He had me at circle-jerk.

Yeah, he's right, but he's still a douche. Does he feel humanized when I say that, or just Lemon Fresh?

Aw! I always felt that this place was much more of a creepy little circle-jerk of lurve. (But perhaps I'm just missing Balk's Cock.)

Publish and perish, I guess.

That's where he's wrong... dehumanization isn't the essential ingredient, it's AN essential ingredient, coming in right between pepper and professionalism.

i agree with him completely. but i am also glad gawker provided access for me to read it. because it was amazing.

i hadn't considered circle-jerking to my own self-righteousness! off to craigslist to gather a group! thanks, robby-kins!

Criticism from a guy who told Page Six that his wife was "weepingly grateful" for his email? Purposefully TOLD them that?! Yup: he's a de-humanized piece of circle-jerking horse shit. Ok, I feel better now...

The novel just got even better.

This comment is intended strictly for those who personally know me: He's holding me too tight. Help me? Best, Poodlitzer

Oh, that photo. . .careful, Robert. Don't slide into the abyss of a "rebound quickie."

See look, he's bouncing back. He's already taken a new girlfriend in Phyllis Diller.

Oh yeah, we're the assholes. Because we're the ones who spread the news of the childhood trauma of someone we spent a decade with to our students, despite it being none of their fucking business, just to make it look like the person who abandoned us can't really be trusted to make any good decisions, because of said childhood trauma.

But ohmygodthatdogissooocutesiewootsiegiveusakiss!

Oh, who could have predicted that this email would so quickly have moved outside of the sphere of those for whom it was strictly intended? Dude had better take those spring break pics off of his Facebook, too.

@mathnet: @IBentMyWookie: I was going to ask how Frederic Prinz von Anhalt feels about Butler messing around with his lady.

Well, he's not wrong.

I've got a lot of sympathy for the guy. He's doing the best he can in an impossible situation, and trying to take the high road dealing with his wonky former spouse and her creeparoo billionaire boyfriend.

I feel less sympathy for the snark-assed grad student who started forwarding this to all his buddies while sucking down a pabst, masturbating , and dog-earing his copy of "On the Road" to that one page where people burn like roman candles (which everyone does. yeesh.). With any luck, he'll get his.

It had its intended effect around Tallahassee and in some other places where she and I are actual human beings.

To humiliate her with your false expressions of concern and your sharing of profoundly personal information about her? Not to mention your insinuation that her attraction to Turner is because of her childhood abuse (look in the mirror, Bob, you're a Grandpa figure yourself)?

I hope it didn't have its "intended effect", you passive-aggressive fuck. Even though she seems to be a douchenozzle as well, nobody needs that kind of shellacking. I'm glad I don't have your nerve in my tooth.

What a creepy little circle-jerk of self-righteousness you're running.

That's quite a compliment coming from you, Bob. Let us know when you get that Pulitzer Prize for Creepy Circle-Jerks of Self-Righteousness you so richly deserve.

@LolCait: And I'll ask you, too. You're probably interested as well, Wookie, having attended an inter-species marriage.

@VenusCloacina: BravfuckingO.

Well, yes.

But it's the nature of e-mail that it gets forwarded. It's the nature of news that it gets published.

Our job, such as it is, is to remember that people in public life are still people. So, once again: Sorry, Julia!

Sorry dude, your charge of "dehumanizing" rings kinda hollow. Aren't you the same guy who framed your soon-to-be ex-wife's intenstinal blockage as the catalyst for her existential epiphany!?

Are gawker and gossiper mutually exclusive? I'm not sure where to set up camp.

Hey Bob, people that don't want the probing speculum of public scrutiny don't put their feet in email stirrups and start yelling about their issues. The Clue Phone is ringing with an offer for you to tell "personal friends" personal news in person.

Oh my goodness. Total Eric Schaffer.

The caption to that photo, as per his livejournal which surely exists (you just effing know it does):

I know that this sort of thing can easily become distorted through hearsay and idle gossip, so I want you to hear it from me first.

