House o Groove

The Boing Boing Violet Blue Thing - 2008-07-01 15:40:52

I first read about this from an email I get from the Romenesko column at Poynter - but I'll just cut to the chase and link to Update: BoingBoing explains why Blue posts were removed. And here's the Boing Boing link in question: That Violet Blue Thing.

The gist as I see it - Boing Boing removed all posts by author Violet Blue (who writes about sex and sexuality) without comment, then made this post days later.

That Violet Blue thing
Posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator, July 1, 2008 8:48 AM

"...Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn't attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There's a big difference between that and censorship.

We hope you'll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private."

Why it matters - Boing Boing and its authors have set the expectation that they'll be for open, informative writing that is on the side of full disclosure. Though apparently that's what we should expect of major companies like the telcoms, or for government, and not bloggers, if we're to follow the logic of what appears to be happening here. This post leaves me thinking that well, either there's a legal issue or oooo, someone is dating someone else or perhaps someone posted some snark someone else took personally. (Those last two are standard blog/internet drama material.) Until there's more of a disclosure here it's yet another reason why I'm going to laugh at anyone who uses the words blogger and journalist simultaneously. Journalism isn't what I look to Boing Boing for anyway - but information, and links to interesting places. However this is going to color my impression of their content from now on. Seriously all it would take would be one more sentence "there's a legal issue involved" or "we have an objection to use of nouns" - frankly it could be a legit reason, or it could be some ridiculous drama. (I particularly love the commenters at the Boing Boing thread who say "well, thanks for this, now we know and there's no drama" - please, that post makes for even more speculation-fodder.) But the manner that they handled this has already made me see them as less of a legitimate resource for information/news. And yes, in the past I've had several news stories that were brought to my attention via the site. Now, I'd pay less attention - or at least give their information less value than before.

Not to mention the fact that hey, Boing Boing, you have issues with author Violet Blue's credibility? Isn't it important that the readers know about those issues? And be able to assess if they're legitimate? If it's important enough to take the trouble to pull all those posts - shouldn't we all know about what's up? If it's a legal matter - why not just say "legal issues make it inadvisable that we comment further." Press Releases 101, there are countless ways to infer that legal matters are why you can't say more.
(Disclosure: I've read one or two Violet Blue articles via links. Otherwise know nothing of her, nor care honestly. I have enough bloggers to follow.)

Apparently Boing Boing has been editing out comments of some people who were trying to complain about this issue prior to their July 1 Violet Blue posting. I'm more of the MetaFilter crowd as far as comment moderation goes - Boing Boing seems a lot more heavy handed. But Boing Boing playing the "we're just a personal blog" card (wanting to keep the Violet Blue reasons private) - when they're really just as much of a business, employing people to write and taking in ad revenue - seems a bit weird to me. Especially in light of this link (first posted by MeFi commenter who I'll link when I can find it) - here's Doctorow quoting on Boing Boing from an article he'd just authored(Feb. 26, 2008) about the Sony DRM rootkit:

"Companies aren't charities. They're businesses. It doesn't matter why they're offering an unacceptable product -- all that matters is that the product is unacceptable.... Even weirder is the idea that companies shouldn't be criticized because in a market, you should just take your business elsewhere. Free markets thrive on good information. For a market to function, customers need to have good information about which goods are worth buying and which ones should be avoided -- that's why we complain in public, to help companies make better decisions."

Epic Length MeFi Thread: Boing Boing Finds 21st Century Trotsky?
You'll have to skip over the parts where a few MeFites immediately hop to the rescue of the Boing Boing crowd. As usually people are all too ready to tar and feather - which makes others quick to defend and perhaps not realize that some of this isn't passing the smell test. (I'm not really sure who jscalzi is, but he definitely takes on the "I'm speaking up for BB" role in a "I am posting too much today, and possibly am not aware of it" taking-over-the-thread manner. This is a very MeFi thing, and why I love reading the site. Also Languagehat went a little wild too, but apologizes later, love and hugs all round.)

Best comment so far still is adipocere's summing up:

Doctorow has in his words (both fiction and non-fiction), come out against DRM, censorship, and all of that jazz. And he links to such items. Not just a little, but a lot. He has tried to make himself one of the frontmen about these issues ... and that's where the responsibility kicks in. He's almost unavoidable when you start digging around on these kinds of issues. This is a guy who just wrote, from what I can tell, a book about sousveillance and using technology against Big Brother - surely 1984 might be somewhere in the forefront of his mind. When you put forth a cause, when you support it so vocally, expect that people will bite you on the tushie if you turn around and do the opposite."

