"Forbidden Posting:" The Secret Symposium

Monsters, Gregg. Monsters from the Id.

“You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to believe that Web logs are to some extent a function of the id. They come out so fast and so unedited they often express our feelings more accurately and even deeply than more carefully wrought writing. This is their blessing and their curse." -- Roger Simon

Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Last week Gregg Easterbrook, the New Republic’s blogger, decided to decapitate Quentin Tarantino’s new blockbuster Kill Bill, using the bluntest tool in a film critic’s chest -- a bleat against the increasing levels of violence in cinema. But along the way he had the thought that increasing violence in films might, just might, be associated with the urge to make money in Hollywood. At that point he sent his brain out for a burger, but his body continued typing. While his brain was on a break, he wrote:

"Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else by promoting for profit the adulation of violence?”

Then, with his brain still out to lunch, Easterbrook, as he puts it,

“.... worked on this alone and posted the piece. Twenty minutes after I pressed 'send,' the entire world had read it. When I reread my own words and beheld how I'd written words that could be misunderstood, I felt awful."

It was, of course, too late for feelings. The whole world had read it and the whole world had understood it. Reaction was swift, sure, and ruthless. It was heightened when, once Easterbrook had understood that he had, perhaps, “miswritten,” he failed to post an UPDATE along the lines of “Errr, well, what I really meant to say was...” but waited several days before issuing a Non-Apology Apology.

By the end of this week the item had soared out of the Blogsphere and roosted in the major media where the larger autopsies of Cyberspace Bloopers are performed. Chief among these was the Saturday morning LA Times column “Regarding Media: If it sounds like anti- Semitism, maybe it is” by Tim Rutten which gives the best encapsulation of the story to date.

In the meantime, ESPN (as Jeff Jarvis notes) is bent on proving yet again that media corporations are even dumber than their employees, slunk up onto the net to remove Easterbrook as a writer and as a presence on their web site. While this may have seem like a good idea to ESPN's challenged intelligence at the time, the stage is no set for a rousing Web-wide discussion of Free Speech.

But what has yet to make the wires is the back story to Rutten’s column, the transcript of the conference-call-cum-symposium on the issue, conducted in camera on Friday. This secret conference call included Gregg Easterbrook, Roger Simon, Tim Rutten, and Glenn Reynolds (without whom no discussion of the greater meaning of the Blogsphere is allowed to take place.) Although all involved took the pledge of confidentiality, nothing is really secret on the Net except the truth.

Here at American Digest, through unindicted co-conspirators, we have obtained a transcript of that high level conference. In the interests of keeping leaking at the top of the nation's to-do list we are making public some choice excerpts from that "chat:"

Easterbrook: "How ironic that a simple and devoutly Christian New Republic scribbler with no ambition beyond a modest measure of 250,000 unique visitors a day should out of a clear sky find his blog besieged by an army of fellow creatures, all grimly determined to be of service."

"I have confessed, abased myself, and apologized with automated email responses. And yet, always in my mind I seem to feel the creature is lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible, only waiting to be re-invoked for blather, spew, and blogacide. I have come to hate the Blogsphere"

Tim Rutten: What, to your mind is, the "Blogsphere"

Gregg Easterbrook: "A single machine, a cube 20 miles on each side."

Prof. Glenn Reynolds: "Why total potential here must be nothing less than astronomical!

Roger Simon: "Nothing less. The number 10 raised almost literally to the power of infinity."

Rutten: “ Gregg, what is the most important thing you have learned about the Blogsphere?

Easterbrook: "A blogger doesn't need brains. Just a good loud voice."

Prof Reynolds: “Like a chain saw, it can hurt you real quick if you get stupid around it.”

Simon: "If you refuse to issue an ‘UPDATE:” the next attack on your Blog will be more deadly and more .... brutal."

Rutten: "How do you know that?

Simon: "Know? I seem to visualize it. I... if you wish, call it a . . . .premonition."

Easterbrook: But how can you know these things, O Chef of the Future?

Simon: "Remember, Easterbrook, anti-Semitism is an invisible being that cannot be disintegrated with atomic fission, much less a non-apology apology."

Easterbrook: "But, Roger, I was talking about money, not Jews."

Simon: "Statements about money and Jews tear can tear blogs apart here on the planet of the Forbidden Posting."

Easterbrook: "That's true enough. But any statement stupid enough to survive 3 billion electron volts of pure Web flames would have to be made of solid nuclear material. It would sink of its own weight to the center of this planet."

Simon: "Well, you wrote it yourself and blew it out your capture buffer!

Easterbrook: "There's your answer and my new story. I'll say, "My brain must have been renewing its molecular structure from one second to the next. I dimly remember typing “Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money...” and then pressing send and thinking ‘You ought to see my new mind. Up there in lights. Bigger than Glen’s now." That's it and I'm sticking to it.

Rutten: “I don’t want to follow that because it leads to the question of medication and I don’t write on mental health issues. Besides, my newspaper is looking plenty crazy already. Mr. Simon, could you sum up Mr. Easterbrook’s issues?

Simon: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It is simplicity itself. Easterbrook was too close to the problem and his Thorazine hadn’t kicked in. The Web creators had completed their project. Big machine ... no external censors and no internal compasses . . . true non-disintermediated spew at the touch of the Send button! But the Web creators forgot one thing...."

Rutten: "Yes, what?

Simon: "Monsters, Tim. Monsters from the Id! Easterbrook was warned to UPDATE, he didn’t, and now he's paid. Let his blog be deleted from a billion bookmarks.

Rutten: “But what does this mean for the future of the Blogging machine?

Prof. Reynolds: "Nothing! It means nothing, you fool! Easterblog is a bug not a feature. I CRUSH IT! Blogging is THE BIG MACHINE! "8,000 cubic miles of relays. Enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses. Operated by remote control, operated by the electromagnetic impulses of individual Blogging brains! It will, dare I say it, RULE THE WORLD!"

Rutten (Quietly setting phaser to ‘stun’) : "To what purpose?”

Prof. Reynolds: "Purpose? Purpose? Unfortunate plebeian scribe on dead trees! Once perfected my ultimate BLOGGING MACHINE will instantaneously project, from any blogger, solid blather to any point on the planet! Yes, any insight, memory, whine, spew or bad concept they can keyboard will be known to all for all time. For any purpose, ANY PURPOSE! Blogging is the Philosopher's Stone of Publishing. Publication by mere thought without any thought. Easterbrook is merely ahead of his time. Why Easterbrook is the living incarnation of Days of Future Past! (Which remains one of my all time favorite albums)"

Simon: "But like you, Reynolds, Easterbrook forgot one deadly danger. His own subconscious hate and lust for self-destruction. He forgot those mindless beasts of his own subconscious! And so those mindless beasts of his subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shut down. Don’t you see, Reynolds? Your BLOGGING MACHINE is the secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to blather and spew and slur! And kill careers!”

Easterbrook: “But...but.... all I did was hit the send button before pulling my head out of my ass.”

Simon: "You still refuse to face the truth."

Easterbrook: "What truth?”

Simon: "Easterbrook, that thing you wrote. It's you."

Easterbrook: "Oh, God! You’re right! My evil self is in my send buffer and I have no power to stop myself!

Easterbrook (as the posting spews all over known Cyberspace and causes the servers at the New Republic to crash while the “letterstotheeditor@newrepublic.com” mbox) explodes: "I deny you, foul posting! I GIVE YOU UP!

Prof. Reynolds: ‘I’ll link to that.”

Posted by Vanderleun at October 18, 2003 3:09 PM | TrackBack