| Subject: Re: Project PM announcement/manifesto |
| From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 6/15/10, 10:38 |
| To: "Hogan, Michael" <michael_hogan@condenast.com> |
After a half-century of false starts, filming has finally begun on a film version of Ayn Rand's final and most explanatory novel, Atlas Shrugged. The timing of this independent production - prompted though it was merely by a filmmaker's potential loss of rights were filming not to have begun by last weekend - is rather splendid, as the election of Barack Obama and the consequent and confused perception that a free republic has now crossed some sort of line into statist tyranny has sparked a new round of interest in the novel on the part of conservatives, many of whom are in for some nasty surprises to the extent that they actually read and understand the book or make any further study of Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. To wit:
1. Rand is a staunch atheist and Objectivism denies not only the alleged "proof" of God, but also the possibility of any such phenomenon. Both her fiction and non-fiction works lump Christians together with socialists, fascists, and other "mystics of muscle." In fact, Rand quite accurately charges Christianity and related doctrines with providing the anti-intellectual foundations by which statism thrives.
2. Equally accurately, Rand dismisses the American "conservative movement" as a ridiculous and dangerous hodgepodge of tribalism, blind tradition, superstition, and platitudes. She even singled out National Reviewfor particular criticism back when National Review was a far better publication than it is today under the leadership of such people as online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, the dumbest single magazine editor I have ever come across.
3. Opposed to immigration on cultural grounds? Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant intellectual who, in the grand tradition of Russian immigrant intellectuals, came to this country partly in order to mock the Judeo-Christian traditions upon which many conservatives wrongfully believe this country to have been founded. You are better off with the Mexicans, who not only share your superstitions but multiply them in the form of new saints.
4. Keen on traditional family values? Rand not only advocated adultery but practiced it.
5. Rand was a staunch proponent of absolute individual liberty - unlike our conservatives, who regard themselves as such but nonetheless advocate or at least tolerate all manner of social legislation relating to drug use, "sodomy," and "obscenity."
6. Atlas Shrugged is filled with over-the-top characterizations and ham-fisted dialog. This will not be a problem for Palin fans, but the better sort of conservative might find it irritating that every villain in the book has some name like Moodley Spootie Gubbertushie, possesses a "soft, boyish face," and is forever shrieking out something about "the general consensus" while alternately panicking in the face of the steely example of the book's dozen heroes. At any rate, your children will find the sex scenes very instructive. I sure as fuck did.
In conclusion, Ayn Rand doesn't like you. In fact, she has more in common with Christopher Hitchens, and the guy used to run around Europe advocating permanent Trotskyist revolution.
Great, thanks. I'll get it to you in the next few days.On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Hogan, Michael <michael_hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
Hey Barrett,
Sure, Ill take a look.
Thanks,
MikeHowdy-
You may recall the project I mentioned in the last couple paragraphs of the Charles Johnson piece I wrote for you three months back. It'll be launching later this summer, and though I've put out a bit of info on it for recruiting purposes, I haven't yet put out the formal announcement manifesto; I'll give you first crack at it if you'd like to take a look. It's called Project PM, and will consist of two networks, a media network and a governing network, both of which make use of software that's being designed for the purpose by the fellow who oversaw the software for Hearst's upcoming "digital paper" PDA and who also runs databases for Deutschbank. I've designed the media network in such a way as to avoid a couple of the problems that inevitably plague aggregators and content creators/distributors like reddit and Huffington Post. Were we to launch today, we'd have several hundred thousand unique readers a month, as we've got popular bloggers like Johnson and Allison Kilkenny in addition to a couple of more traditional journalists like former Newsweek Baghdad correspondent Michael Hastings on board already, and will be recruiting quite a few more soon; the network is designed to grow by way of invitation from existing participants, and information is sent throughout the network by way of pressing a single button associated with either one's own piece or a piece that has reached them from another participant, which is thereby sent to each other person to whom the contributor is connected. So you have some number of unusually significant and high-quality pieces being evaluated and perpetuated by some smaller number of particularly clever commentators, and a reader/user has a widget which automatically displays any piece that's been "pushed forward" by the bloggers 10 or 50 times or whatever the user sets it for; the end result should be a vastly improved means of information flow.
Let me know if you'd be interested in taking a look at the piece when it's finished.
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Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302