Ned Sonntag

Words of Wisdom on the Blogger/Commenter/Troll Relationship

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs" -- John Osborne

Let the Fluids Fly, O Usual Suspects!

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Deadhead Wingding at WOMR!!

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Update:Scott Browned by Robo-Call from K Street!!!

The cats skittered out of the kitchen as I screamed into the receiver

So I get back in from Hyannis around 6 this evening and the phone rings.  Checking Caller ID I see it's from Washington DC~ (202) 461-3440 ~ so, okay this'll be interesting.  Seems to be a multiple-choice polling call... "Republican?" No.... "Democrat?" Yessss... Apparently the software is recognizing the difference but who knows?  "Voting for Brown in the Special Election?" Nooooo... "Coakley?" Yesss...

Massachusetts... is Brownout of Luck if he should win.

Then the pushpolling begins... "We're pleased that you're a human who Thinks As We Do and wanted to inform you that Martha Coakley wants to use Taxpayer Money to pay for Abortion in the new Healthcare Bill... were you aware of that?" 

The cats skittered out of the kitchen as I screamed into the receiver about how... I'd just told their software I DON'T think as they evidently do and second of all thanks to the wussy Blue Dogs~ that ship has already sailed! ... but the software had already thanked me halfway thru my rant and signed off in search of other people to offend or misinform... 

If this man Brown isn't any brighter that the designer of the call-software he'd just wasted his contributors' money on... well, Massachusetts is up Brown Creek and Brownout of Luck if he should win... 

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A Golden Fleecing via Local Content!!

NPR was once funded by Foundations~ which allowed uberrich families to avoid 60s-level taxation while retaining some control over their fortunes... then corporations such as Archer-Daniels-Midland stepped in to take up the slack as Reagan's Union-for-the-Rich kicked into gear... this Knight/Argo deal sounds like Stop-Motion Animation for Radio!!!

A potentially Hairyhausin' situation as the Gung-Ho imperial radio network prepares to drive deep into local markets with kinder friendlier cryptoglobalist content... the subtext is thus underwritten!!    NPR spent the late 80s booting small college-radio stations off the bandwidth so that Desert Storm would not be dampened by campus-driven protest-marches...  mindcontrol in neoliberal doses... those who fancy themselves as our Olympian Masters look down to mess and meddle with us mortals as seen in this classic 60s flick...

tip of the hat to Jeff Boudreau's Facebook Group 'Supporters of Folk and Blues on WGBH'.

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New-Decade Schadenfreude!!

I'm just sayin'.  Rush Limbaugh is in a Hawaiian cardiac unit and Karl Rove last week got divorced after a quarter-century-long second marriage.  Both dudes were seen visibly squirming on TV after Obama escalated the Afghanistan adventure 2 weeks ago.   It's a Wingnut Wipeout!!!

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Fox25NewsBoston Whips Up Size-Hate to Serve Sponsor!

Thursday morning I woke from a vivid Technicolor dream...

My old pal Pam Hollowich and I were very well-dressed spies in the early 40s... in a movie!  The sets, the lights, being directed... maybe we were in the present day... I don't think it was Michael Curtiz in the director's chair, but maybe.  Glamgirl Pam lives in LA and was a cover-model for two issues of DIMENSIONS Magazine http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/  in the early 90s... around the time she was the first person http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/22/us/the-burdens-of-being-overweight-mistreatment-and-misconceptions.html?pagewanted=3  to sue Southwest Airlines  http://www.travellaw.com/page/larger-passengers-pay-more-southwest-air over its new policy of demanding that supersize people buy two seats...  An enjoyable enough dream... so tonight I'm watching FRINGE on Fox25... and a commercial comes on about Dilbertish naughty male cubicle-workers conspiring to blow off a meeting and book an escape-flight CASABLANCA-style on... Southwest Airlines.  Oooooooookay.  Synchronicity, trendspotting, psychic detection, premonition... I only get worried if the weirdness DOESN'T happen every couple of days...  then immediately after... a teaser for News At Ten.  A graphic appears of a Supersize Passenger blocking an airline aisle....  and saying shrink-like, "How does this Image make you Feel?" 

