Friday, February 8, 2013

An Open Letter to Toni Marie Ricci…

Clearly someone’s been in this good lady’s ear….

Dear Toni Marie:

I am writing this because I cannot begin to explain it all on Twitter and I feel it needs to be said. I have always liked you and blogged about you and your events freely and often. We enjoyed a very cordial and friendly relationship and I loved meeting you. I feel that I personally have done my best to promote and support all your past, current and future projects, especially your upcoming book. Mob Mistress has also interviewed you and, I can tell from the questions, that she took great care and compassion not to hurt you, even apologizing for a past blog that was written concerning your ex-husband, which may have hurt you.

Yesterday, you came to me in DM on Twitter, and sent me a link to your blog radio interview. I said I would check it out. You said you thought it was strange that I hadn’t retweeted your interview link. I explained to you that we were in the process of doing our first blog radio show right before yours was airing, and I was distracted preparing for that because I had just learned of it. Then you told me, in that case, I should forget about listening to yours. I don’t know what one radio show has to do with the other, but I sensed you were either offended or felt slighted because we, neither Mob Mistress or myself, retweeted your link that night. In any case you found that odd because you had a relationship with both of us and “helped” MM out. Then you went on to say you were not upset with me. I thought that was the end of it.  But then you seemed to have taken issue with Mob Mistress, saying that you noticed something different (never saying what that was), she has no integrity, a bad attitude and that you give Carla credit for saying what she did about her. You asked me to relay a message to MM, which I did. When MM asked you directly what your problem with her was or if she did anything to you, you never replied. I asked MM myself, if anything had gone on between the two of you, because I was baffled by the whole exchange, which seemingly came out of the blue. I can attest that MM has never uttered one single, bad word about you to me, ever. So I feel that there is something else going on that we are not privy to, but the words you used against MM were uncalled for and unprovoked. I still do not know what brought this about.

Let me explain that we do not blog for a living, it is a hobby. We cannot monitor Twitter 24/7, but we do and have always retweeted all of your significant tweets. Okay, one fell through the cracks, but it was nothing to get offended about, it happens. I did a simple search of our blog and since May of 2012, we have posted at least 13 blogs about you or mentioning you and, in addition, I know I personally retweet several items a day from your account. I am sure if you had asked us to retweet the link to your radio interview, and we saw the request, it would have been done.

Now, although I feel very badly about what happened between the two of you, I have been placed in a very difficult position because of yesterday’s exchange. I had planned to blog about the additional paintings Michael Bell was working on, your book release, book signings and any other events associated with you. But how can I? People use the words loyalty and respect, but I take them to heart. Mob Mistress was a good friend of mine before we ever began this blog. She has stood up for me and defended me more times than I can count. I owe her my loyalty and she has always had my respect. How can I remain loyal to her and not disrespect her and still blog about you? It would be like me saying, I noticed something different about your husband, he has a bad attitude and needs to get integrity, and adding now I believe what Carla said about him…and then I still expect you to invite me to your home for dinner with him at the table. I hope you see what I mean by my analogy. While my allegiance is always going to be to Mob Mistress, I am trying to be honest and direct with you out of consideration for your feelings, which is a courtesy I normally would not extend if you were anyone else.  In the same vein, I also have not included the actual tweets and DM’s from yesterday’s conversation. I do hope you understand and I sincerely wish you all the best.

Chiara

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, thats very disappointing to hear. You guys went so hard for her, promoting her, getting her side of the story out about Carla being a pig with her hubby.. Well its too easy to move on without her. You do not need her- you made her relevant. Sure Karen brought the affair up on reunion, but you guys befriended her and helped her publicly. Who else has? No one, just your blog! Your blog went on before her, it will go on after. Let her be a stingy biatch elsewhere.

Mob Mistress said...

Toni Marie Ricci is relevant to those who love, like, respect and/or interested in her story.

We are very good with our actions on this matter. We wish her well.

Anonymous said...

Very true, but I did feel bad for you all because you have ben so supportive of her and have always been very respectful to her. Its nice that you are still considerate of her feelings

Anonymous said...

Thia ia such a sad situation. Clearly this started from a misunderstanding and has spiraled out of control. I sincerely hope, for all involved, that apologies can be said, amends made and bridges repaired. You have all been of benifit to one another and to lose that relationship over something to trivial and petty as a simple misunderstanding would be shameful and a waste. I wish you ALL the best and pray that you can all see past this mess.

Mob Mistress said...

Don't feel bad for me, I'm great.

It's not a bad situation.

For clarity:

Toni began DMing Chiara that morning. I knew nothing about it at the time. It's their conversation.

I tweeted. I did not mention anyone in the tweet.

Toni then asked Chiara to pass on a message to me referencing my tweet.

I asked her what her issue was; her reply was her conversation with Chiara is none of my business. Which made absolutely no sense considering she asked Chiara to pass on an insulting message to me.

It is my belief she thought I was referring to her in a tweet. Frankly, she wasn't on my mind when I typed it. If it applied to her, not my issue.

There is a saying, "A hit dog hollers."

Chiara lost, asked me if Toni & I had issues she didn't know about. My answer was, "We've always been cordial. I have no issue with her."

I'm good on my end of this incident. I received a message. I addressed it.

Our site did well before we had contact with Toni Marie Ricci. It'll do well without further dealing with Toni Marie Ricci. There are no hard feelings on my end.

There no bridges to be repaired. I owe no one an apology concerning this matter.

Anonymous said...

Oh no! I am so sad about this entire situation. We must all learn to be careful and thoughtful when using our words! I like Chiaro, I like MM and I like Toni.