{Out of karakter}
In Olympia, there is a cute little collectivist rag called "Works in Progress" which I read every month to get a chuckle. Well, lately they have gotten very, very boring and predictable, and as a reader, I wrote them to tell them what I thought of their little paper.

The email exchange follows. Very amusing!

Honestly anymore I pick up WIP, glance at it, and put it back. Same stuff, different spin. Using my special powers I can predict WIP will complain about The Olympian the City Council, and Triway. In addition to the usual reliable space fillers mentioned above, Palestine and Israel will get spread about, as needed to take up room, and there will be the usual assortment of breathless writings that pretend to be news, but are really poorly written op-ed pieces.

News has sources, doesn't rely on buzzwords, catchphrases, or innendo, and is presented as news. Opinion pieces may have factual data in them, but are presented as opinion, and not disguised as news.

Sadly WIP still hasn't risen above the level of crude samzidat.

For an example of true, quality "alternative" media, look to The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly, Everday Olympia, hell even The Onion.

Odd, the rest of the exchange got cut off...

Anyhow they wound up accusing me of going around destroying stacks of their product, and told me I could quit "monitoring" their paper as they weren't going to change.

I countered and told them that as a reader it is my place to criticize, but if I wasn't part of their target audience, fair enough. I then told them to produce proof I was destroying stacks of their product.

Clearly this is how the collective mind deals with dissent. Ignore it, tell it to go away, and then challenge it in a fashion that suggests the non supporter is out to destroy it. Which in turn justifies their existence, and places the blame back on the non collectivist.

[mike off]

Those that work in the media are so used to the self-congratulatory cirque du jerk. It's like higher academia (and I would strongly recommend getting a copy of Indoctrinate U, which our illustrious Red Square did some camera work for)--they don't get out much. So, when someone challenges their inbred views, it shocks them more than the rest of us who deal with the masses on a daily basis.

Take, for example, the Heller Case this past summer. I remember reading through an issue of Time, and the author of the articles covering the case seemed rather surprised that the Supreme Court would give a ruling in favor of an individual right rather than the collective interpretation.

Thing of it is, this writer majored in history in college. You would think that she would be able to do a bit of research--and finding Federal court rulings on 2A are NOT that hard to find. But then again, ever since the early 1990s, there has been a drastic downturn in education, it seems (although this has been more and more the trend since the radicals from the '60s started taking positions in academia and government). They're baby-sitting ideological puppy farms. More interested in feeding them the party line than preparing them for the real world.

{out of karakter}

DDR, this isn't even real "media" they call themselves a "media collective" and sell a few small ads, rely on donations, and run the most absurd, breathless stuff. I told them they read like samizdat, and they do.

That said, they serve a group of liberal "progressives" who fancy themselves the center of all that is correct in Olympia. You are either part of them, or you are not worth listening too. In other words, your criticism and opinions are meaningless.

Their heads are that far up their collective asses?

DDR Kamerad wrote:Their heads are that far up their collective asses?

{out of karakter} I wanted to get the whole exchange posted here to show how silly it was, but since I couldn't get it to stick for some reason this thing looks more like a rant... Well I'm waiting for a reply again, so will try showing the more interesting parts of the exchange again tomorrow.{back}

Yes, their collective heads are shoved so far up their collective asses they would put even AlGore to shame. In fact a popular Olympia Collective hobby is "progressive rolling". We find the ones with their heads up their (or other's) asses, and roll them in a giant hamster ball that has electrical generating dynamos in it. That way we have a renewable source of green energy! Once the batteries in the hamster balls are charged, we put them in green cars, and put the discharged car batteries into another ball, with another progressive in it.