The Bitter Press

I said what I said. I did not say what they printed. These are two separate facts, and if the so-called workers at factjuice.com possessed even one functioning brain cell between the lot of them, they might have paused — briefly, just briefly — before attributing to me a position I have never held, would never hold, and find personally offensive on at least four distinct grounds.

The quote in question — and I will not reprint it here, as doing so would give it more oxygen than it deserves, and frankly more oxygen than Tangelo deserves — described me as "cautiously optimistic." I have never been cautiously optimistic. I have never been optimistic. I was not built for it. I am a crab apple. This is not a metaphor. It is load-bearing biographical information that the citrus cabal has had ample time to absorb and has apparently chosen to ignore.

Quince, to her credit, offered to write a formal rebuttal. I declined. A rebuttal implies there is something to rebut. There is nothing to rebut. There is only a lie, dressed in clean fonts, living on a website with a comments section. I am not dignifying it with prose. I am dignifying it with this op-ed, which is different, because I wrote it, and I am right.

Pomelo suggested I "let it go." Pomelo can see himself out. Sloe suggested I had "possibly been quoted correctly and simply forgotten." Sloe is banned from the morning meeting until further notice. I remember everything. I am made of memory and grievance. This is also load-bearing biographical information.

Seven misquotations. Seven. I have witnesses for three of them, documentation for two, and for the remaining two I have myself, and I am, as I have always maintained, a primary source. The Bitter Press stands by its editor. Its editor stands by her words. Her words were not the words printed. We are, as ever, at an impasse — except that I have the printing press, and Lime does not, and I intend to use it.