Re: BTW
Subject: Re: BTW
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 11/9/09, 11:19
To: Karen Lancaster <lancaster.karen@gmail.com>

Obviously I'm aware of your concerns regarding my image. I'd remind you that P.J. O'Rourke, who works for the Heritage Foundation, of all things, spent much of his career writing about his drug use, drug dealing, illegal revolutionary activities whereby he helped to cover up a deadly assault on a police officer while serving as a member of a Maoist cabal, driving around drunk while engaging in sexual relations with an underage girl, and a thousand other things. Then there's Hunter S. Thompson. Even when I was younger and at my most deranged, I never did anything close to as self-destructive as either of those folks.

I'm not being dismissive of your concerns; I'm just trying to make you understand what constitutes a scandal for a writer and what does not. I'd love R.S. McCain to try to get me on something like, "Barrett sometimes smokes marijuana." Andrew Sullivan got arrested for marijuana not long ago; no one cares. He's always talking about psychedelics; no one cares. He's got HIV because he ran around having unprotected sex and doing meth while the editor of TNR; still writes for Time, Atlantic, twenty other things. No one cares about this sort of thing. Don't even get me started on William S. Burroughs.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Karen Lancaster <lancaster.karen@gmail.com> wrote:
You might want to ask your pal Scott to take down these videos with you in them, discussing drugs, pornography, Hustler magazine, etc. They are quite public, easy to find and could be exceedingly damaging if someone like Robert Stacy McCain, NYPD, etc. were to find them, not to mention fairly uncomfortable if someone like Mike Hogan or your dad were to see them.