Bloggasm

Tony Pierce is a California-based blogger who first became an internet celebrity when he’d post about his wild LA escapades on his personal blog. He’s been featured in the New York Times, the LA Times, and other mainstream news outlets, and has been highlighted on major blogs like BoingBoing. His personal blogging has slowed down somewhat as he’s taken up a gig at LAist, a blog about LA life and culture.

Simon Owens: You received a lot of press in the past over your criticisms of Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds. Do you ever grow frustrated by the right-wing blogger’s ability to gain in popularity even though his (and other bloggers like Malkin and Powerline) lazy reporting gets proven wrong on almost a daily basis? Does it give you the sense that there’s no sense of justice whenever it comes to the media?

Tony Pierce: I’m actually pretty old, almost as old as Glenn, so I’ve seen a few things. I’ve seen Milli Vanilli win a Grammy, I’ve seen Fox News get super high ratings, and I’ve seen George W. Bush somehow become a two-term president. Therefore it no longer surprises me when people make lame things gain a certain amount of popularity.

And personally I might be part of the problem. I don’t read Kos, I don’t read Atrios, and I only skim Huff Post. To me reading the righty blogger over the last few years as they somehow try to explain their allegiance to that train wreck is far more entertaining than watching the lefty bloggers point and laugh.

Anyone who reads the news regularly knows what’s up. So reading the spin mongrels do their thing is purely an opportunity for free entertainment. And to be fair, Glenn’s checks from Rove have either begun to bounce, or he has had a hard time sleeping at night lately because his production of blatant bs has mellowed. Malkin, however, is a lost cause which is why you can’t even get upset with her because there wasn’t anything there to begin with.

Simon Owens: Do you feel that a lot of your readers envy you over the easy-going lifestyle that you portray on your blog? Do you feel that you’re living some kind of western-coast version of the American dream?

Tony Pierce: Perhaps, but they shouldn’t. My blog is full of lies. My fingers haven’t smelled of teens in months. My hits have gone down steadily since I started working at LAist. I’m not the undercover superhero I used to be.

When I think of the west-coast version of the American Dream, I think of a pimped out car, a sweet pad in Malibu with a pool and hot tub, and a crawl space filled with unmarked bills. I don’t have any of those, but I do get paid to blog, so I guess I’m doing some thing ok.

Simon Owens: How hard is it for you to balance between blogging for LAist and your personal blog? I noticed a recent post in which you’ve expressed guilt for not blogging enough on your personal blog, why do you think this is?

Tony Pierce: It’s not hard to balance, because there is no balance. I spend every waking moment thinking about LAist. I do feel guilty that the busblog has become second in my heart. But what can you do? Very few people get the opportunity to be a professional blogger. And there’s no way that I want to ruin things for others who might get this chance. So I want to do everything I can to make LAist more successful so that other publishers will see that if you pay dedicated bloggers a full-time wage that they will give 100% and give you a return on your investment.

There will be a time where I will figure out how to balance both blogs better, but right now pretty much anything that I think is bloggable ends up on LAist.

Simon Owens: How did you find the other bloggers who write for LAist?

Tony Pierce: Every once in a while I will post on LAist that we’re looking for writers for LAist. Recently I wrote that we were looking for a Clippers blogger and a Laker blogger. We got enough responses that I could be picky and we ended up with two really great guys.

Simon Owens: Do you read blogs that center around other cities? Like New York or Chicago (the blog Gothamist comes to mind)? How do these blogs compare to LA blogs?

Tony Pierce: I read way more blogs than I feel comfortable admitting. Yes I read all the Ist blogs as well as many of the Metroblogging blogs. I don’t think anyone can argue the greatness that is Gothamist. They do more on a Sunday than most city-based blogs do on their best weekdays.

Of the LA blogs I like LA Observed the best. I realize he has sort of an unfair advantage with his relationships with the LA Times, but he uses that advantage beautifully and he’s seriously dedicated. At first I tried to compete with what he does, but after a while I just gave up and instead focused on what we could do that he couldn’t, which was music. One day we might get a contributer who’s as obsessed with the local rag as Kevin is, but until then we’ll just have to let him do his thing in awe.

Still, Gothamist kicks ass and they’re my idol, and target.

