Wait, use this tweaked version instead:
Notes from Bushwick
Nothing happened in Bushwick this week. Or, if it did, it didn't happen to
me. But I'm of the understanding that other neighborhood residents are fond
of attending music events and artistic gatherings, sharing meals at
restaurants, and other such wholesome things, and I'd like to facilitate all
of this because I am a being of pure energy which radiates harmonic love
throughout the multiverse. So, if you're organizing any sort of thingamajig
or what-have-you, playing a show at an area venue, or otherwise preparing to
do something nifty, send me an e-mail. Artists, cooks, musicians, amateur
filmmakers, guy who sells all DVDs for two dollars while also being willing
to provide two free DVDs to those who purchase five at regular price,
hookers - I want to hear from you. If you're thinking about robbing and
murdering an elderly pawnbroker, ostensibly to do great works with the
resulting score but in fact simply to prove to yourself that you stand
outside of history as a man of ideas, I'd like to chat. Promote your
projects; advance your radical political beliefs; present to me your fair
young body; share your recipes. Hell, feed me phony news tips and general
disinformation. At any rate, I've decided to do a weekly profile piece, and
if I don't get any bites then I'm just going to start running around the
neighborhood with a notepad, bothering you at inopportune times. I MUST HAVE
INFORMATION I FEED ON IT END TRANSMISSION
Notes from the Outside World
The conservative end of the blogosphere has always outshone its opposite
counterpart with respect to flamboyance of sentiment. It's true that you can
go check out Daily Kos on most any given day and find a few recommended
posts of dubious logical worth - user diaries too often fall under the
general categories of Stories About People The Diarist Knows Who Have Lost
Their Jobs or Rambling Demands For the Public Option, and of these, way too
damned many end with angry/triumphant/offended rhetorical flourishes
expressed in bold and all caps. But as an entity, Daily Kos works - hundreds
of regular contributors continue to do an incalculable amount of exposing,
advocating, fundraising, muckraking, organizing, and all those other things
that a political movement needs done, and the vast majority of the official
content in particular is reasonably expressed and thoroughly sourced.
The conservative equivalent of Daily Kos would be RedState.com, which has
far fewer users but nonetheless makes up for its logistical shortfalls by
way of an absolutely mind-blowing failure of collective self-awareness. For
instance, this user diary was posted last week to general acclaim and
endless upvoting:
Earlier this evening, as most of you now know, one of our own, Rush Hudson
Limbaugh, while taking withering fire, crashed and burned.
Tonight, Rush is no longer just a radio personality.
Tonight, Rush is no longer just a NFL owner denied
Tonight, Rush is us. And we are him.
Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us
every man woman and child in
this great nation of ours.
And it goes on like this.
We all have our dreams in life
such as they might be. Rush dreamed of being
an owner in the NFL... Will your light of your dreams be next?
Like all terrible things, the piece ends with that ubiquitous old poem,
"First they came for the communists..." And it launches right into that
contextually awkward first line without a hint of irony or even the sense
that such a thing as irony can exist.
The state of the conservative commentariat in general and its blogger
division in particular is even worse than it appears to the casual observer.
Mirroring the brain drain of the past several years whereby the men of
intelligence have left the GOP for smarter pastures, many of the
conservative blogosphere's more capable writers have abandoned their former
allies in disgust. The most dramatic of these departures has been that of
Charles Johnson, once widely revered among conservatives for leading the way
on such things as Rathergate, co-founding Pajamas Media, and otherwise
advancing the cause of citizen journalism. Johnson's success in uncovering
the truth made him a hero to many on the right; the problem is that, over
the last couple of years, Johnson has opted to uncover the truth regarding
certain other things that many of those same people would prefer be left
alone - for instance, that former Washington Times editor Robert Stacy
McCain, who co-wrote Donkey Cons with the woman who in turn wrote Palin's
recent biography and who has otherwise found great success as an allegedly
respectable pundit, has also expressed a variety of white supremacist
sentiments in the form of various comments and articles written under a
Confederate-inspired pen name.
Even as we discover more and more evidence of his racial preferences, McCain
and his various backers continue to stonewall. McCain himself has taken
mostly to composing deranged insults directed at myself, Charles Johnson,
and occasionally both myself and Charles Johnson at the same time; over the
weekend he finally managed to address one of the numerous charges I've
leveled at him over the past month or so, but did so without actually
linking to my piece lest his readers learn too much. But there is only so
much he can do in his own defense; one cannot write for white supremacist
outlets under an assumed name or associate with violent neo-Nazi leaders
under his real one, as McCain has, and still try to carry on as usual when
such facts are revealed and disseminated. One is entitled to his views, and
one is even entitled to conceal them, but one is not entitled to conceal
them successfully for any length of time. The internet is serious business.
Still, all is not lost for The Other McCain. It would be a difficult trick
to come out of the closet as a white supremacist, but were he to go about it
skillfully, McCain could perhaps reestablish himself as a sort of mainstream
voice on behalf of our nation's various Confederate revivalists, neo-Nazi
layabouts, and other assorted toy fascist crackerjacks. There's probably
some money in it, anyway.
