Grab and Keel

TOPIX

In March I wrote this on a Topix Blog site:

[No- no! We must have this fight with those who bring them, the racist, sexist, religion bashing, money questions, who did what in the 90’s, who did what in Chicago, who’s hiding what where? All these words, these attitudes that we hold onto, dregs of the last century, must go into the fire we are building. Two candidates are going into the fire. While I think the phoenix rising out the ashes will have a female head, whoever it is will not resemble the original. We must leave no stick, no leaf for the Republicans to burn.

This is the Democratic transformation that will occur. Do not be faint of heart!]

At the time I wrote this exhortation, I was still imagining that the Democratic Party understood that the years of right wing tripe to which we, the public have been subjected, regarding the Clintons, was an attack against the whole of the Democratic Party itself. Ultimately then, fighting the fire of the right wing by stepping into the blaze was the good fight. Little did I know that instead of stomping on the flames, or forging a stronger animal, the DNC would instead attempt to cure the problem by cutting off it’s own body and bleeding all over the kindling.

Neither candidate resembles the original. Nor do we yet have a phoenix. Instead, ponder that any gardener will tell you that blood is a nitrogen rich fertilizer. Imagine the power of the torn phoenix’s blood to transform and raise that kindling from the dead!

To wit, from February, until the Montana and South Dakota primaries, I spent a whole lot of time on Topix. I couldn’t stay away. I came to the conclusion that a lot of paid people were blogging there. It had access. For one thing, a lot of the small local newspapers were linked to it. The comments don’t wait in line for approval. In all the time I blogged there, I only saw one comment (directed against me!) removed.  Since “free speech” is standard in the Topix world, even when inflammatory, demeaning, or prurient posts arrived, they were judged by viewers, but in practice, not removed. People were having discussions about all sorts of things, but it appeared as though basic election information was missing.  I started leaving blogs with links to unaltered debate texts and speeches of the candidates. I confess, I was off on my own; I really didn’t have time to leave any for more than Clinton, Obama, and sometimes McCain. It became a sort of unwashed, forgot to eat, ignore the hubby, crusade. Because I am a Clinton supporter, I identified myself in these exchanges so people could decide for themselves. I received positive responses from people in Ohio for this effort, before their primary.  Most of the time however, it felt much like I was trying to hold my thumb in the hole when the dike was gone. Examples are as follows:

To become a Topix page editor appears fairly easy. When you are a page editor, the cache of this role causes many to assume that you have gravitas, or that you are neutral. You then may pick whatever topics you choose, use the same or pick your own inflammatory title, and voila! You have now set up your own sleaze machine. Now you only need spend a little time controlling the blogging flow. Put a blog or two on the first page directing people in the right thought process.  Most people, I learned, never read the topic source and assume what is there is actual information.

Drop this bomb into all the cities that matter, upcoming primaries, etc. and you have a prime example of how to influence the public at least long enough to get through voting day. The more hits you get on it, the more it is on the top of everyone’s page. Every time someone clicks to it they have to see what you or your right wing chauvinists have written on the first page in order to comment on it.  Sometimes people figure out this ploy, and will argue back, but the inflammatory title is still there on the web page, like a blinking neon light surrounded by sparklers.

One prime example was the page editor named AYNON.  Aynon claims to be pro Obama, and was si se puedeing all over the place. In March this person set up one blog page titled “Hillary’s List of Lies”. Maybe you have to be a boomer like me to have a sense of the history surrounding the author of the source page, one of the best of the fermented tripe slinger’s, Dick Morris.  And no, I won’t link you to it; 926 versions can still be searched, down from I think around 154,000, and found, generated from Real Clear Politics. Having been thrown out of the garden, Dick has been railing against it’s walls ever since.

Since Aynon is still supporting Obama, there appears to be reduced reason to suspect what sprang from Zeus’s head is a right wing troll.  No, more likely is that this is a prime example of the Obamacons nurturing growth in the bloodied kindling so it may grow another forest. Note too, when Aynon began editorship, clear back on Oct 9th 2007, the day of the Detroit Republican debate, apparently a snarky kind of inspiration. In any event, when I went on the blog and left a Wikipedia link to Morris suggesting they research the source, the blog respondents subsequent comments indicated they realized they had been had.

Another common tactic used by right wing and Obamacons alike was spamming. Three examples come to mind, “walksalone” a right wing blogger who would drop tracts of un-attributed material cut from David Horowitz’s “Front Page” magazine, a compatriot of Morris. Drevylen Minor and Mc2frMcSame, both apparent Obama bloggers, drank from the Horowitz well. Now, I know spamming is a fact of life, but on Topix, while viewers may judge spam, it is not typically removed.  Especially if dropped onto the first page, where as stated earlier, it is seen by every viewer, it is very difficult to counteract. Typically they were dropped, in one or two days, into approximately 1500 sites. Parity for viewer viewpoint is then unbalanced. Eventually a ground swell of recognition occurs, but it may be too late to affect the vote. It appeared that there might be as many as thirty of these folks moving from town to town following the elections. Since each new location had not seen the spam in the previous location, the battle had to be re-fought every time. 

Topix is fairly dial-up friendly. As noted earlier, many of the same town news sites are now connected to it. It was always disconcerting to read an article, many done in the best journalistic style, in a local newspaper website, like in Indiana or Pennsylvania, and click a link to a Topix page containing a blog from someone like Obama supporter John Meoff (Jack) and read that Clinton was a dead F**K, who laid on her back and had various things done to her face. Lest you think he was some random punk. I found 300 blogs from him ranging from Klamath Falls OR, (before the vote) to Austin, TX where he had friends.  As I noted in an earlier blog, Buzzz!! Two, many of us are using dial up pretty much exclusively and are looking for information. Topix, because of the infestation of this kind of garbage is a very appears to be a very poor information source, yet because of the news site links, one of the most accessible.

Some ageism was developing when I left the field, but of course racism was rampant. In contrast, it was better repulsed, perhaps because of the viewer base. Interestingly I rarely saw the bloggers, who appeared to be paid Obama supporters, fight this battle. I developed the hypothesis that they might be allowing foment in order to utilize and direct the energy of the anger.  Maybe some expert out there in the blogosphere already knows the answer, and can add to this.

Another element of Topix pages is that they can be freely set up without tie to one of their computer generated news links. Simply pick a town, click a few links and set up a title. I eventually did this myself in Montana and South Dakota, in order to place voting information, links to candidates, debate and speech texts to locations I thought might be without. I did this in hope that the local population would see the information without having to wade through the garbage. One Obama supporter in Montana apparently did see it, and for a short while we had a sort of collaboration. Eventually I did link these sites to the infested ones, and immediately Mc2frMcSame caught on and began to add his ditties. 

Two things are immediately apparent from this event; first, it is incredibly easy to put any kind of material on Topix. Secondly, as viewed by the political blogger on Topix, It’s all one big game, where the stakes are high, the adrenalin is running and anything, no matter how outrageous, or libelous or threatening can be said anonymously. Since the effort to present facts is always more time consuming, this battle can only be poorly fought with facts, unless the rules are changed, or unless many more come to wage the war with tools I lacked.  In the mean time the battle still wages. The melding of right wing Limbaughians and Obamacons is occurring. The Democratic Party schizm is real, and we can be very malicious and ignorant people.