This morning when I tried to rouse him out of bed, Mr. Fluffykins refused to get up and accompany me on our morning constitutional. I knew that there had been problems, but I thought that our devotion to one another would heal the wounds that had been caused by the overzealous ball-cupping of one of the judges at the Tallahasee County Fair Dog Show. I though that my love would be enough to help Mr. Fluffykins forget the pain of that past fondling, and that together we would forge a new future....

@Pope John Peeps II: y. He's doing the best he can in an impossible situation, and trying to take the high road dealing with his wonky former spouse and her creeparoo billionaire boyfriend.

How was that email "taking the high road"? His wife's childhood sexual abuse and intestinal blockages (not to mention her supposed jealousy of his Pulitzer, which I highly doubt) were none of his graduate students' business. Nor were the relationship agreements she and Turner have.

If he had sent an email that said "Elizabeth and I have separated and are being divorced," that would be the high road.

Implying that his wife left him for someone who reminded her of Molestin' Grampa/because she's a moneygrubbing whore/because she's OH SO JELOUS of his precious Pulitzer/and anyway she's just going to be one of his stable, so there--that's pissy.

Committing that to writing and sending it to graduate students in English--a group of people well known for their gossipy nature--was irresponsible as well as pissy.

Is there an office pool on which Gawker staffer gets assassinated first? I'm in.

No no no. Elizabeth is the one joining the circle-jerk.

Sorry, wait. I thought that everyone knew that email is never truly private? Did he really think an email would remain so? Maybe I worked for the federal government too long, but even I know that email gets around to all sorts of audiences, intended or not. This guy needs email etiquette 101. Jerk.

For readers who don't know Florida all that well: "around Tallahassee and in other places" is a very funny line.

Mr. Turner is probably better for her in the longrun. Media moguls tend to know when to shut the fuck up; masochistically egomanical writers never do.

Obvs, it was totes a private e-mail, but a vengeful twentysomething aspiring novelist leaked it because he got a B- on his paper for Carver and Achebe 101. Do you think the grad student who leaked it can get kicked out of the program? 'Cause if R.O.B. only sent it to a handful of people, it's gotta be pretty easy to figure out who done it. What if some bespectacled Ivy Leaguer slumming it post-grad in Tallahassee doesn't get his MFGay? Has the missing 8th Foer sibling gone to the dark side?

Careful, Fluffy. I think he's eyeing your rug.

So, if they leave Tallahassee, are they no longer actual human beings? But how can that be, if we already dehumanized them? I'm confused.

I went to school in Tallahassee, and I can assure you that there are no actual people there.

I wonder if Bob ever thought "circle jerk" would be a part of his Wikipedia profile, as it now is.

Elizabeth is Cuckold-My-Pulizer-Flaunting-Hubby-With a-Daft-Superannuated-Billionaire Hot!

Dehumanized? I think one of Ted's ranches is chock full of 2 legged fillies!

I'm increasingly disturbed by the dog-clutching, myself. Please note also dewberry clutching dog and the related friend clutching brace of dogs. Old Bob was pointedly specific about the fact that he gets canine custody; can we count them as singlefiers even though they're not stuffed?

@Pope John Peeps II: oooo, he "took the high road" by TALKING TO PAGE SIX ABOUT HOW HIS WIFE WAS "WEEPINGLY GRATEFUL" FOR HIS EMAIL?
no.

Did I call it? I called it! I so called it!

And let's hear it one more time, folks: "But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number..."

This guy can't even SEE the high road from where he's standing. He's just got his poodle in a twist because Gawker out-"sneered" him.

I prefer circle-jerks of self-loathing. Self-righteous masturbaters are too judgmental.

@Pope John Peeps II:

Peeps, I know you're dealing with your own break-up, but I'm sure you're not going around telling people your exes personal details in an attempt to place all of the blame squarely on her shoulders while trying to sound like you were and still are supportive of her.

This guy gets no sympathy for passive-aggrassive douchebaggery.

@IBentMyWookie: Well, our being assholes and his being an asshole are not mutually exclusive. But as far as our assholeness goes, it's not like we're keeping it a big secret.

I'm sorry. We are jerks, but there are plenty of times I've been in the middle of composing an email, or a text message, or, yes, even a Gawker comment, and have stopped, thought "Is this really something I ought to be putting in writing?", decided it wasn't, and gone back to reading Dinosaur Comics. I can't excuse our behavior; but it's almost as difficult to excuse the winner of one of the craft's highest honors for failing to grasp some of the most fundamental qualities of the medium that is the written word.

