The “you can’t make this shit up” cabinet just exploded. This has been a very bizarre and concerning weekend for me personally, over and above the bummer of the Kavanaugh confirmation and I want to share about that with you for reasons that will become obvious. First things first, take a look at what hit my inbox at 7:20 PDT. This missive is the cherry on the sundae of weirdness, topped with malice, that has been my portion for the past 48 hours.
THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY
Suite 4
1 Pastiche Plaza
Intercourse PA 17534-9807
FROM THE DESK OF I. MEESTER-BEEG 7 Oct 18
Dear Mr. President,
Wasn’t Susan terrific yesterday! Such a great speech just fantastic! Watched the vote today and it was terrific. Love those mopes in the peanut gallery! Lancaster reporting a few minutes ago a bunch of Bernie supporters now claiming they’re going to vote Republican! Gotta love it! Give my best to the Judge, his family and the First Lady. She has hit a home run on her foreign trip especially in Egypt! You should be proud my friend.
The VRWC Committee on Un American Activities met last night and recommended the following individuals/corporate entities be added to The List for referral by the Judiciary Committee to the DOJ for formal criminal investigations and indictments with the exception of BALSEY-FORD who likely needs simply to be interviewed then committed not necessarily in that order:
Names Remarks
BLASEY FORD CHRISTINE B. Appears to be mentally ill
RAMIREZ DEBORAH
SLUTNICK JULIE AKA Sweetlick; Swetnick (stage names)
MACCLEAN MONICA
FAW URSULA Fake News Operative
FORD’S LAWYERS all of them
AVENUTTI MICHAEL J. Has gone in to hiding
ESHOO ANNA G. And entire staff
PERKINS COLE LAW FIRM
JAMES ACOSTA Fake News Operative
SCHUMER CHARLES And entire staff
FEINSTEIN DIANE And entire staff
As usual I’ll need a status report ASAP so just have your people call my people. Make it happen!
Best wishes,
MEESTER-BEEG
COMMANDER
cc Rush Limbaugh
Tommy Robinson
Victor Orban
Rebel Media
Alex Jones
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Nigel Farage
Ursula Faw
This is weird enough on it’s face and I wish I was in the mood to just have a good belly laugh. Jim Acosta and I are both Fake News Operatives. Where the hell is my contract from CNN, huh? Talk about gender discrimination and pay, Sweet Jesus, he and I have the same job title. And notice that I’m the only one on the hit list that they decided to cc. What’s up with that?
Now under any other circumstance, I would take this missive for a comic spin — but I’m not in the mind set to do so, because the fact of the matter is, incredible as it may seem, I really am under attack and from forces a hell of a lot more powerful and tangible than some whack a mole calling himself “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy,” and sending me an email on a Sunday morning. I’m under attack from social media.
As you probably know, I blog on other sites, Daily Sound and Fury (which used to be called The Trump Impeachment) and PolitiZoom. I make a few bucks from doing this, based upon a percentage of ad revenues generated by the pieces I post. Or did. On Friday I received an email from my editor, essentially telling me that Instagram had shut down the sites. He appealed, they restored the sites, and then shut them down again. This is exactly the scenario that took place in August with Facebook, and there is a corporate relationship between Facebook and Instagram, so it stands to reason that what Instagram did is an extension of what Facebook did and they’re following the same policy — whatever that may be.
Now this topic is complex, but here’s the bottom line. Without social media driving traffic to the sites, and the sites generating clicks, and the clicks translating into advertising dollars, we’re screwed. Plain and simple.
Let me share a few excerpts from emails I received from my editor that I think will explain this.
Here is the month-over-month trend:
- July, down 15%
- Aug, down 34%
- Sept, down 14%
- Oct, so far down 28%
The trend is pretty clear and you can see where this is headed. Note that prior to July, the trend month-over-month was up, not down. In July, it turned the other way. I was thinking (hoping) that this was seasonal, but the conditions on social media keep getting worse and worsen (as we head into the midterm elections, of course). In with Instagram going away, there is no way to stem the bleeding. This is the straw that broke the camel's back.
Social media wants to wipe out political expression, due to the fact that the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, et al. have been called to testify before congress for their culpability in the social media/Cambridge Analytica debacle, wherein data from 50Million Facebook users was harvested and then used to develop psycho metric profiles, which then in turn were used to influence the 2016 election with Russian bots posing as the neighbors. Unfortunately, they’re not dealing with the issue intelligently. They’re leveling their guns indiscriminately, and in doing so, wiping out little people, some of whom are doing good work.