Simon Owens: What are the ten blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Tony Pierce: Raymi

Metafilter

Defamer

Flagrant

Crooks & Liars

Wonkette

Pink is the New Blog

xTx

the pants

Matthew Good

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Here’s an email I wrote to Michelle Malkin:

Michelle,

Since you find it important to make a post every time a conservative pundit gets attacked in any kind of way, and then go on to claim it’s “liberal thuggery,” and accuse the attackers of being part of “Students for a Democratic Society” when it turns out it was a complete fabrication, might you consider reporting on this:

http://www.comcast.net/news/national/index.jsp?cat=DOMESTIC&fn=/2006/11/12/519413.html&cvqh=itn_letter

In this case, the man was obviously targeting liberal commentators only: Olbermann, Jon Stewart, and Pelosi. Show us how “fair and balanced” you are and make a post called “conservative thuggery.” I dare you.

–Simon Owens

Feel free to email Malkin and demand that she highlights this story in her blog, since every time a conservative pundit gets attacked, whether or not she has proof that it’s a Democrat, she feels free to issue a smear campaign anyway, and then refuses to make corrections when it’s revealed that they’re not Democrats. Her email address is writemalkin@gmail.com

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Gee, I just love it when obvious-pedophiles find their way to Bloggasm through google searches in which they try to find out how to hook up with kids.

From a man with an IP address located in Murray, Kentucky: “chat room for older people trying to hook up with kids”

He arrived at Bloggasm at 9:53:44 pm and didn’t even stay for a full 1 second. I guess this post (the one he entered in) didn’t have what he was looking for.

Scary, huh? I get stuff like this semi-regularly.

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One could lazily say that Sacha Baron Cohen’s ability to make us laugh simply lies with his keen adeptness to draw out the most racist and sexist personas of his interview subjects and display them in all their ridiculousness. But then that would ignore some of the funniest scenes in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which seemed as if they could have snugly fit within the realms of a Jackass movie. In fact, Cohen at some points dives so far into the shock factor humor that the audience becomes desensitized to it, as is often the case with race humor. When we watch the citizens of Kazakhstan participate in the annual “Running of the Jew,” in which large hulking costumed “Jews” chase the children through the streets, you’ll likely hear forced laughter in the audience at what is essentially over-the-top anti-semitism. Later in the movie, when Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) find out that they’re spending the night with a Jewish couple, their fear that the couple will poison them never does much in inducing real laughter.

That is not to say that the racism isn’t funny, it’s just more entertaining when Borat manages to let his interview subjects spew their racist remarks. Perhaps this is why he only spends a very small portion of the movie in New York City before hitting the road, because Cohen understood the guarded, stand-offish nature of the New Yorker. When Borat goes to kiss a random New Yorker on the street, the response you almost always hear is “Get the fuck away from me, don’t you fucking get near me.” When he’s in the south, the southerner will either awkwardly let him kiss him, or politely tell him “No, we don’t do that kind of thing here.” Cohen preys on the exaggerated polite mentality of southerners, who will go out of their way to accommodate even the most obnoxious guests. Borat is always able to cause the southerners to let down their guard through his own sexist and racist affirmations, and through some bizarre assuredness that the camera filming them will never reach American eyes, they spew forth the most vile stuff imaginable.

Borat, in its faux-documentary style, puts together a coherent plot rather than jumping from interview to interview like in the short lived Da Ali G Show. Borat is a Kazakhstani journalist who has been sent to America to make a documentary about American cultural life that will theoretically be emulated by Kazakhstan’s people (something that’s confirmed in the epilogue of the movie). He’s accompanied by his producer Azamat who is there to keep him disciplined towards his final goal. But when Borat watches an episode of Baywatch, he becomes immediately transfixed with Pamela Anderson and decides right then and there that he is to marry her. He convinces Azamat that they need to travel to California in order to get the full range of American life, and of course on the way there they curve their path into the deep south.

The attempt to make a coherent plot is a thin one, and Borat’s interactions with Azamat are, for the most part, insubstantial and not very funny (with the main exception being when they get into a huge fight that causes them to part ways). During their trip in the south, Borat encounters an entire range of southerners, from rodeo owners to tongue-speaking evangelical churches to antique dealers, and to borrow a cliche, hilarity ensues. To dictate said hilarity into the written word would flatten it and dry it out; its humor can only be conveyed through the screen. But suffice it to say that Borat is probably the funniest movie to emerge this year.

With its major popularity and inevitable cult following, Cohen must have realized that the death of Borat is eminent. He has been propelled into a notoriety so large that he will never again be able to sneak under the radar in order to trick his interview subjects. But perhaps that’s what’s so fantastic about the movie, that he approaches it with his gloves off, willing to do the most outrageous things imaginable until tears of laughter well up in the audience’s eyes. Many critics will label this movie a mockumentary, but Cohen has painted such a true-portrait of the south’s landscape that he will no doubt be the envy of any serious documentarian, who must deal with the barriers created by those who know every word of theirs will be picked over and dissected by the unrelenting liberal-than-thou criticism of their fellow Americans. Cohen has managed to remove the lense of political correctness to display the racist southerner in its most basic, Neanderthalic beauty.

