"I believe in a world where gay married couples are free to protect their marijuana fields with fully automatic machine guns."-- Austin Petersen, slogan maker extradinaire
And I do not believe in this world of a libertarian political hopeful on whom I've kept eyes for some time; if I find a better outlet than Reason to give him a serious expose, I will coax my friend to lose the above quote, try to give my readers a sharper definition of why he is the right Senator for Missouri, and for that propose, the moral relativism needs to be dialed down, this coming from a woman who, in 97, saw gay marriage as an inevitable legal victory, supported it, and in the intervening 19 years, I am not entirely unsympathetic to Roy Moore's hardline extremism on homosexuality. That is quite a shift simply because I felt threatened and survived trauma which for me was too much to bear. I know I'm on the losing end of this argument, and that progressives outnumber the right, and that my hostility has little intellectual standing other than medical model stricture, but I have been too close to too many men and women "in the life," some of whom I have written in here more than others, like Alan Gordon. Alan was privy to the intensity of my unhappiness for a long time. He and I kept our connection with each other through the deaths of our mothers in 2005, online and otherwise, and he knows me intimately. I cannot say he reads Disability In Entertainment Arts, but if he has, he must be appalled, and tried hard once to pull me back from the sheer extent of my hatred for what I allowed this center to do to me. Much has changed, and Liberty has been significantly downgraded due to Harrisburg's centralized horror of a shell game with Maximus, and I'd no longer recognize the chaotic empowerment tactics therein of my day. The chapters of past and present are no longer parallel, and this brings me to Craig Brittain's second suspension from Twitter, with a weary sigh.
A first amendment lawyer I chatted with briefly told me Craig was a fraud, and that he had to be directed by the SEC to stop representing himself as an attorney, but he was one of the first of my followers to accept me for as I present myself. I don't know what he did this time, but he takes Twitter's banned or suspended accounts like the holy grail. I do not, and have yet to see the evidence of Milo's genius. But I do have to say that Terms of Service policies have always had an air of uncertainty about them. Spam is speech. Twitter wants to be profitable, yet law firms cannot solicit clients. Account holders cannot ask other account holders for money, but we can promote, and even there, up to a point. We cannot harass other users, but I've trolled my share. Peter Thiel, though inactive on social media, probably could have had me banned for my brief outburst at him. Don't know. Nick Denton isn't exactly an exception to the dowager's coda, but I was nonetheless angry over Gawker's downfall. Once fraudulent parties are excised, we do not consider what happens to them unless they are recycled as an event worth telling: Stephen Glass denied at the state bar. Jayson Blair's plagiarism recast as an interracial motive for murder on Criminal Intent. They become life long outcasts, crippled in some fundamental way. I was going to profile Craig too with some libertarian window dressing, but in the third largest political party full of outliers, even felons, Craig is an outlier. He makes Austin seem nearly as established as Rand Paul.
In my shameless and weary dithering, I am working on a legal outline against Mr. Wheelchair. Vendors such as these dissolve with incremental regularity, but I cannot endure this machine. Pyrrhic victory at this point?
Showing posts with label stephen glass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stephen glass. Show all posts
Friday, April 6, 2018
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Personal Loyalties
He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." --Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane
A television commercial when a freshly resigned case manager still had access to cable through a defunct company. One question Americans might ask is how we enforce anti-trust laws when Comcast is the sole provider of pay for view, despite diverse distributors like Netflix and Amazon and Verizon. Verizon is a now redundant spin off of AT&T, but it is a communications utility. Netflix I never fully comprehended but suppose it started as a rental agent. Amazon is a retailer, and now all these corporate models have there own cable box.
In 1997 I was still in job divorce mode which seemed, as a rupture, to take forever to heal, and there was the commercial for The New Republic. I called, subscribed to the print edition, knowing nothing, certainly not that Marty Peretz was insane. I discovered that later on my own in my dialogues with TNR, particularly with Michelle Cottle, but in 97 I read a contributor's article about lice and typhus and old world Jewish quarrels, and fell in love with the writing. I wanted to write like that, doubted I ever could, and understand why David Plotz and Lane want to kill Stephen Glass. I'm a million miles removed from Airforce One's onflight magazine and part of me wants to kill Stephen Glass. TNR has been much changed and diminished in these 17 years. One of their interns was nice to me when I pitched, and I've recounted this, and still get horny over the fact that The New Republic was nice to me and I did nothing with that capital out of fear and intimidation. I emailed them shit on spec later but I myself knew it was shit on spec; that door had closed because I feared to assert myself to get at the former corrupt bastard who ran this city, John Street. I met Street without wearing a brassiere without ever intending to do that. There was a gathering in the parking lot and I had a sudden craving for a burger and threw on shit clothes and rolled down and there was Black Mafia himself and I died. Being ever the politician, he grasped my shoulder and asked how I was doing. No idea I hated him and his excuse for a brother.