Add that concept to the fact that independent journalism and investigative journalism is under attack as well. This is a topic that I could write about all day, because I keep on top of who is doing what in the political blogosphere and in journalism in general. Journalism has been in trouble for some time. Over 10,000 journalists got laid off between 2007 and 2010. Other companies, and you will recognize all of these names, have had problems as well. This is from a wonderful article on digital media, which I suggest you read in its entirety. Mother Jones:
You don’t always hear the bubble burst. Often, it’s more a gradual escaping of air, signaled by nothing more than the occasional queasy feeling you bat away: One house for sale on the block, oh well. Two, three—maybe just a robust market? Five, six, seven—and suddenly everyone’s underwater and the sheriff is at your door.
That’s kind of how it’s feeling in the digital media business. For a few years now, investors have been pouring money into online news with the kind of fervor that once fueled the minimansion boom. But in the past year, the boarded-up windows have started showing up: The Guardian, which bet heavily on expanding its digital presence in the United States, announced it needed to cut costs by 20 percent. The tech news site Gigaom shut down suddenly, with its founder warning that “it is a very dangerous time” to be in digital media. Mobile-first Circa put itself on “indefinite hiatus.” Al Jazeera America, once hailed as the hottest thing in bringing together cable news and digital publishing, shut down and laid off hundreds of journalists.
Pop.
And it’s been getting worse. As the New York Times’ John Herrman put it, “in recent weeks, what had been a simmering worry among publishers has turned into borderline panic.” Mashable, which had made a big investment in news and current affairs, laid off dozens of journalists and pivoted to a new, video-heavy strategy. Investor darling BuzzFeed fought reports that it had slashed earnings projections by nearly 50 percent. Salon laid off a string of veteran staffers. Yahoo put its core business, including its news and search features, up for sale.
Pop. Pop.
I have a background in journalism. I was a reporter and radio newscaster in the late ‘70’s in Denver, after I graduated from the University of Colorado. It was a blast doing it, but it was very low paid. I’m talking a couple of bucks above minimum wage. For compelling economic reasons I got out of radio, but the same mindset that drew me to journalism and radio in the first place drew me back into political blogging a couple of years ago.
I am very committed to what I do because I honestly believe that the future of democracy is at stake. We have an election in one month that is the most important election of my lifetime, certainly, and I’m in my 60’s.
As I said at the outset of this post, this has been an incredibly stressful weekend for me. The weekend was kicked off by receiving an email from my editor telling me the sad facts of life, followed by this post, which is a last ditch effort to save ourselves.
Friends, we are under attack on social media. As you may have noticed, our social media accounts have been shut down, one by one, as the social media giants lash out at small publishers of political content. These social media accounts are the means by which we sustain our activities. They send viewers to our site which allows us to make a small amount of advertising money which we use to pay for the servers and software to run the site, the newsletter, and the forum and to give a small amount to the writers and editors who often work 7 days-a-week to keep it all going. Now, without the traffic coming from social media, the money we make on advertising will no longer pay the bills.
Without support from our readers, we will be forced to shut down the website, this newsletter, and the discussion forum on October 31st.
We have set up a campaign on Patreon, which allows people to give on-going support (or patronage) of $5 a month (or more if you can). If we can get to 500 patrons by October 31st, we can keep the site, the newsletter, and the forum going. Otherwise, we will be forced to shut down. Please become our patron on Patreon:
Let me bottom line this for you simply: when I started making a little bit from blogging I reinvested it in subscriptions. I live on a disability check, but the minute I could I purchased subscriptions to New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones and Los Angeles Times. I send the Guardian a few dollars from time to time as well. Then we need to all chip in to pay for the servers, I need to keep the wifi on, normal stuff. I’m only asking for your help to pay costs to stay up and running, and there will be additional content, seven pieces a week, that will appear only on the Patreon page, so that you will get more bang for your buck. And of course I will continue to post here, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
It is incredibly hard for me to come with hat in hand and ask this community, which has always been so giving and generous to me, for more, but please see it the way I do: the bigger picture here is that grass roots political expression needs to have it’s voice and if a small group of us get washed out of the picture, the whole of us is that much more diminished.
I just want to keep my voice out there — and clearly, somebody hears it. This wingnut who sent me the weird email read me somewhere and I pushed some button. Truth has a way of doing that, have you noticed?
If you can help, please do. If not, your good wishes and kind thoughts are always welcome as well. They are the chicken soup to my soul.
Thank you.