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One of the things that often rises to the top of the political slush, particularly close to an election cycle, is anecdotal stories of individuals from either side of the political spectrum supposedly vandalizing or committing some form of violence towards the opposition. More often that not, there’s usually no real proof of who the culprits were. For instance, pundits will hype the vandalization of political lawn signs or bumper stickers as “proof” that the other side is composed solely of savages, even though whoever actually vandalized the signs is long gone. It could have been anarchists for all these pundits know.

Whenever conservative pundits do this, they almost always use the mocking term “liberal tolerance” either in the title of their post or somewhere in the body of it. Michelle Malkin, creator of the ingenious term “Moonbats” (whatever that means), has taken to labeling these incidents as evidence of “liberal thuggery.”

It seems silly to point out the anecdotal nature of incidents like this, how a few obscure individuals somehow represent an entire political ethos. I’ve held strong opinions for several years, and I’ve never attacked a politician or pundit, nor have I vandalized any political signs. Is this somehow proof that my political opinions come out on top?

What’s even more amusing is when pundits make specific accusations and even create the facade of citing sources that actually lead to nowhere, in that they just follow a circular pattern where no direct sources are actually present. Michele Malkin, in a post titled “Liberal thuggery at Ball State U.,” does just this. Like most Malkin posts, it’s short on actual analysis and long on block quotes, and it points to a specific incidence of “liberal thugs” attacking David Horowitz when he visited Ball State University. At one point, she makes the accusation that the attackers were part of Students for a Democratic Society, and links to another blog post to prove it. If you actually click through to her “source” (which few of her readers actually do, something that has been proven by several bloggers through their site meter statistics after she’s linked to them), you’ll see that no proof is ever actually given, which caused me to leave this comment in the post:

Malkin has provided a link to your blog as “proof” that the people who attacked him were part of Students for a Democratic Society, something that you repeat in your blog post. Do you have any evidence to suggest that they were part of this organization? Something more substantial than a rumor you heard? Names of the specific people who attacked him? They are all over the age of 18, so you have every right to print their names. Please do so, otherwise don’t credit this to an organization when you have no proof.

In fact, all news sources which cover this particular incident specifically mention that the attackers were never named. Which begs to question, why is The Horse’s Mouth making these accusations, and why is Malkin not bothering to check her facts?

Furthermore, Malkin then goes on to accuse the staff at Ball State of being hostile towards David Horowitz, and to prove this, links to an article that behaves in the same circular fashion, in that there’s absolutely no proof that the claims of “discrimination” hold any water.

As one commenter put it over at The Horse’s Mouth:

Boy, it’d be great if somebody would actually present some proof that the administration wanted to shut down Horowitz. You, my friend, are the sole source for Michelle Malkin stating, I quote, “The students took their cue from the university’s administration, which vocally opposed his presence.” Where the heck is any reference to the administration members who “vocally opposed” Horowitz?

I don’t disagree that college campuses are a lot more liberal than society at large. I applaud the efforts of individuals who attempt to point out this bias.

But making unsubstantiated specific allegations of overt discrimination against conservatives by particular administrators greatly diminishes your credibility. I’ve spent 15 minutes following links and trackbacks trying to find the source of Malkins claim that particular administrators “”vocally opposed” Horowitz. It appears the only sources are (1) your blog, which proclaims what the administration “really meant” by statements that articulate a facially non-discriminatory policy, and (2) Horowitz’ own needling comments in response to these unsubstantiated claims that the faculty opposes him.

Either Horowitz needs to be more controversial, to generate some actual prejudice, or he needs to stop saying he’s being discriminated against. Pointing to lunatic students doesn’t count — those students don’t represent the university any more than the drunken idiots who flip cars and light them on fire at sporting events represent the university.

After Malkin has made all these unsubstantiated claims, she ends with one of her usual glib remarks: “Parents of future college students: Scratch Ball State off your list.”

I always had this theory that becoming a popular conservative blogger wouldn’t be that hard, and this particular incidence adds substance to this theory. All I would have to do is write posts devoid of rational thought and make claims devoid of proof, and then I’d just continually email people like Michele Malkin and Instapundit until they started linking to me. Because god forbid they ever write any original content of their own.

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With the death of Ed Bradley today, we’re seeing the slow steady beginning of a new era, the old media juggernauts of one of the most powerful news shows in America, 60 minutes, are slowly going out to pasture or dying. First it was Dan Rather retiring. Then it was Mike Wallace calling it quits. And now there’s Ed Bradley. Andy Rooney is still holding on with all the strength that his bushy eyebrows can muster, but it’s only a matter of time before he succumbs to time as well.