Shattered Glass doesn't work as a film because it is too close to reality of events which have damaged us all, and yet, Stephen's breach of ethics, his fabrications, his plagiarism, and the exposure of other notorious cookers of truth who followed, point to a distinctly modern problem as old as the hills. We don't like being drawn in for fools by more temperate psychopaths, remain fascinated by such villains, and don't look too closely at demarcations, such as the fact that bias builds its own slant. I have read John B Judis in TNR's pages, and can't say I always get his policy critiques, but I do not consider him to be virulently anti-Zionist. Jewish liberalism is not always sacrosanct, and has its own unpleasant equivocations which cause undo harm. Philip Roth exposes it however diffident or enthusiastic one might be about the author. I've certainly experienced it, and wrestled hard with my conscience afterwards, despite the roots of poison which have led me to eschew certain other vectors of radical equality.
Yet Billy Ray deserves credit for nibbling around the edges of the edifice we call the fourth estate, and Sarsgaard reached in deep to pull out an inspirational scene on the nature of integrity, despite the fact we have to find ways to entertain the audience, and do it daily. Everyone is in the brand game.
A television commercial when a freshly resigned case manager still had access to cable through a defunct company. One question Americans might ask is how we enforce anti-trust laws when Comcast is the sole provider of pay for view, despite diverse distributors like Netflix and Amazon and Verizon. Verizon is a now redundant spin off of AT&T, but it is a communications utility. Netflix I never fully comprehended but suppose it started as a rental agent. Amazon is a retailer, and now all these corporate models have there own cable box.
In 1997 I was still in job divorce mode which seemed, as a rupture, to take forever to heal, and there was the commercial for The New Republic. I called, subscribed to the print edition, knowing nothing, certainly not that Marty Peretz was insane. I discovered that later on my own in my dialogues with TNR, particularly with Michelle Cottle, but in 97 I read a contributor's article about lice and typhus and old world Jewish quarrels, and fell in love with the writing. I wanted to write like that, doubted I ever could, and understand why David Plotz and Lane want to kill Stephen Glass. I'm a million miles removed from Airforce One's onflight magazine and part of me wants to kill Stephen Glass. TNR has been much changed and diminished in these 17 years. One of their interns was nice to me when I pitched, and I've recounted this, and still get horny over the fact that The New Republic was nice to me and I did nothing with that capital out of fear and intimidation. I emailed them shit on spec later but I myself knew it was shit on spec; that door had closed because I feared to assert myself to get at the former corrupt bastard who ran this city, John Street. I met Street without wearing a brassiere without ever intending to do that. There was a gathering in the parking lot and I had a sudden craving for a burger and threw on shit clothes and rolled down and there was Black Mafia himself and I died. Being ever the politician, he grasped my shoulder and asked how I was doing. No idea I hated him and his excuse for a brother.
Shattered Glass doesn't work as a film because it is too close to reality of events which have damaged us all, and yet, Stephen's breach of ethics, his fabrications, his plagiarism, and the exposure of other notorious cookers of truth who followed, point to a distinctly modern problem as old as the hills. We don't like being drawn in for fools by more temperate psychopaths, remain fascinated by such villains, and don't look too closely at demarcations, such as the fact that bias builds its own slant. I have read John B Judis in TNR's pages, and can't say I always get his policy critiques, but I do not consider him to be virulently anti-Zionist. Jewish liberalism is not always sacrosanct, and has its own unpleasant equivocations which cause undo harm. Philip Roth exposes it however diffident or enthusiastic one might be about the author. I've certainly experienced it, and wrestled hard with my conscience afterwards, despite the roots of poison which have led me to eschew certain other vectors of radical equality.
Yet Billy Ray deserves credit for nibbling around the edges of the edifice we call the fourth estate, and Sarsgaard reached in deep to pull out an inspirational scene on the nature of integrity, despite the fact we have to find ways to entertain the audience, and do it daily. Everyone is in the brand game.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Shards and fissures
I used to believe I'd automatically get myself excluded from the established press if I told the truth about inherent bias, but it is something of which most readers are suspicious of already, not without justification. Let me give a for instance. Eugene Robinson yesterday faults the administration's liberal self-righteousness in villainizing Putin's provocation in the Crimea, and indeed, Eugene's voice sates progressive outrage with the Bush Administration's 9/11 overreach. Nothing wrong with pandering to a liberal base trying to shore up a fading promise Barack Obama represented. If candidate Obama had not aspired to the presidency, one can speculate what he might have done as an inspirational leader on a more nuanced platform.
Like Robinson, I actually remember Grenada. I can neither affirm nor deny that it was an appropriate domino effect for Reagan era spheres of influence, but citing the US incursion on the petite Caribbean paradise doesn't explain Ukrainian turmoil. Neither does citing America's systemic destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. There is a minority viewpoint which doesn't equate Putin with Mussolini, which is not to be blind to modern Russian brutality. I am not unaware of ugly brute force in Russian penal systems, but this doesn't preclude Vladimir from acting out of legitimate national interests.
