome (run by ATP) and autophagy (run by ATP). Once the cells get sufficiently clogged up, they don’t work right, that causes more stress and the generic response to stress is lower NO levels.

So abusive bullies like this do cause bad health and in this case probably accelerated the mother’s death. The child’s death too. That is the whole point of bullying, to cause stress, pain, hurt, and in the limit death.

There is someone needing Fred Phelp’s kind attention (except it would upset this little girl’s family).

True. I just wish we could isolate all the bullies in one place, so the rest of us could have some peace.

This is not new. I wish it were.
Every so often you come across a person who just cannot stand anyone else receiving sympathy or being the centre of attention. The grudge was merely an excuse. The not-pology is because she can extend her attention gain for a time by doing so. Unfortunately, next week or next month, this woman will be doing this again. Unfortunately, she will continue to spiral downward, destroying everyone within reach, until she dies or is murdered.

Civilized behavior is great most of the time, but when you encounter people like that, civilization is no substitute for going over with a crowbar and taking out a couple of kneecaps and collarbones.

I’m a little bit interested to see how far 4chan will go towards punishing her.

Ah, the joys of mob rule.

Posted by: Dan Weber

Those who would be shown compassion need to show it to others. I think amending the law to reflect it would cause more problems than it solves but morally I don’t see the problem with honoring the secession from the human race and the rights and privileges being human entails which Jennifer Petkov clearly intended to express by her viciously cruel behavior.

dizie izie, my mother has always said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and your exact duplication of my post #11 in your post #27 is obviously an act of great homage to the Master. Or else you have ten thousand monkeys at ten thousand keyboards posting for you.

Old Rockin’ Dave wrote:

Civilized behavior is great most of the time, but when you encounter people like that, civilization is no substitute for going over with a crowbar and taking out a couple of kneecaps and collarbones.

>

I don’t condone breaking anyone’s bones*, but I’m sort of surprised that one never seems to read of assholish neighbours waking up with an axe in their chest.

* I presume you don’t mean actually removing kneecaps and collarbones, which’d be all sorts of weird in addition to wrong. Plus, removing someone’s clavicles without killing them is probably beyond the average vigilante to do with any reliability.

Before we start breaking out the pitchforks and torches, this story is from Fox News and they have been known to get things wrong and/or distort them. I can’t imagine what could possibly make the Petkovs any less disgusting, but I’ll admit that it might be possible.

Those who would be shown compassion need to show it to others.

Mob rule is scary. You might approve of the mob today because they are taking down this person, who you have decided sucks after you have seen 4 minutes of local teevee news coverage. But tomorrow maybe the mob will go after one of your friends.

@31: “I don’t condone breaking anyone’s bones*, but I’m sort of surprised that one never seems to read of assholish neighbours waking up with an axe in their chest.”

Is a bullet in the back close enough? “Man arrested for fatally shooting teen” (Oct. 10, 2010), http://www.fox41.com/Global/story.asp?S=13299553

Two points not clear from the news story: (1) the 62 year old man (who looks none too healthy) did call the police on the group of teenagers who were vandalizing his home and car at night. The police did not respond as apparently it was not deemed to be sufficiently serious; (2) pictures of the man’s home show rocks (that appear to be about fist size) embedded in the siding.

Still, shooting a 15 year old in the back is extreme.

However, his parents’ press conference, including denials that their son would ever be involved in such activities, indicates at least part of the problem. According to the parents, that night he wasn’t hanging out with friends (that they knew) and, they were not aware of where he was.

What the neighbor said was vile, hurtful, downright evil. Thankfully this country allows her to say such things, so that they can be seen for the type of person they are, and appropriately ostracized.

Vandalism, death threats, these things are beyond the pale and also crimes.

Let the shame be its own punishment. The vigil in the neighborhood was a very easy response (nothing easier in the world than defending a dieing child) but its also the right and legal response.

I disagree completely. Psycho neighbor is, as far as we know, healthy, fertile, and able to attract an equally psycho mate. She has, currently, no need for medicine at all. It’s only a shame that medicine hasn’t gone far enough that the poor kid could live long enough to move away and have this be nothing more than an ugly memory one day. The moral is that selecting for “healthy” people is not the same as selecting for “good” people and we need to go further with medicine to give more people-whatever their morals-a chance.

Eh, this is making a certain assumption about Petkov-the-pissant and her family medical history.

I’m referring to cases where people do shit like get drunk and get bunged up in a car accident and require surgery.

Karma, who is known to be quite the biatch, brought some stuff to Jennifer Petkov recently:

1) Oct 20, 2010 … A custody hearing was held for two of Jennifer Petkov’s children, who will live with their father until…
http://xrl.in/6jg0

and

2) Jennifer Petkov Arrested For Allegedly Trying to Run Over Neighbor (not the same one) http://xrl.in/6jg1

BTW, the above link also mention the eventual firing of Mr. Petkov…

As I said…Karma can be quite the biatch at times.

hello,

I’m talking about her neighbors. This particular woman is sociopathic enough that she’s willing to continue doing so in public and only “apologizes” when her back is completely against the wall…

hi all

That is what causes the neurodegeneration of Huntington’s. Once the cells get sufficiently clogged up, they don’t work right, that causes more stress and the generic response to stress is lower NO levels…

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