In late December of 2011, I decided to join Twitter as it would give me the opportunity to ask several NewsHounds a few specific questions I had concerning some of their writings. Well I asked, but I didn’t get answers. For the most part, the hounds replied with cries of #STALKER #OBSESSED.

@NewshoundAlex would not answer why she deliberately misquoted Juan Williams in an effort to smear him. Remember this?

@AuntyEmEricann, a self-professed expert on Canadian Broadcasting, would not explain how she could stupidly make the unbelievably false claim that Fox News is banned from Canada. Rather than trying to defend this idiocy, Aunty apparently sent flunky @mikeyhatesit (I had previously never heard of him) to carpet bomb me with tweets/questions on a wide range of topics. Mikey proved his lack of intelligence with many crazy, moronic statements. A summary of my early twitter adventures with Mikey and the Bowsers can be found here.

NewsHoundAlex didn’t like being questioned and blocked me (though she periodically comments on my tweets). Mikey became upset because I had the nerve to answer his questions, so he blocked me. Aunty Em Ericann? While he won’t address his ignorance on Canadian broadcasting, to his credit he hasn't blocked me.

Huh? To “his credit”?

Yes. His credit.

Tweeting with Aunty, I became convinced that Aunty was not exactly what (s)he claimed to be. Consider that he rarely refers to America or Americans. It's almost always as 'Merka and 'Merkans. Elitist. Derisive. Scornful. And is it just a coincidence that 'Aunty Em Ericann' sounds exactly like ‘anti-American’...or was the name chosen for precisely that reason?

Aunty describes himself on his blog as a female and insists that “Ericann” is his real and married name:

It makes people laugh, but that's my real name. Or, was before I went back to my maiden name. My ex and I dated 2 months before we realized my married name would be a pun (Em Ericann). That might be the only reason we got married. I'm a former American, who lived in Canada 35 years, became a Canadian citizen along the way, and returned to The Land of My Birth to take care of my aged father.

But is Ericann his real name?

Before I continue, I should mention why I don’t think that Aunty should mind anyone questioning his gender as he has done the same. Examples of Aunty referring to Ann Coulter as “mAnn Coulter” can be found here, and here. If Aunty believes it is acceptable to refer falsely to someone who is a woman as a man, then he must think it is also acceptable to refer truthfully to someone as a man who falsely claims to be a woman. Right? (Sounds like Blake Edwards wrote this for Victor/Victoria!).

Speculation about Aunty’s actual gender was rumor and hearsay until last month when this tweet appeared:

• Big thanks to @AuntyEmEricann who spoke without drawing breath on Dub and Leroy Sibbles for http://howjamaicaconqueredtheworld.com #reggae He knows his #dub
  

Interesting. A person who actually spoke with Ericann calls Aunty a “he”.

Aunty repeatedly refused to answer questions tweeted to him about this, so the challenge was on to find the truth. And just a few weeks later, another tweet appears:

• Half way through my Dub podcast listen out for @AuntyEmEricann.
  

Great, we’ll get to hear Aunty speak and the speculation will either be confirmed or proved wrong. For his part, a proud Aunty repeatedly tweeted a link to the recording.

The podcast is frankly very well done; I think even a non “dub” fan would find it informative and well-produced. But what may be most interesting about it is that there is no mention whatsoever of Aunty Em Ericann, let alone Aunty talking about Dub and Leroy Sibbles as advertised. A number of others are introduced and interviewed but not “Aunty”. One person who is on the recording, and does talk about Dub and Leroy Sibbles, is a man by the name of Headly Westerfield. According to the website How Jamaica Conquered the World:

Headly Westerfield is a massive fan of Reggae. Born in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1950s, Westerfield was a child of the hard-driving Rock and Roll and Motown Sound of his hometown. … Moving to Canada in the early ‘70s… Westerfield currently lives in south Florida and writes political commentary under an assumed name.

Now whom does that sound like? If you’re thinking Aunty Em Ericann, you're thinking right. Let’s compare the two identities:

Headly: His bio says he grew up in Detroit, moved to Canada and lived most of his life there, then moved to Florida and now lives in the town of Sunrise, Florida.

Aunty: Claims to be from Detroit, moved to Canada and lived there for years until moving to Sunrise, Florida.

Headly:

I had hoped to be able to spend the next few months saying goodbye and giving hugs to those people who have been important to me during my 3.5 decades in Canada. Sadly, that will not happen. My mother’s health has, in the past few weeks, taken a very hard turn for the worse. Consequently, it now looks as if I will be leaving almost immediately to go to Fort Lauderdale to stay with my father and comfort my mother in hospital.

Aunty:

I'm a former American, who lived in Canada 35 years, became a Canadian citizen along the way, and returned to The Land of My Birth to take care of my aged father.

This next one is my favorite. Headly:

Born in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1950s, Westerfield was a child of the hard-driving Rock and Roll and Motown Sound of his hometown. As a teen he found himself moving equipment on and off stage at The Grande Ballroom

Aunty:

As a native Detroiter, I have watched the decline of the city with a tear in my eye. I lived there the first 17 years of my life and one of the joys of my teen years was moving equipment on- and offstage at The Grande Ballroom.

