The Nine Tenths Aspect, Dowager Version

In light of Gawker's battle over the Terry Bollea sex video, I did some research on Thiel. Some. I did not scour every link, nor do I know the entire story of the trial Gawker Media's lawyers lost to the powerful venture capitalist's investment in painting a man like Bollea as a victim, but here is a surprise for you: I like Gawker. This comes late, admittedly, and I wish I could make corrections to their platform editor after I hit publish, but anyone who can run a headline asserting Zuckerberg is a paranoid fuck has my admiration. If I make threats against my disabled community, I come under intense pressure from Blogger and twitter, but Zuckerberg has a high bar to meet as a public figure to go after Denton. I also followed Thiel's ominously quiet twitter account and used "faggot" like a whiplash noun, so is this not suspiciously against my libertarian vibrations? 

Even Reason Magazine might hesitate to applaud Thiel's wealth as weapon against journalism. I'm a writer; it is what I damn well do for Christ's sake, and if Peter Thiel doesn't want to be outed as a stool softener, he should not be a public figure, but that ship has definitively sailed due to Ebay, Paypal, which I use, reluctantly, and had to use for Examiner's chump change, however many years it's been now. I am too ashamed of the fact that I bowed to Examiner's cut rate foreskin content aggregation to include it on my resume, but it consumed nine months of my life and added up to fifteen dollars. Whatever depression may have done to my Harvard acumen, I am still better than that.

Gawker is too, and I like it's meanness, Fleet Street bite. Thiel sets a dangerous precedent. I'm an individualist. I hate the New York Times, but if I had Thiel's money liberals would set me up for target practice if I sued Carlos Slin to decouple him from one of the most powerful newspapers in the US. I also shouldn't be paying Blogger for this domain name, assiduously applying myself, three bucks in a dead Adsense account, money which I actually need, as my budget is that bad, but I'm aging, frightened of that, and bitterly wronged.

Is media as an enterprise deplorable? Yes, and even Woodward and Bernstein should be challenged and deconstructed, but without narratives, we'd be murdering each other in crocodilian riverbeds.