After being dumped by Jimmy Wales on his own website, Rachel Marsden put his clothes up for auction on eBay
Posted on 03/03/2008 6:37:42 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
March 3, 2008
Jilted lover uses eBay to hit back at Wikipedia guru
After being dumped by Jimmy Wales on his own website, Rachel Marsden put his clothes up for auction on eBay |
Philippe Naughton
As of midday today, $102.50 could buy you a little piece of internet history: the T-shirt that Jimmy Wales was wearing when he met Rachel Marsden for what he insists was their one and only night of passion.
There's nothing special about the T-shirt, except for a couple of stubborn stains that even Tide extra-strength could not remove. But it's not every day that a guru of the worldwide web uses his own site to dump his girlfriend and she responds by putting his old clothes on eBay.
Mr Wales, universally known as "Jimbo", is the 41-year-old co-founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written and edited by its users that now contains 9 million articles in 253 languages. Ms Marsden is a Canadian columnist and right-wing TV pundit for whom the word controversial could have been invented.
The two met, online at least, a couple of years ago when Ms Marsden contacted Mr Wales to complain about her Wikipedia biography, with which she disagreed. Mr Wales says that they have only met in the flesh one time, on February 9 this year, by which point they appeared to have developed something of a cyber-lust.
The precise details of their meeting are still unclear. A San Francisco weblog has published transcripts of instant messaging (IM) conversations in which the pair planned a romantic getaway at a hotel in Washington DC. Ms Ramsden, on the other hand, said that Mr Wales left his T-shirt at her flat in New York City.
Either way, they clearly hit it off. In one IM message after their meeting, Mr Wales reportedly tells her: "btw, i am recovered from 24 hours of marathon sex. lol."
In another exchange carried on the Valleywag blog the pair compare broadband services around the world and Mr Wales complains at the miserly download speed offered in America. "When you talk about megabits and broadband, you have no idea what that does to me," she replies provocatively.
For some reason, however, the relationship soured - possibly because Mr Wales realised that Ms Marsden was keeping a copy of all their "hot" instant messaging on her Google e-mail account.
Citing "friends" of the Wikipedia founder, Valleywag reported that Mr Wales had become fearful that Ms Marsden would use the transcripts to blackmail him and threatened to have her deported back to Canada.
The transcripts were duly leaked last week and on Saturday Mr Wales, ignoring the Wikipedia protocol he has so carefully developed, posted a personal statement on the site to insist that he had only met Rachel Marsden one time and was "no longer involved" with her.
Mr Wales also denied having intervened "inappropriately" to redraft her Wikipedia biography, a far more serious charge given the politics of Wikipedia. The IM transcripts suggest, however, that he did offer her advice and even quoted Bill Clinton's line from his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky that it "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is".
Ms Marsden first came to public attention in Canada in the late 1990s when, as a college swimming star, she accused her team coach of sexual harrassment. The coach, who was fired and reinstated, claimed that she had in fact harassed him.
In 2004, she was given a conditional discharge with one year's probation for criminally harassing a Vancouver radio host following their break-up. Last September she was again accused of harassment after she used her blog to accuse a Canadian counter-terrorism officer, with whom she had had a two-year affair, of passing her secret documents.
After Mr Wales posted his Wikipedia statement on Saturday, Ms Marsden was quick to take her revenge, taking the T-shirt and sweater out of the closet, washing them and posting them for sale on eBay - modelling them herself.
"It was such a classy move [by Mr Wales] that I was inspired to do something equally classy myself, so I'm selling a couple of items of clothing he left behind, here in my NYC apartment, on eBay," she explained to buyers.
"Jimbo was supposed to come visit me in a couple of weeks and pick up some of his stuff, but obviously that won't be happening now," she wrote.
"Both of these items have been washed, twice, with Tide extra-strength liquid detergent. Otherwise, they would not be in salable condition. I took them out of GitMo style isolation from a plastic bag in my closet (where they were placed to prevent the ongoing terrorism of my olfactory senses) and washed them out for the purposes of this auction.
"PS: Sorry that my hair is such a mess -- I'm in breakup mode right now and really couldn't be bothered."
Who has the blue dress? It’s got to be worth a fortune!
ping
Well played :)
That's potential tagline material.
And yes, she's a right-wing pundit. A pretty good writer, although it sounds like she's kind of a nutball, and sleeping with her sounds like the mother of all Bad Ideas.
}:-)4
You play with fire, you get burned.
She sounds like a bit of a nut herself... how many charges of harrassment can one person have ?
Lots, apparently.
$102.50 is a great deal. It would be a great conversation piece! Display it in a frame like a sports jersey!
She used to be on RedEye on Fox.
One day she was escorted out the front door by security.
She is a whackjob.
Sounds like they deserve each other!!
Eye-opener (Rachel Marsden carried out of Fox News)
New York Post ^ | May 31, 2007 | Richard Johnson
Posted on 05/31/2007 12:48:36 AM PDT by tlb
SECURITY officers hastily escorted “Red Eye” contributor Rachel Marsden out of Fox News Channel’s Midtown headquarters yesterday for bizarre and erratic behavior. “She’s out of her [bleeping] mind. She was doing crazy stuff,” a spy told us.
A Fox News rep had no comment.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1842337/posts
Yes..Canadian...google her and you will get a feel for the legacy she has.
This is one right-winger that is pretty darn embarassing...
But, for all of us who know that Wikipedia is a biased organization, she does provide useful proof.
You should see what they are doing to Scott Swett and the Winder Soldiers info...shameful
Current Bid $203.50
Wikipedia's Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales Sweater left @ex-g/f's
Current Bid $202.50
One Wikipedia administrator said that it was like letting Greenpeace write the article about the Exxon Valdez, but it didn't do a bit of good. Eschoir is still the editor in charge of the Free Republic article, and he's working in concert with another Wikipedia editor (the notorious BenBurch of Democratic Underground) to post the personal details of Freepers on other pages, in violation of a federal injunction. Jimmy Wales has created a left-wing propaganda site cleverly disguised as an encyclopedia. It's appropriate that he is humiliated like this.
As for Rachel Marsden, only one harassment charge has ever stuck. She walked in on her boyfriend cheating on her with another woman, and had a few choice words for him. In Canada, that's "harassment" in much the same way that saying gays shouldn't be allowed to get married is a hate crime.
The woman sounds odd enough for me, but alas, she’s too young.
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