[WikiEN-l] No joy in Maddenville, part 2

[Daniel R. Tobias]

[a sequel to the parable posted earlier in this list]

Maddenville was in crisis.  People with bizarre views of what 
constituted "football" were disrupting it.  Some of the town's 
leaders decided that what was needed was to Get Tough on the trolls, 
vandals, and disrupters.  A number of people were banned.  Many of 
the banned people, along with others who were critical for some 
reason or other of the concept of Maddenville, the way Maddenville 
was being run, or the game of American football itself, started 
congregating on a hilltop near enough to Maddenville to get a good 
look at what was happening there, but across the county line so that 
the authorities of Maddenville had no jurisdiction over them.  They 
named their new settlement "Maddenvile Review Village", and soon it 
grew into a thriving settlement, though still much smaller than 
Maddenville itself.  From there, residents used telescopes and 
binoculars to monitor the goings-on at Maddenville, as well as 
getting reports by phone, paper mail, and in person by visitors from 
Maddenville, not to mention watching and listening to the TV and 
radio stations originating in Maddenville.  Just like the obsession 
of Maddenville was football, the obsession of Maddenville Review 
Village was Maddenville.

For a while the two settlements coexisted without very much strife; 
many in Maddenville were glad that some of the more disruptive people 
had left (whether voluntarily or by being exiled forcibly), and chose 
simply to ignore the activities of the village of critics and go on 
with their own passion for football.  However, there were a few in 
Maddenville whose feelings were hurt by the mean things Maddenville 
Review Village was saying about them.  They would send banned people 
to sneak into Maddenville at night and post notices on the bulletin 
board in the town square, sometimes containing personal attacks on 
citizens of Maddenville, or revealing embarrassing personal 
information about them.  Maddenville's constables would rip them down 
as soon as they saw them, but sometimes ill feelings resulted from 
their being seen at all.  A growing sentiment developed among some of 
the leaders of Maddenville that more needed to be done than simply 
passively ignoring them.

Matters soon came to a head when a leader who had been the subject of 
particularly nasty attacks from the Review Village noticed the 
distressing fact that Maddenville Review Village was listed in the 
atlas and gazetteer in the Maddenville Public Library.  This atlas 
was the pride and joy of the town librarian and the centerpiece of 
the library's collection, as the librarian supplemented her love of 
football with a love of geography nearly as great.  The atlas was 
kept in a set of three-ring binders so that pages could be updated as 
needed, in order to keep it accurate up to the minute.  In a recent 
update, MRV had been added, as the publishers of the atlas decided 
that it was sufficiently notable for inclusion along with the many 
other cities, towns, villages, and hamlets included there.

This would simply not do, according to the town leader.  MRV was a 
group of evil, banned trolls, and should not be given the recognition 
of inclusion in any reference work in Maddenville, in his opinion.  
Since Maddenville had a tradition to "Be Bold", he went into the 
library with a tube of White-Out and obliterated MRV from the map.  
The librarian wasn't very happy with this, but didn't vocally object 
because she didn't much like MRV anyway, and didn't want to be seen 
by the townspeople as supporting that group of trolls and harassers.