Wednesday, July 19, 2006

A special anniversary

Hey, all, it's a special anniversary here at the Aaron Clarey "Captain Capitalism" racism watch!

Exactly one month ago we received a letter from a real honest and for true lawyer (maybe) warning us that Aaron was going to take "legal action" unless this blog came down. And, well, not wanting to disappoint the fanbase - here we are! But since then, nothing. Not a peep, but for the comment below. Such a shame, because Aaron Clarey speaks words of great wisdom (when they aren't, y'know, hate speech) and we really wanted to meet him in person. There're all kinds of deep questions he could've answered for us, like for example:
  • How big a failure does a human have to be, to bitch out people who lost their families, homes and jobs in a storm for taking government aid, but then to run to the law like a baby to try to protect himself from the consequences of his own speech?
  • Where does a guy who bashes trial lawyers get off playing games with frivolous suits?
  • Somebody gets worried because he said some things he wishes he hadn't. Instead of taking responsibility like an adult, he tries like hell to edit what he said out of history, to silence anyone who points out what he said, and to bully and intimidate yours truly for noting it. Does that sound like someone who should be attacking communists and fascists to you? Or does it sould like a pathetic Stalin wannabe?
  • And, what kind of loser tries to earn his bread sliming minorities? Oh, wait, I guess I know that already: the kind that goes and slimes other peoples toddlers down below! Excellent!
  • And, hey, what happened to "Batfink" and "CaptainCool" and "Sanjay" and "Ricardo Juan?" Just how many people is Aaron censoring to try to cover up his ignorance and racism? Like reading Pravda....

I'm still laughing at you, you pathetic, ignorant little man.

3 comments:

Peter said...

1. This is not about the consequences of his own speech. This is about someone assuming the identity of another, distorting that person's message, and then linking to the person's actual writing for the purpose of the distortion.

2. Just to pick out one hypothetical example, if there were statistics that girls who play sports in school are more likely than boys to quit in the middle of the season, there are a number of conclusions that could be drawn. A liberal might claim that we need more resources for girls' sports to stop this from happening. A conservative might argue that this shows that girls are less interested in sports and so we need not have equal roster spots for both sexes under Title IX. But dishonest thing would be to create a blog as an imposter, write a post that says, "women are the weaker sex," and link from the imposter blog to the real blog. That is what you did.

3. "Instead of taking responsibility like an adult, he tries like hell to edit what he said out of history..." Hmm. Seems you did some editing of this blog. Why was that? Were _you_ taking responsibility like an adult? Do you deny that you pretended to be Aaron?

4. Why does an anonymous blog refuse to allow anonymous comments?

5. Have you contacted a lawyer? If so, what did he/she say?

Clarey watcher said...

I never pretended to be Aaron, per se -- I think the satire was obvious. Some editing was done because it's difficult to keep writing in that voice. Were I cleverer I'd keep doing it.

It's not my intent to disallow anonymous comments; I simply use the defaults. I ought to change that. Thanks! On the other hand, I'm not filtering either. And I sort of don't care -- this space is about archiving stuff and some satire, it's not a comment-y weblog. If I chat it's more an amusement thing.

Your points (1) and (2) are wrong exactly _because_ I linked to Aaron's orginal speech (and keep archives of it, as do a few other people, I gather). If there are questions about my interpretation, go check the facts yourself. Of course, you can't do that, because Aaron himself has prevented it, which is, um, interesting. Although I would be, shall we say, very very interested in how my characterization of say, Aaron's "Mexican women" post as "racist" is off-base -- in fact I think you'd have to be quite the fool to make that argument (and, interestingly, his sister also characterized his material as "racist," which is a pretty strong point in my favor.) Were it otherwise, Aaron would have left it. Similarly his comments on Katrina victims were, well, what they were. I have not misrepresented them. Or calling the lowest 60% of earners "greedy scum bucket parasites," or .... This is not about different interpretations of facts.

Although the sheer amount of editing Aaron is doing now, plus his comments below -- he investigated a commenter he didn't like? And insulted his kid? That's ... admirable. So I think he neatly comes across as a cave-dweller.

Sanjay said...

The Monitor answers a boob. There is no imaginable equivalence here with Aaron's typically revolting behavior: not only was the edited speech not what one would call hate speech, but more importantly Aaron is a _broadcaster_ who uses his blog as an adjunct to his radio show and in fact, rather amusingly, has taken to boasting of his pull and influence among, presumably, other boobs. This on the other hand is a dinky little blog with probably no hits. Given Aaron's _own point_ below --- that nobody comes here --- all he is doing is bullying a blogger who does him no harm in order to change history; the Stalin comparison holds nicely.

One would have to be more than a little stupid to have mistaken the author for Aaron, especially given that he appears to have made himself the first to have commented on this blog, quite soon after it debuted, and was followed by a series of commenters all wise to the gag and all left in place. It is therefore quite possible that Peter (and Aaron himself) did in fact make that mistake.

It is possible, mind you all, that the posting misrepresesents Aaron vis-a-vis the extent of his legal excursions. (Not the "pathetic little man" part though which seems about right.)