Day 6 Of Inky Boycott Reveals: People Will Blame Bloggers For Anything, And, Natch, PW Still Sucks
You had to see this coming, right? Yesterday, Inky editorial page editor Harold Jackson pissed and moaned all over the place about how hiring John Yoo fosters debate and is not just one more fucked up thing his boss, Brian Tierney, is making him deal with in some kind of conservative business-death fantasy game. Jackson then went on to say that the resulting fury surrounding Yoo’s hiring — including Philebrity’s very real boycott of the Inky – is:
“what happens when your information comes from those bloggers who never let the facts get in the way when they’re trying to whip people into a frenzy to boost Web site hits. It’s a shame that one blogger who disseminated poor information is actually a full-time journalist for a sister publication in The Inquirer building.”
What a motherfucking company-man douchelord. What a lot of the print folks are never going to get about this boycott (and for that matter, most of our coverage of the Inky and DN) is that, it’s not about some mad rain dance to have these papers go under so that we can run in and grab up all of that audience. We don’t want that audience, and would have no idea what the fuck to do with it even if we had it. What it is about is an act of consumer and media colleague revolt, because what we really want is the Inky to stop behaving like a serial failure who continually shoots the messenger and blames everything in the world except itself for its myriad problems. As consumers of news, just how much bullshit should we have to put up from our Paper of Record? We think that just about anyone would agree that we’ve all, at this point, put up with a hell of a lot. And the John Yoo thing is just the final straw. If the Inquirer was a store, it’s pretty safe to say you wouldn’t shop there any more, unless you had somehow been convinced that they’d gotten their shit together. Same rules apply to a media source. Especially if that media source runs some dumb fucking Twitter debate instead of actually having the balls to come out and say what it really thinks about this. Philadelphia Weekly, grow the hell up already.
DN blogger Will Bunch — even after Jackson threw him right the hell under the bus in the quote above — doesn’t really see it the same way as we do, but we’ll respectfully agree to disagree and direct you to his very well-expressed opinions on the whole matter anyway. Bunch says that, badly behaving though it may be and acting in poor faith across a wide array of issues, the Inky needs us now more than ever. Funny thing is, the week that just went by shows that, really, we don’t need it at all.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
From my Twitter feed:
@PhillyWeekly Well. Unlike @philebrity, we were criticizing John Yoo/Inky before last week. http://tinyurl.com/oqbzwp Welcome to the party, Joey.
they just can’t let go!
May 18th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Hi Joey:
Not interested in joining the usual PW-Philebrity pissing matches. But I thought I’d point out to you that PW — me, namely — has been crying out about John Yoo’s Inky column for a few months now. Since March 1, to be exact. We’ve never called for a boycott like you, but we’ve never equivocated on our stance: John Yoo doesn’t deserve the platform the Inquirer’s giving him.
http://politics.pwblogs.com/?s=%22john+yoo%22+inquirer
The Twitter debate was on top of the writing and, yes, reporting we’ve already done about the matter. You might’ve noticed all those links in the right-hand column of the post you linked to.
As a matter of fact, I almost wrote in defense of your boycott last week — not because I’m joining it, but because I think the criticism of you has come from the confines of a cozy club of Philly journalists who feel you’ve betrayed them with that act. Which is the wrong reason to criticize the boycott. But whatever.
Hope you don’t mind the gentle correction.
Joel Mathis
Online Editor
Philadelphia Weekly
May 18th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Thanks Joel — we stand gently corrected, and agree 100% on how the boycott has rankled the tenured/tenure track at Broad & Whatever. But why not join the boycott?
May 18th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
How would you all feel if some of your “friends” were maimed or killed because some towelhead got through and bombed the Inky building because we decided to put the kidd gloves on because people found the enhanced interrogation techniques distasteful.
I personally am not ready to die because someone in the ultra left finds these methods abhorrent, and before you get on your next soapbox I am neither rethughlican, ultra right religous zealot or a GOPosaur, I supported Obama and support his current decision to not release the photos.
Do you REALLY think that the towelheads would think twice about using the same methods that Mr. Yoo advocated, they’d do all that PLUS cut our infidel heads off.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Maybe KHamilton’s right about the ultra-leftist revolution vs towelheads. Has it actually begun?
“Statue of Former President Beheaded in Ohio”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520505,00.html
May 18th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
@ KHamilton
U R funny. U sed towelhead…TWICE! OMG! CRAZY….cause they put towels on their heads instead of on a hangar in the bathroom! MayB they r poor and don’t have bathrtooms!! HA HA! ROTHFLMFAO!!
Keep up the good work!!
May 18th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
@ KHamilton
Plus isn’t OBama an Islam too?! Better check his bathroom, right?! HA HA! LOL!
May 18th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
@tips: I kind of feel like I would’ve had to pay more than minimal attention to the Inquirer in the first place in order for me to have any credibility in boycotting it, for one thing.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Would forcing the towelheads to read a month’s worth of “Chick Wit” columns count as torture? Cause that would totally work.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
…also, dude, towel head is not the preferred nomenclature.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
@andy: it’s “fucking towelhead,” right? That’s how I always hear it used.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Enlighten me then, what IS the prefered nomenclature?
May 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Yeah, what is namencloture anyway?! My pop calls those Gayrabs, Sand Crabs!! LOL. Every time we go the shore he’d look down at the water and say “GOddamned sad crab terrorist fuck hole pieces of no good camel spit!!” We laughed so hard.