The rest of that comment is also worth a read.

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I'm Going To Miss Carlin - 2008-06-28 00:48:02

I first heard that George Carlin died when I was in the airport on Monday when we were flying home. It came up over the television in the waiting area, and it was annoying as hell that the channel decided that the person to comment on it should be Mike Barnacle. (The guy who lifted Carlin material to use in his Boston Globe column, if you don't remember. I think I was watching MSNBC. I'll contain my rant on that production decision to say that whoever made that guest lineup was a moron.) I spent the rest of that day - and frankly until now - feeling a lot of things, and spending a lot of time remembering the man.

You see, I've grown up listening to Carlin. To me he was more than just the man who brought us Seven Dirty Words and the famous court case that I studied in graduate school. That's not how I first learned about Carlin. My father introduced me to him when I was in elementary school, and thanks to cable I got to see several of his televised specials. In my house Carlin monologues were always shorthand for food I didn't like - "hoooow do you knoooow you won't like it, if you haven't even tried it????" and answer: "it came to me in a dream!" Which also goes into a monologue about meatcake - that unidentified leftover found in a fridge that might be meat, might be cake. (That's from Carlin at Carnegie for the curious. Or at least that's where I first heard it.) Carlin hit on the reason why I couldn't deal with eating raw tomatoes as a child. (Because "the inside of a tomato looks like it's in the larval state.") I can go on and on - with each new album that I bumped into there were Carlin riffs that became ingrained in my brain. I didn't quote him in real life except to my father - he and I appreciated this form of comedy, so it was something I felt that Dad and I shared. And we still do, and both of us are still here - but Carlin isn't. I was lucky enough to go to see Carlin live twice, both times with my parents. Mom laughs at Carlin too - but for some reason I always think of my father when I hear certain things Carlin says. (I think Mom does too.) Probably because my father has the same love of langage that Carlin did - and the same ability to want to mock and yet laugh at certain things.

I have a stack of Carlin albums. I have most of them as mp3s on my ipod as we speak. I keep them on there, even with the only 20 GB of space on it - because I never know when I'm going to want to listen to something. Even as he aged and some of his rants became much more cutting than the early, more gentle digs at society - I still want all that in my collection. And I still want to carry that around with me - the same way you'd carry around a book you love to reread, or a picture of a family member. His two disc set Classic Gold is still my favorite for the nostalgia factor, and for the range of things Carlin speaks on.

But as we got on that plane, just after I'd heard he died, I cued up his Airline Announcements (on Jammin in New York). I listened to a bit - I'd have listened to more if I hadn't started to get a little tearful - and then I listened to the stewardess give her speech. It was totally worthy of mocking, and the same damn speech we've heard them give for years. And the more ridiculous that airline travel gets the more we really need someone like Carlin to call our attention to it - to make us laugh at it and just as importantly let us know we can rightfully get angry about it. Not to spew contempt at the particular stewardess in front of me - but at the system that comes up with the empty words that she speaks but did not author. The system that thinks we're stupid enough to believe that the words make sense.

I listen to a lot of comedians on Comedy Central. I've seen many come and go, get television series (Carlin himself was not good sitcom material, as he himself admitted after his did poorly), and have bits posted on YouTube (the ultimate in popularity). No one has really stepped up to fill Carlin's place as social commentator. I've seen some try - comedians obviously trying to have the same kind of Carlin take on things, the same kind of "little things you notice" monologues - and none of them could quite manage it. Carlin made critiquing society and language look so easy. But it isn't.

I'm really going to miss him.

George Carlin's Last Interview
By Jay Dixit on June 23, 2008 in Brainstorm, Blogs at PsychologyToday.com
Via MetaFilter

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Montana Fest, Part IV: Morgan's Big Day - 2008-06-27 21:27:38

More baby photos and a blessing ceremony.
Again, family hooha and gushing about the baby, move along if you're not interested...

Also - lots of photos in this one. Be warned if you're computer takes a while to load image heavy pages.

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Montana Fest, Part III: Baby Photos! - 2008-06-27 20:41:21

This trip I did not make the same mistake as in February - I took TONS of baby photos. That way I had some decent ones out of the batch. Sharon and Joyce - if you don't have a Flickr account I can see that you get the original large size of any of the Morgan photos, just let me know.

Any post with "baby" in the title will have lots Morgan photos in it. You have been warned...

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Montana Fest, Part II: Saturday Evening Blurry - 2008-06-27 20:16:19

More fun filled Montana Gathering shots...
And remember the title as you look at these.

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