Left Behind

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Thursday April 30, 2009 · 1:46 PM PDT

2009/04/30 · 13:46

First in a series in which one former magazine writer looks back on his zany misadventures in the Netroots. Cross-posted at ASSME.org, the Web site of the American Society of Shitcanned Media Elites.

Like Don Henley, I got the call that I didn't want to hear, but I knew that it would come.

It was Mark Karlin, the Matt Drudge of the Left. This Chicago enigma had been paying me to write news headlines for his baby, Buzzflash.com: a screaming anti-Bush site modeled after The Drudge Report, only without the weather obsession or brevity. Now my contract editorial services were no longer needed. He did leave me with a kind compliment: "You had no problem learning the Buzzflash style of writing," he said.

johngorenfeld

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Tuesday July 29, 2008 · 12:17 PM PDT

2008/07/29 · 12:17

(cross-posted, with fun editorial cartoons, at CampaignSilo.com):

So thirteen percent of people think Barack Obama is a Muslim. An unprecedented crisis in public ignorance? "Not so," said my dad, because Will Gorenfeld is a Civil War buff, or rather a pre-Civil War buff, who knows everything about the year 1856, and believes nothing is new under the sun. "There were rumors," he said, "that John C. Frémont was secretly a Catholic."

Poll

45 votes Show Results

Who should the netroots support in 1856?

45 votes Vote Now!

Who should the netroots support in 1856?

Republican John C. Fremont (anti-slavery, pro-conquering land)

33 votes

Democrat James Buchanan (pro-slavery, even-handed on Kansas-Nebraska)

3 votes

American Party's Millard Fillmore (anti-Irishman)

9 votes

Church of Cthulhu offered grant opportunities

johngorenfeld

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Saturday April 05, 2008 · 5:28 PM PDT

2008/04/05 · 17:28

Yesterday Rolling Stone's Jeff Sharlet dropped an amazing tidbit. Seems that the Faith-Based Initiative--the Bush plan to send billions of tax dollars hurtling to religious groups--was dreamed up by the geniuses at The Family, the District of Columbia's spiritual mafia and no fans of the Establishment Clause.

Which reminds me. Way back in 2002, below the radar, a bunch of God-oriented offices sprang up within the Department of Labor and other secular agencies. The idea was to grease the path of dollar bills from the U.S. government to social programs inspired by one deity or another.

So I decided to get in touch on behalf of a controversial faith--the fictitious congregation from H.P. Lovecraft's classic horror stories, about a terrifying fiend from the deep. I was just cleaning out my closet and found this:

johngorenfeld

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Tuesday March 25, 2008 · 3:28 PM PDT

2008/03/25 · 15:28

Yeah, Romney's out of the race. But Robert Lichfield, a Republican bigshot from Utah who was his most controversial fundraiser, remains in serious need of scrutiny for what he's doing to American kids, even if this particular Red State horror is no longer part of the 2008 election.

Lichfield runs an extremely profitable network of "tough love" private schools for American teenagers. He's based in Utah, but his dungeon-like punishment center, Tranquility Bay, is run in Jamaica, beyond the reach of U.S. law. He had to leave the Romney campaign after it emerged that he was facing hundreds of child abuse complaints, including stories of children locked in dog cages.

johngorenfeld

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Tuesday December 19, 2006 · 9:13 AM PST

2006/12/19 · 09:13

He's the robot who takes on the MSM and he's back in business: celebrated pundit R. Robot, the world's first self-writing weblog. Enter the name of a friend or enemy, and he'll automatically compose a preposterous, Jonah Goldberg-style assault on his/her outrageous acts of seditious treason.

Originally a take-off on Andrew Sullivan, I built him in 2003, and from time to time have updated his list of "traitors." Since Little Green Footballs hasn't really budged since then, I don't think the joke has dated much. The robot broke down a couple years ago, but thanks to WordPress he's back in business, as unsparing as ever. Is it time to give R. Robot his own L.A. Times column?

johngorenfeld

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Friday January 13, 2006 · 7:45 PM PST

2006/01/13 · 19:45

[Edited -- JG] Is this for real? My dad, a retired attorney, wrote a short letter to the New York Times with the rather reasonable suggestion that they shoulda broke that wiretap thing earlier. "I hate to think what might have happened had the Pentagon Papers of 1971 landed on Bill Keller's desk. My guess is that we would not read about them until 2000, if at all." That's it, that's the whole thing.

All well and good. But did it hit too close to home? What's that ding in the inbox? There he he is, minding his own business and playing computer baseball -- it's 1955 and Brookyln has come back in the 7th to pull out a game against the Phils -- and he suddenly receives a snotty e-mail with a nytimes.com return address. It is apparently from Keller's personal secretary.

I wonder if any other Daily Kosians have received anything like this -- its tone varying from boilerplate to self-satisfaction to a sneering "I wonder if you've even read it [the story]" at the end.

Do they write you less condescending letters if you buy Times Select? Read More

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Return of the Right-Wing Robot

My dad got a cranky letter from the NYT for wiretap letter-to-editor