Is there any doubt that Headly and Aunty are one and the same person? But even if his claims of being female and having the real name of “Emily Ericann” are both false...so what?

Finding out the facts about his gender led to the discovery of a bigger, more important truth about Aunty. Why can't he bring himself to say 'America'? Why did he chose an alias that expresses abhorrence of this country? Does Aunty Em Ericann really hate America? These questions were answered on February 25, 2005 when then-Headly expressed a few choice words for America and Americans:

Anyone who knows me well also knows how much I hate America in general and Florida in particular … I have often said that the biggest fault of America is that there are too many fucking Americans there.

And so, Anti-Americann was born. The end result: a person whom NewsHounds welcomes and uses to provide political commentary is someone who expressly hates America and Americans. Come to think of it, that would make Aunty well qualified to be one of the bombastic bowsers.

Just as there are no Aunty Em Ericann web sightings before the move to Florida, there is not much of Headly Westerfield to be found on the web after relocating--except for this little trinket where he advises everyone to read the new Aunty Em Ericann blog:

Please forgive this electronic intrusion. I am writing because I promised a friend I would help her promote her new Blog to get her started. Her name is Emily Ericann, but writes under the nom de blog Aunty Em.

Her essays are always interesting and insightful, and usually make me laugh. You can find Aunty Em's Place at http://auntyemsplace.blogspot.com/

If you like what you read, tell a friend or two. If it makes you angry, tell more friends.

|o| Headly Westerfield
|o|
|o| Saving the world....
|o| ....one e-mail at a time

This was posted on his Yahoo page for “Westerfields Web”, his site for communicating with friends and business acquaintances. If someone can lie with such fluency to their friends and business acquaintances, they should have no difficulty lying to complete strangers.

With all my love,
Grayhammy

UPDATE: You can read Aunty’s response to this post if you want the full flavor. He begins by criticizing us for linking to public information about him:

There was no other reason to expose things about me that have no relevance to my writing for NewHounds...

What relevance do your oft-repeated invocations of Bill O’Reilly’s loofah have to do with his reporting? But as has been noted by people we respect, that doesn’t make it right. Such matters were tangential to Grayhammy’s primary point and with his permission they have been removed. They will not be mentioned again unless Aunty chooses to do so.

....and there is nothing in that article that has any relevance to NewsHounds.

Ahem:

• The doctored quote used to smear Juan Williams.
• Aunty’s preposterous claim that Fox News was banned in Canada.
• Aunty’s scornful labeling of America and Americans as ‘Merka and ‘Merkans.
• The fact that the fake name Aunty claimed was real and used at newshounds is a homonym for ‘anti-American’.

In fact, in his post he admits joining Twitter only to harass us with questions. Why? Because we write for NewsHounds and he’s in the Johnny Dollar cult of personal destruction.

Actually he didn’t admit to harassing anyone. And you want ‘personal destruction’? How about smearing someone with an accusation of child sexual abuse because he works for Fox? Saying someone else on Fox slept their way to getting a job there based on nothing but a ‘rumor’? What do you call speculation about Ann Coulter’s sex life? Oh, and how about branding someone a ‘convicted traitor’? For further eye-opening examples a bit closer to home, see here.

GrayHammy levels a new charge at me, one I’d never heard before in my entire life: I am a draft dodger who high-tailed it to Canada...When I was 17 years old I made the same mistake a young Levi Johnston made and I got a girl pregnant. She was Canadian...

That’s nice but GrayHammy never said you were dodging the draft. Plus you don’t explain how we can tell that this story is true, unlike the other ones you’ve been telling for years.

Here’s something else about Johnny Dollar’s sewer that I find interesting. He only ever publishes linked headlines, unless it’s about NewsHounds. Then he will do long posts that twist our words and spit them out in a way that make them resemble a fun house mirror.

Look here, and here, and here and here: just a few posts of many that are not just headlines and not about the newshounds.

Yesterday, when he learned I was travelling [sic] to Michigan where he resides, he suggested we meet for “détente.” Today he exposes me, leaving me without even a fig leaf of cover.

Did it ever occur to you that had you accepted the offer it would have been an immediate game changer? That we could ramp down the animosity? Instead of responding seriously you refused on the grounds that you won’t meet with a ‘creepy cyberstalker’. Actually you wouldn’t meet because that would have exposed your masquerade.

That’s clearly psychotic behaviour.

Thank you Dr Ericann. Er...Dr Westerfield.

Just before I moved back to ‘Merka after 35 sane years in Canada...

Still can’t bring yourself to call it ‘America’?

I am not anti ALL ‘Merkins. Hell, some of my best friends and family are ‘Merkins.

Well I’m convinced.

For whatever reason, Aunty’s response has been removed from the front page of newshounds, but the direct link still works.

Tags: newshounds, slootsky