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 2:05 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Notes from Bushwick
Nothing happened in Bushwick this week. Or, if it did, it didn't happen to
me. But I'm of the understanding that other neighborhood residents are fond
of attending music events and artistic gatherings, sharing meals at
restaurants, and other such wholesome things, and I'd like to facilitate all
of this because I am a being of pure energy which radiates harmonic love
throughout the multiverse. So, if you're organizing any sort of thingamajig
or what-have-you, playing a show at an area venue, or otherwise preparing to
do something nifty, send me an e-mail. Artists, cooks, musicians, amateur
filmmakers, guy who sells all DVDs for two dollars while also being willing
to provide two free DVDs to those who purchase five at regular price,
hookers - I want to hear from you. If you're thinking about robbing and
murdering an elderly pawnbroker, ostensibly to do great works with the
resulting score but in fact simply to prove to yourself that you stand
outside of history as a man of ideas, I'd like to chat. Promote your
projects; advance your radical political beliefs; present to me your fair
young body; share your recipes. Hell, feed me phony news tips and general
disinformation. At any rate, I've decided to do a weekly profile piece, and
if I don't get any bites then I'm just going to start running around the
neighborhood with a notepad, bothering you at inopportune times. I MUST HAVE
INFORMATION I FEED ON IT END TRANSMISSION
Notes from the Outside World
The conservative end of the blogosphere has always outshone its opposite
counterpart with respect to flamboyance of sentiment. It's true that you can
go check out Daily Kos on most any given day and find a few recommended
posts of dubious logical worth - user diaries too often fall under the
general categories of Stories About People The Diarist Knows Who Have Lost
Their Jobs or Rambling Demands For the Public Option, and of these, way too
damned many end with angry/triumphant/offended rhetorical flourishes
expressed in bold and all caps. But as an entity, Daily Kos works - hundreds
of regular contributors continue to do an incalculable amount of exposing,
advocating, fundraising, muckraking, organizing, and all those other things
that a political movement needs done, and the vast majority of the official
content in particular is reasonably expressed and thoroughly sourced.
The conservative equivalent of Daily Kos would be RedState.com, which has
far fewer users but nonetheless makes up for its logistical shortfalls by
way of an absolutely mind-blowing failure of collective self-awareness. For
instance, this user diary was posted last week to general acclaim and
endless upvoting:
Earlier this evening, as most of you now know, one of our own, Rush Hudson
Limbaugh, while taking withering fire, crashed and burned.
Tonight, Rush is no longer just a radio personality.
Tonight, Rush is no longer just a NFL owner denied
Tonight, Rush is us. And we are him.
Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us
every man woman and child
in this great nation of ours.
And it just goes on like that for a while. The short version, edited by
your correspondent for taste as well as length, goes like this:
We all have our dreams in life
such as they might be. Rush dreamed of
being an owner in the NFL... Will your light of your dreams be next?
Like all terrible things, the piece ends with that ubiquitous old poem,
"First they came for the communists..." And it launches right into that
contextually awkward first line without a hint of irony or even the sense
that such a thing as irony can exist.
The state of the conservative commentariat in general and its blogger
division in particular is even worse than it appears to the casual observer.
Mirroring the brain drain of the past several years whereby the men of
intelligence have left the GOP for smarter pastures, many of the
conservative blogosphere's more capable writers have abandoned their former
allies in disgust. The most dramatic of these departures has been that of
Charles Johnson, once widely revered among conservatives for leading the way
on such things as Rathergate, co-founding Pajamas Media, and otherwise
advancing the cause of citizen journalism. Johnson's success in uncovering
the truth made him a hero to many on the right; the problem is that, over
the last couple of years, Johnson has opted to uncover the truth regarding
certain other things that many of those same people would prefer be left
alone - for instance, that former Washington Times editor Robert Stacy
McCain, who co-wrote Donkey Cons with the woman who in turn wrote Palin's
recent biography and who has otherwise found great success as an allegedly
respectable pundit - has expressed a variety of white supremacist sentiments
in comments and articles written under a Confederate-inspired pen name.
Even as we discover more and more evidence of his racial preferences,
McCain and his various backers continue to ignore it. McCain himself has
taken mostly to composing deranged insults directed at myself, Charles
Johnson, and occasionally both myself and Charles Johnson at the same time;
over the weekend he finally managed to address one of the numerous charges
I've leveled at him over the past month or so, but did so without actually
linking to my piece lest his readers learn too much. But there is only so
much he can do in his own defense; one cannot write for white supremacist
outlets under an assumed name or associate with violent neo-Nazi leaders
under his real one, as McCain has, and still try to carry on as usual when
such facts are revealed and disseminated. One is entitled to his views, and
one is even entitled to conceal them, but one is not entitled to conceal
them successfully for any length of time. The internet is serious business.
Still, all is not lost for McCain. It might be a difficult trick to come
out of the closet as a white supremacist, but if he were to go about it
skillfully, he could perhaps reestablish himself as a sort of mainstream
voice on behalf of our nation's various Confederate revivalists, neo-Nazi
layabouts, and other assorted toy fascist crackerjacks. There's probably
some money in it, anyway.