Boo hoo hoo....a BBB closes

Maybe you've already seen the latest bombshell: Open Left, one of the Big Box Blogs, has shut its virtual doors. The reasoning behind the closure seemed a bit suspect, and Donklephant has pointed out just what stinks to high heaven:

The liberal blog Open Left suddenly announced today that they’ll stop posting content because…

we have gradually run out of money to maintain operations. It is a difficult decision, but we kept going for as long as we could.

But…

The site will not disappear, and all published content will remain online {…}

Wait…what?

Open Left is run on Soap Blox, which is a blogging platform and hosting service. The blog platform appears to be free and the most expensive hosting costs $40 a month. Sure, there are add ons, but Open Left doesn’t get a ton of traffic. They say they’re going to keep the website up, so it’ll cost $480 at the most every year. If you add in extra storage and overages every month, maybe it costs $1,000 a year…maybe.

So the idea that it was too costly to maintain the site is hard to swallow. Why didn’t they just throw a fundraiser? Think they could get 100 people to pitch in $10…or more? This is, after all, some of the same readers who rocketed Howard Dean from obscurity to the national stage because he was able to raise a ton of money online.

Bottom line…if they really cared about their readers they’d simply tell them that they can’t pay their writers anymore so content contributions will go down. And that’s assuming they paid their writers in the first place. Many political blogs simply invite people to blog and pay them zip. The platform, readership and communication is enough compensation. Also, I’ve been frank with all of you about content dropping in the down years between elections…and our hosting costs more than what they were paying. Do you see us going away?

Just saying…Chris Bowers and crew could easily keep that site up and post to it when they want to. But they’re not making any money. That’s the reason they’re quitting. Not very “open” if you ask me.

Amen! Strikes me that there would be plenty of regulars there who would gladly pony up some cabbage, if operating costs were an issue. But like other good corporatists, albeit of the "leftist" flavor, it's all about making the almighty profit - readers be damned.

The cycle of netroots life

This cycle repeats every two years, and is even more reliable than Old Faithful.

This public service announcement brought to you by Democracy in Action and IOZ.

Dickie Spoons, Great White Liberal Hope

Newly placed in the glass case today, may I present for your viewing pleasure phallus waggus megamouth (subspecies: prog), colloquially known as Rape Apologist, Liberal Male Version

Honestly, when will I learn not to click on Daily Kos when I'm eating, or digesting, for that matter ? Or hell, on an empty stomach but hoping to eat something today ?

@#$%!!*

The oh-so-charming poster thereisnospoon loftily explains to women that he understands so much more about what "real" rape is than we women do ourselves, silly overwrought booze-addled creatures that we are.

Sometimes cliche is the only reasonable response to purveyors of same: Dear Dickie Spoon, with "liberal/progressive allies" like you, who needs adversaries ?

By coincidence, I found the latest Carnival Against Sexual Violence newly available today. It happened en route to sharing Dickie Spoons' all-too-common-in-blogland (and IRL) bullshit with a feminist blogger who posts regularly about sexual violence and why fighting it in this culture is such an uphill battle.

You lose some, you win some.

June 26th was Torture Awareness Day: Where were the Big Box Blogs?

One wonders. Finding front-page content (even diaries for that matter) of relevance regarding one of the major human rights crises of our times would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Let's see. MyDD? Silence. Just polls, polls, and more polls.

My Left Wing? One can hear the sound of crickets chirping.

Daily Kos? Barely a peep. The closest we get to anything from the front-pagers is a brief mention of one of Valtin's diaries (hell, might as well go to his blog which should be a must-read to begin with).

Booman Tribune? Be thankful for Steven D., who does at least cover some anti-torture news; and a slightly belated post from Larry Johnson.

I might quote something from a blogger called Death and the Maiden - a new (as of this month) anti-torture blog - that pretty well sums things up:

What? You didn't know? You haven't heard?

Yeah. How 'bout that, huh?

Today's the tenth "International Day in Support of Victims of Torture." It was designated by the UN General Assembly as an annual commemoration of the ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture (20 years ago today). But apparently not too many, including the United Nations, give a rat's ass. You won't hear about it from the mainstream media, and the UN didn't even bother to put it on this year's calendar.

Disappeared. The International Day in Support of Desaparecidos is now itself a desaparecido.

Almost disappeared, that is. The good folks at Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition have events scheduled in Washington DC. Take a look at their web page and sign on to their petition to repeal the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

And after you do that, start making every day Torture Awareness Day in your local community. Check the links in the sidebar of this blog. They have lots of good ideas to help you get started. Don't let torture awareness slide down the chupadero.

Just sayin'.