Oooooookay...  back to watching FRINGE!  The teaser appears again with each commercial break, each time saying shrink-like, "How does this Image make you Feel?" ...  So having been involved since '76 with the Size Acceptance Movement, which championed Pam in her lawsuit, I knew I had to bathe a bit longer in the Murdochian cathode rays.   At 10:15 after further teasers Ted Daniel comes on, reporting from Logan Airport.(Where the 9/11 planes took off from,eh? eh?)  http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/unusual-attitude/2009/11/passenger-creates-big-debate-a.html  "An aviation blog"(TWO WEEKS AGO)"reports that an American Airlines employee surreptitiously snapped this image to draw attention to the issue of Big Passengers..."  Ted went on to say that American and Delta tend to cut fat folk some slack while... wait for it... Southwest and United tend to demand extra seats be purchased!  Viewers were then urged to log onto myfoxboston.com to Weigh In on the matter.  You've got to admire the sheer seamless infotainitude of this bit of Murdochian mindcontrol... Daniels presents it very much as if the shock-horror had transpired just hours before.  A very poorly-documented, possibly staged presentation of Fat Man as Terrorist, brought to you by the very corporation that first kicked up the brouhaha a decade-and-a-half ago... ain't Fascism fascinating?  Oh here's a WSJ writeup on Pam's case and others... read it before Rupert starts charging  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1018401551469704520.html?mod=travel_primary_hs 

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Support Our Troops, Cut&Run Surrender-Monkeys!!!

Conservatives suddenly find the sweet taste of spilled Muslim blood turning bitter when it's a 'Racist Negro' in charge of the spilling.  'The Messiah', seemingly boxed in by our current Colonial Adventure... pulls a neat bit of Jiu-Jitsu on Neocon pundits such as Thomas'Flat Earth'Friedman who now admits that he was wrong wrong wrong on Iraq.  His permanent punditry in peril?  Probably not, but lovely watching him squirm.  Hey here's Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove squirming... checkmate, wingnuts!!!

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34247828#34247828

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Conservative Communism!!

O

hhh boy Gene Fama... who you can find on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/nedso#/genefama?ref=mf

 as well as at http://lambiek.net/artists/f/fama_gene.htm  You'll see an excerpt from his masterpice SQUIRREL JUICE. http://www.fama.net/  is his 'toon site....

Gene, one of my old Underground Cartoonist buddies has become an Investment Seminar neovaudevillian and 98% of his Facebook posts involve the latest 'thinking' within the Box of neoReaganism. 

Upon pointing out that the Gipper was no longer with us, during a long exchange yesterday afternoon, his son leaped into the argument noting that my observation was invalid due to the resemblance in his opinion of my hairdo to that of a 1960s neovaudevillian Ukelele performer.  This led to their next contention that the Nazis were Leftists. 

It occurred to me that I'd only ever heard this contention since the election of Obama.  I traced this meme, a favorite Glenn Beck talkingpoint, back to Jan. 2008's book LIBERAL FASCISM by Jonah Goldberg.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Goldberg

This morning's googling confirms that JG is indeed the son of Lucianne'Lewinsky Scandal'Goldberg, the mentor of Matt Drudge, and led to the factoid that Lucianne is an Episcopalian! 

So... to close the loop on this... my friend is a sort of Investment Counsellor and he's referencing a fellow named 'Jonah Goldberg'.  In Appalachian Scots-Irish parlance a 'Jonah' is a Bringer Of Bad Fortune, and in High Old German/Yiddish a 'Goldberg' is a Mountain Of Wealth.  This brings to mind the old joke, "How did you become a Billionaire?" "Well, Daddy left me Two Billion and I lost Half of It."  ... Which might be a good definition of Conservative Communism.

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MurdochWatch Part 23: Great Google-y Mogul-y!!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10403830-265.html?tag=mncol;txt

It had finally dawned on me three days ago after 2 years of Feuding, that the most entrenched and barnacle-encrusted of our Commenting Coterie of jihad-fomenting slaphappy High-Fiving Trolls... doesn't know how to Google!  ...Has, in fact, no grasp whatever of the concept of the Search Engine.  And was thus reduced to whimpering helplessness when trying to recall the name 'Van Jones'.  Which is what made it so perfectly synchronicitous today when said Problematic Resident's God-King~ Oceanian Master and Commander Rupert Murdoch~ escalated his War Of Words with Google, threatening to withdraw all NewsCorp content from the Empire's most popular research resource... wouldn't THAT be awful!  Information may Want To Be Free, but in the Master's case, Disinformation Wants To Be Expensive. 

