Phired? Ober Out at Seven Days

When the remnants of Hurricane Irene brought the worst flooding Vermont has seen in nearly a century, Phish and the group’s fans rallied around the state by donating time and money to the relief effort. While it took the mainstream media time to wrap their proverbial heads around just how bad the situation was in the Green Mountain State, Phish fans had already spread the word on message boards, Facebook and Twitter that help was needed.

Many Vermonters appreciated the help, but not Seven Days staff writer Lauren Ober, who skewered the group’s fans in a post on 7D’s Blurt blog. Today, less than a month after the “ill-conceived” and “ill-timed” post was published, Ober has announced she is leaving the Seven Days staff.

No matter how Ober and Seven Days try to frame her departure, you can’t help but think that the Phish post played a role. It wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence that within Ober’s apology post, was the following note…

Opinions expressed on our staff blog do not necessarily reflect the views of editors or staff at Seven Days. Many of us are longtime Phish fans, and all of us appreciate what the band, and its fans, are doing for our state.

Perhaps that should’ve been at the end of the original article, no? Many of Ober’s co-workers came to her defense when the Phish fan community gave her shit, but Seven Days owner/editor Pamela Polston did not, at least publicly, weigh in to offer her support.  Now, Lauren didn’t just save her bitter nastiness for the Phish fans who ::gasp:: offered assistance to Vermont. In recent months, she’s gone the stupid stereotype route to take aim at Burlington trying to reach out to the Quebecois, a lawyer who helped flood victims and a senior citizen who put herself in Ober’s cross-hairs by posting a personal ad Lauren felt was “icky.”

We’re hesitant to take any pleasure in someone losing their job in this economy, even Lauren Ober. We hope she learns there’s a difference between being snarky and being mean. The worst part of the whole “How About You Lend a Phreaking Hand” debacle, is that beyond Ober throwing out every stereotype and changing every “f” to “ph” were some really good suggestions about how Phish fans could’ve helped flood victims even more. You don’t kick somebody and then ask for their help. Good luck, Lauren.

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7 Responses

  1. We didn’t mess with her, but she sure decided to mess with us. Goes to show that people are sick of hack authors using tired, worn out stereotypes on a group of people that can’t be stereotyped. Other writers should take notice of how to NOT treat phish fans. Especially since we donated over $1 million+ to help Vermont.

  2. As you said “you don’t kick people and then ask for their help”.

    You don’t kick people when they are down, either.

    FTR, the post on the lawyer was 100% positive, I guess you’re going only on the title. The post on the grandma was amusing. The old lady is in to “rimming”. I mean really, she can’t snark on that?

  3. Wow. She sounds like phreakin’ mean beotch! Listen, I’m not a rap phan at all but if my homestate got tagged as bad as VT did by Hurricane Irene, and Kanye held a benefit concert to raise money for those affcted, I would be 110% behind the dude. Ober and out, Lauren.

  4. I worked with this girl and she’s got lots of issues, prominent among all of them is that her thoughts run no deeper than those from the television world.

    In a simple way, she’s like most of America – an intellectual sheep.

  5. Regardless of her ill-timed antagonistic blog posts about Phish, bottom line is that she is just not a quality writer, and for some reason the editors of 7 days allowed her to write for a long time unchecked. It was really bad writing. And she’s not the only cancer in their newsprint. Their music writer is well-below average and basically unreadable.

    Someone is asleep at the wheel at 7 Days.

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