Looking at the new recruits, I’m not particularly enthused at what we’ll have left. I watched Katie Couric’s first 60 minutes piece, a profile on Condi Rice, and was bored. She had arguably one of the most powerful women in the world right in front of her, and she essentially did a “fluff” piece on her. And have you seen the guy who’s slowly taking over for Andy Rooney? I don’t even know his name, that’s how uninspiring he is.

With the recent popularity of Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator,” let’s not forget that the media’s job is not to simply show us a carnival freak show, a kaleidoscope of depravity. It’s to make a democratic government as transparent as possible. Translucency is not adequate. Let us hope that 60 Minutes will continue to fulfill that role.

Mistress Matisse has been active in the BDSM community for over fifteen years. When she’s not whipping naughty (and nice) boys into shape, she writes a weekly column, Control Tower, that appears in the Seattle paper The Stranger and addresses a variety of alternative sexual topics such as BDSM and kink, polyamory, and sex work. She also has a blog at http://mistressmatisse.blogspot.com/.

Simon Owens: In order to enter the BDSM culture, does one have to basically live in or around the city, where people who practice it live in concentrated numbers?

Mistress Matisse: I suppose it depends on what you mean by “enter the culture.” If you want to go to large fetish events with lots of people, well then yes, being in a metro area (or being willing to travel) does help. If you simply wish to make a few like-minded friends and do BDSM with your partner, then living in a smaller town is not a problem. Even in a rural area, if you Google the name of your town and “BDSM resources” you’re likely to find something interesting. If not, try again with the name of the county, general area, or nearest larger town, until you hit pay dirt. What you’ll usually find is some kinky e-mail lists and possibly a website for a local BDSM organization. That’s your first stepping stone to meeting people and making friends.

Simon Owens: How does one go about finding other people into BDSM? Is it done solely through the internet?

Mistress Matisse: I myself came out into BDSM before the internet existed, so my answer is definitely not! The internet does make it easier to find events and organizations, but I really don’t think it should be anyone’s only source for BDSM information or kinky social interaction. BDSM is like anything else: there is a lot of misinformation being posted about it online, and there are a lot of people hanging around online venues who aren’t telling the truth about themselves. Doing cyber-BDSM with people you’ve never met in person is, at best, just an erotica writing exercise. More often than not, I think it’s just a huge waste of time. Turn off the computer, leave the house, go talk to real live people.

Simon Owens: With the recent Jason Fortuny scam, where he made a fake ad and then posted all the replies on the internet, do you think this presents a danger for those who are interested in non-traditional sex? How does one go about finding like-minded people but also protect one’s privacy at the same time?

Mistress Matisse: It’s a relatively small danger. If you exercise a reasonable amount of caution about people you meet through personal ads, then you should be fine. Such as: Do not give any identifying information in the first few e-mails. Spend some time chatting with the person and ask yourself: Does this feel right? Not “Is this making me hot?” because that answer is probably yes. But is everything this person is telling me about themselves really adding up? People get so hungry for a partner that they ignore red flags, but you’ve got to think critically if you want to preserve your safety and privacy.

Simon Owens: How did you get your column at the alt-weekly paper? Does your blog help promote your column writing, since you can link to it online?

Mistress Matisse: The official answer is that I got it because I’m a great writer and The Stranger recognized that. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Dan Savage and I used to be night-clubbing buddies way back in the day. Sure, I think the blog helps promote my column, but The Stranger circulates 100,000 paper issues a week and Dan’s column is nationally syndicated, so The Stranger’s website gets huge traffic, way more than my blog.

Simon Owens: In my Diversity of the Blogosphere survey, I found that there were more women sex bloggers than men. Why do you think this is?

Mistress Matisse: I don’t know, unless it’s about perceived readership interest? The idea – which I have heard, but don’t necessarily subscribe to – that both women and men want to read about sex from a woman’s point of view, but that (straight) male readers don’t want to read about another man’s sexual thoughts? An interesting question, though.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Mistress Matisse: There are so many bigger, well-known sex bloggers, but I’m going to give some love to some of the smaller ones….

My secondary partner – meaning, we’re lovers but we don’t live together – Monk of Twisted Monk.

Richard Evans Lee is great.

Renegade Evolution is never dull.

John Scalzi’s not a sex blogger but I like him anyway.

This lady is as blistering about her trade – book publishing - as I often wish I could be about mine. Unfortunately, I don’t have the advantage of anonymity: Miss Snark.

Can I add this gal to my blogger list? She’s great: Tasty Trixie.

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