Update: Wouldn't it be extra-ducky if Murdoch satrapy CapeCodOnline became Google-impervious!  Support local independent media... advertise on Cape Cod Today!!

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The REAL Reason WGBH-FM is Cancelling Naomi Arenberg's Folk Show?

I'm cutting-and-pasting this from correspondence I had last nite with Jacqueline Schwab, composer/performer of music for Ken Burns' CIVIL WAR PBS series and wife of Edmund Robinson minister of the Chatham UUMH.  Jacqueline is as dismayed at the cancellation of Naomi Arenberg's Folk Show on WGBH-FM as I am so I sent her my conspiracy-theory which I've covered here at the CC2day Blog in past years. 

"I've probably mentioned this article before... http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1123    The Friday two weeks before the invasion of Iraq, on MORNING EDITION Scott Simon and Bob Edwards 'got with the program' and repeated the Roveism all morning that the UNSCOM inspectors "Were Kicked Out" by Saddam 4 years earlier.  The Mainstream Media only took up this Big Lie in the last days of August/first days of September six months before the Invasion.  Prior to that, when a Republican operative would say that on Mainstream Media, he would be corrected by the statements of Hans Blix and Scott Ritter.    National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting were founded and funded by many of the same progressive postwar individual and foundations that were active in the New Frontier merger of the Unitarians and Universalists in the early 60s.    I've expressed my concerns on this to UU WORLD Magazine and the UU Board.  Given the centrality of the Flecks and the Picketts of Chatham to the founding of the new denomination and its hymnbook...  UUMH Chatham should consider confronting NPR with its role as cheerleader-for-the-cheerleader George W. Bush.    The postwar progressive Mutual Founders are mostly gone now, but there must be inheritors of the tradition who wrestle daily with this cognitive dissonance... let's figure out who they might be, confront them, and lend them support.    Perhaps folkmusic/singersongwriters have been found by WGBH surveys simply no longer popular in Boston.  Do you believe that?  I think it more likely that there's increasing friction between artists and the Suits Upstairs who gave Bill Kristol pundit-airplay for the past 6 years.  Maybe folkfans like me stopped giving money to GBH after 'Simon Said' What He Said.  I certainly cut 'em off my list.  I LOVE folk music... Dylan saved my sanity...    Growing up in a Republican household in Jacksonville FL all thru the 60s, being bussed for 6 years to a 'peculiar Prep School'(see my VITALITY feature this month) which despite its function as a Segregation Academy had a heavily Unitarian enrollment... the wife of Jacksonville UUMH minister Charles White McGehee was one of the English teachers, and their sons were my classmates... I managed to get rides a few times to 'Liberal Religious Youth' meetings at the J'ville UUMH to hear the kids play folkie protest-songs on their guitars... this in a town where every fourth paycheck comes from the Naval Air bases..."

Oh man the worst one was Corey Flentoff giving the evening news summaries in '03 and '04... the oleaginous rapture in his voice as he would intone the name "Pray-sident Booosh" ...what a little Luger-polisher...

Support LOCAL INDEPENDENT media folks; listen and contribute to WOMR-FM Provincetown www.womr.org with its New Digital Signal!  And keep reading and advertising in CapeCodToday... DO NOT send money to WGBH-FM until Scott Simon comes to the Cape, is confronted with tapes of that Friday show possibly in conjunction with one of Scott Ritter's appearances, explains himself AND RESIGNS. 

The Invasion was Thursday March 20 2003. Count back 2 weeks to the Friday I'm discussing, March 6th. That's when these ears heard Scott and Bob commit the war crime all morning. NPR'd been doing pretty well keeping things straight 'til that moment. Then it caved. Repeating the Roveism all morning that the UNSCOMers 'Were Kicked Out' 4 years earlier, an untruth, GAVE NPR's IMPRIMATUR to Bush to Bring It On. The coverage became gung-ho from then on. That is how NPR was complicit.

The rest of Mainstream Media had started to cave in the last days of August '02. For the next week into September you see the newly-minted phrase 'Were Kicked Out' popping up everywhere. NPR resisted to some degree, at least correcting NeoCon guests who used those Three Little Words. Until March 6th. Then Scott and Bob's heads became Embedded in the oil-rich sand of Iraq. I want testimony from those two on the precise phrasing of the orders that came down from upstairs... to begin lying to their listeners.

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