In that vein, plagiarism is not quite the crime journalists make it out to be, and that was what I was driving at in my column about fraud in my Examiner piece on Glass's inability to acquire a legal license. The editorial chicks who deign to approve or reject my pieces for a certain degree of promotional status didn't like it as newsworthy commentary. Certainly their prerogative, though I stayed up all night researching it, debating a call to the bar association contact. I am on to a thesis which matters, at least in relation to veracity. I do not believe my finished product, as such, does all that badly getting me where I want to go.
I have to watch a very young Peter Falk play a spree killer for Hitchcock again; it was an interesting rationalization. Past informing the present; Falk did not mind spoofing himself, but he never played his audience false. I miss him. He loved life, tumbling with adversity and coming out of it with a twinkle in his eye. Tassoni had the same propensity toward sardonic affection in his gaze.
Like Robinson, I actually remember Grenada. I can neither affirm nor deny that it was an appropriate domino effect for Reagan era spheres of influence, but citing the US incursion on the petite Caribbean paradise doesn't explain Ukrainian turmoil. Neither does citing America's systemic destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. There is a minority viewpoint which doesn't equate Putin with Mussolini, which is not to be blind to modern Russian brutality. I am not unaware of ugly brute force in Russian penal systems, but this doesn't preclude Vladimir from acting out of legitimate national interests.
In that vein, plagiarism is not quite the crime journalists make it out to be, and that was what I was driving at in my column about fraud in my Examiner piece on Glass's inability to acquire a legal license. The editorial chicks who deign to approve or reject my pieces for a certain degree of promotional status didn't like it as newsworthy commentary. Certainly their prerogative, though I stayed up all night researching it, debating a call to the bar association contact. I am on to a thesis which matters, at least in relation to veracity. I do not believe my finished product, as such, does all that badly getting me where I want to go.
I have to watch a very young Peter Falk play a spree killer for Hitchcock again; it was an interesting rationalization. Past informing the present; Falk did not mind spoofing himself, but he never played his audience false. I miss him. He loved life, tumbling with adversity and coming out of it with a twinkle in his eye. Tassoni had the same propensity toward sardonic affection in his gaze.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Predatory Yellow
"It had all the facts wrong."-- Stephanie Verderame, on the IRS agents seizure of future estate assets.
I have never ever fabricated a source in my commissioned articles. Ever, but I am wizened with cynicism in the ever ongoing professional mourners waltzed in by The Fourth Estate over Glass, Blair, and some other justifying frauds of note. We all lie; everyone in the business knows it. We lie by omission, by lack of nuance, so on. Sometimes we organize the facts into a transfixing narrative that feels like veracity, (cf Ana Montes), but every hungry journalist has a prism. To what degree the audience dances depends on trust. Violating it is heinous! But there is a darker truth behind the excoriation of Glass, the massive manhunt that led to the incineration of Dorner. Insurrection. Threatening the underpinnings of the establishment. Now, Dorner played his menace wrong. When I vented that I wanted him to win and received gawker views, it was not a joke. Some of us are that angry-- but he executed his agenda so poorly one has to shrug in a disappointed "WTF?" The minute he put a bullet through that girl's brain, he committed suicide as opposed to launching a crusade. Glass sort of does the same thing. Confirming media bias by getting caught in a fabrication erodes a willingness to believe in our system and the consensus built around it.
Writing such sentiments in rheumy-eyed exhaust is a challenge to delineation, and illustrates the habituation of distracting tendencies, but people who can be fooled usually are, because they bring a set of preconceived notions before the table, but whether or not the Great Recession posited the seeds of a great unraveling remains to be seen. My local media company subversively headlined mass murder as the new national pastime. The sentiment accurately captures the tempo.
I have never ever fabricated a source in my commissioned articles. Ever, but I am wizened with cynicism in the ever ongoing professional mourners waltzed in by The Fourth Estate over Glass, Blair, and some other justifying frauds of note. We all lie; everyone in the business knows it. We lie by omission, by lack of nuance, so on. Sometimes we organize the facts into a transfixing narrative that feels like veracity, (cf Ana Montes), but every hungry journalist has a prism. To what degree the audience dances depends on trust. Violating it is heinous! But there is a darker truth behind the excoriation of Glass, the massive manhunt that led to the incineration of Dorner. Insurrection. Threatening the underpinnings of the establishment. Now, Dorner played his menace wrong. When I vented that I wanted him to win and received gawker views, it was not a joke. Some of us are that angry-- but he executed his agenda so poorly one has to shrug in a disappointed "WTF?" The minute he put a bullet through that girl's brain, he committed suicide as opposed to launching a crusade. Glass sort of does the same thing. Confirming media bias by getting caught in a fabrication erodes a willingness to believe in our system and the consensus built around it.
Writing such sentiments in rheumy-eyed exhaust is a challenge to delineation, and illustrates the habituation of distracting tendencies, but people who can be fooled usually are, because they bring a set of preconceived notions before the table, but whether or not the Great Recession posited the seeds of a great unraveling remains to be seen. My local media company subversively headlined mass murder as the new national pastime. The sentiment accurately captures the tempo.
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