BBBs and the Disaffiliated

Daily Kos has an image to maintain. Any perceived threat to that image is therefore considered a threat to the entire community and some members there have absolutely no qualms about defining what they deem to be unacceptable.

Exhibit A:

Exactly what I did (0 / 0)

when I walked away from MLW and BT. And why I fervently hope the purveyors of impeachment porn at this site will get tired of it and go somewhere else, or else force Markos to boot them and ban that kind of mindless shouting at the rain.

When the signal-to-noise ratio drops to 1 or less, it’s time to move along. That hasn’t happened here yet, but it’s well past that at MLW and BMT–or was when I left both places.

So explain to me why I would particularly want to have them on “my” side? Especially since it just makes it easier for the MSM to mischaracterize blogs and bloggers as a temporary annoyance instead of a true threat to their traditional dominance of the field of news and opinion.

Michael
Musing’s musings

by musing85 on Mon Mar 05, 2007 at 11:15:49 AM MST

Exhibit B:

People that stand in the way of electing (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:musing85

Democrats because of their addictions to drama and constant conflict have found their homes at MLW, Booman Trib, and other sites filled with malcontents that would like to collectively destroy dkos effectiveness and mission. The malcontents need to be shown the door so that they can not contaminate dkos.

Politics is the business of dkos, personality and discontent is the business of the sites Musing mentioned.

PaintyKat

WWYTR? “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend” MLK

by PaintyKat on Mon Mar 05, 2007 at 04:22:43 PM PST

During the 80s, one of my favourite bands The Clash (yes, I really did like them) had a song out which some of you might remember - Red Angel Dragnet - which was inspired by the De Niro movie Taxi Driver. The lyrics included this:

All the animals come out at night.
Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick venal.
Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

Thank god for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.

For those who don't know, The Clash was a counter-culture band...well...I won't write a thesis on the subject, but if you want an idea of what they were about, read this wiki piece about their song Straight to Hell. That should help you understand their message.

Anyway, when I see comments like those above, the words of The Clash come to mind because they were meant to fight on behalf of the disenfranchised, the disaffiliated, the contaminated, the purveyors of [impeachment] porn which mainstream society chooses to shun at every turn in order to keep its neighbourhoods clean and scandal-free (they hope, while hiding their own dirt under the rug).

Read those comments again and let the parallels sink in.

There are some who prefer to ghettoize the dissidents - to put them in convenient virtual cardboard boxes where they simply don't need to be dealt with, heard or looked at - where they can no longer contaminate the conversations of those who believe their opinions are so vastly fucking superior.

That is why we talk about the big box blogs as being like gated communities here - and it's more than just dkos that has that attitude. Their desire to insulate protected, valued members from the "scum" is no different than the bigotted policies of the most backwards institutions in society like those exclusive little country clubs where your money speaks more about your worth than your character does.

"Malcontents" who "want to destroy" dkos.

Yet, some of the most vicious and vindictive words and actions that surely will destroy that overblown, cherished image are spewed by the revered elders day after day. That's acceptable though. They are the members of privilege - much like the rich, drunk kid who kills someone in a car accident and gets a slap on the wrist while a poor African-American kid in the same circumstance is jailed for 20 years.

Anyone who's ever been marginalized or discriminated against should be able to see these situations on the BBBs for what they are. Yet, even some of those people choose to participate in the derision in some warped attempt to heal their wounds.

Membership has its priviliges - for a select few.

And they wonder why people like me are disgusted...or, frankly, they just don't care. Why should they? They've obviously got what they want - everybody else be damned - and so they are.

Even BBBs can practice internal colonialism. They can be more than a reflection of the society that they're a part of, but they actually have to start acting like it first and that responsibility is left to every single member to take on - yes, even at the risk of being thrown out into the street until that rain comes.

People think we're the blight.

Wrong.

We're actually the light.

They need to stop acting like De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, as if he's some kind of hero and find some fucking humility before they do even more damage if they're so damned concerned about their image and mission.

"Listen, you fuckers, you screw-heads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. Here is."

Except that he wasn't, really.

Meta Update: Big Tent Democrat (you all know who he is - wouldn't want to "out" him, after all!) has written yet another GBCW diary at dkos citing "irreconcilable differences with the Management." I wonder how long this self-imposed time out will last. Start the stopwatch.

Mo Meta Update: post by kos

BTD (7+ / 0-)

wasn't asked to leave.

He was asked to be civil in the comments.

He has reacted how he thought was best. It's too bad, because there are few people here I value as much as him.

by kos on Tue Mar 06, 2007 at 12:19:35 AM MST

Click on the link to follow the rest of the soap opera.

Now serving fresh popcorn!