@VenusCloacina: Hey there Missy. You might want to back that trainload of indignity up some, and try to remember that since you don't actually know these people, it comes across as pretty vulgar that you're so in his face.

That's why I wrote the word IM-POSSIBLE in this situation. Because it's NOT POSSIBLE to avoid the temptation to hurt someone who has done damage to you. Of course he failed. Of course he was weak. It's what we do. Barring breaking up with the Dalai Lama, who would shrug and say "when you shrug off attachment, life is an ephemeral mystery worthy of fascination", everyone fucks it right up the wall at the end.

Hey Bob,
The next time your trophy wife dumps you and you're afraid that your grad students will be surprised by this, just send out an email saying something like: "Yes, it's true. We split. I'll be happy to tell you what happened if you bring a bottle of scotch and some decent weed by the manse. Thanks, Bob.

Save you a lot of scrutiny on the old series of tubes.

Gossiper.com is just some lame straw site getting people to download software. Strike three, Butler!

I don't care if he did intend that e-mail for a select group of friends and others, or the entire world. What he had to say was the kind of thing that, perhaps -- perhaps -- you share with your closest of friends over coffee or a beer or something. And, probably, that close friend would say,

Bob, that whole grandfather theory is just weird. I'm not so sure about that. Don't you think money, travel, and so on might also have something to do with it? And anyway, if the grandfather theory is true, it doesn't say much about her own attraction to YOU, Bob, who at age 50 married her at Tavern on the Green when she was barely 30. So, I'd steer away from that whole line of reasoning for your own good. It makes it sound like she dumped you for a richer and better looking molester. You don't want to be the ugly molester, Bob.

Instead, Bob Butler decides he's too busy to actually have, ahem, actual human and humanizing contact with the few people who he wants to know the gorey details, and so he sends out an e-mail with instructions to go forth and spread the story as he's told it. The assertion that Elizabeth Dewberry wept with gratitude about that e-mail is either a huge lie or more proof that she's got corn bread for brains, which has long been suspected. In either case he does her no favors, which puts the lie to his assertions of love and gratitude and so on.

And if the e-mail recipients were so close, so dear and human to him, that he would share such personal details with them, how come he couldn't predict that at least one of them would forward it on to the world? Clearly, there's at least one person who needed to know about Dewberry's intestinal distress who, in fact, he did not know very well at all.

Let's cut the bullshit: creative writing staffs are notoriously catty, backbiting groups of malingerers who love talking about each other. Robert Olen Butler was merely trying to get ahead of the spin and win the gossip battle. Bob Butler has always perceived himself as something of an otherworldly saint figure, but this latest is just so much crap.

By the way, he's not a crap writer like some have alleged -- he's pretty damned great if you ask me. Writers like him should write more and talk less.

Actually, I thought it was more like an icky reach-around of smarmy pseudo-sophistication but what do I know? I never won a Pulitzer.

@VenusCloacina: God bless.

@Pope John Peeps II: And everyone try to remember that she apparently GAVE him PERMISSION to use all these personal details in an email that she KNEW full well was going to be sent.

This thread is boring now. I'm going back to writing about Queen songs. And reading Dinosaur Comics. And White Ninja comics.

My favorite thing about this is how entirely blameless he is. To wit:

1. Her grandfather's abuse caused the attraction to Ted Turner / the divorce.
2. Her first husband was also an abusive asshole.
3. That damn Pulitzer, too! Damn that Pulitzer!
4. Did I mention the granddaddy issues?

How DARE you Gawkers poke fun at an innocent man?!

@Pope John Peeps II: That's why I wrote the word IM-POSSIBLE in this situation. Because it's NOT POSSIBLE to avoid the temptation to hurt someone who has done damage to you

Actually, it is. It's completely possible. And it's completely possible not to be an utter passive-aggressive douchebag.

Nor am I ever "vulgar". "Vulgar" is sending a mass email about your soon-to-be ex-wife's intestines.

I'm so confused. Judging by the photo, how was this guy not grandpa-ish enough? What's going on here?