GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #841: ADVERTISERS SUCK BUT . . .

 Before we begin today I wanted to let you know that for nearly ten years I worked for a teleconferencing company named Conference Plus. I was there when Arkadin bought them out. I was gone before NTT bought them out. In my time there, as a conference operator and a tech support rep, I have dealt with a lot of extraordinarily rich people. I find it odd that we (meaning, Americans) worship the ground they walk on because almost all of them didn't have any common sense. Which is a polite way of saying they're fucking idiots. But they're smart about one thing. One very important thing.

Rich people love to spend other people's money. The golden rule is, never spend your own. Make someone else pay for things.

This lesson is important to the topic we're about to discuss. And yes, this is old news. I have a stockpile of GF ideas that are on the old side, but goddammit, I'm going to get to them all because even if they are outdated, they're interesting to me. I make it a habit of never--NEVER--writing about something that doesn't interest me.

A while back Dana White was on Theo Von's podcast in which they talked about RFK Jr's presidential run. This was back when Kennedy was still a Democrat. Von had RFK Jr on, and the comedian's advertisers demanded that the episode be taken down. White asked why, and Von didn't seem to have an answer. However, he did supply White with the name of one sponsor: Peleton. White's response: "Peleton sells stationary bikes, and they've got a problem with Robert Fucking Kennedy. Fuck you, Peleton."

He then went to throw all UFC's Peleton bikes in the trash. He said, "This is America. You can fucking have whoever you want on your podcast. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do."

Hold that thought. Around the same time Elon Musk, the Boy Who Would Be Crap, was being interviewed live onstage at some event or other, and he was asked about the advertising boycott at Ex. He'd made some anti-Semitic comments, so his advertisers essentially pulled out of the deal. Even he admits it was a stupid thing to do, but the boycott had an odd effect on him: not only did it enrage him, it also made him do one of those stupid things you do when you're called out for being stupid and don't want to admit it: he made himself into the victim. He initially said, "I hope they stop. Don't advertise. If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear?" And then he admitted that the boycott would destroy Ex. "It's going to kill the company. That is what everybody on Earth will know. We'll be gone, and it will be because of the advertiser boycott."

My hatred of advertising is well documented in these GF columns. At best I think they're annoying. At worst they are evil attempts at mind control. And there is a small part of me that likes both White and Musk just a little for their reactions. But advertising is a necessary evil.

As much as I hate advertising and advertisers, they pay for a lot of shit. These fuckers are never broke. They never scramble for money. Because all that money they're pumping into advertising should probably be put to better use, like paying their employees well. I seriously have no idea why McDonald's still advertises. Is there a single goddam American roaming the country who *doesn't* know about McDonald's? But they pay for things. TV shows, movies, music, just about every form of entertainment is paid for by advertisers. If they thought sponsoring books would help, I'm sure they'd be all over that.

But White is wrong. Because the advertisers *do* pay for everything, they actually *can* tell you who you can or can't have on the podcast they are paying for. You can have anyone you want on. You can do whatever you want to do. But you can't do those things and still expect to be sponsored by Peleton.

All that social media you enjoy? From Facebook to Ex to Instagram to even goddam MySpace, the reason you don't pay for anything is because the advertisers are paying for it. Each time you post something, it's because an advertiser allowed you to do so.

Let's get back to Musk. When I heard him tell his advertisers to go fuck himself, I desperately hoped the rest of the advertisers would also jump ship. I eagerly awaited the self-destruction of Ex mostly because he bought it so he could look like a free speech warrior. He's not. The only person who should have free speech, according to Musk, is Musk himself. Everyone else can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I wanted to see the ego he'd pumped up with his ridiculous purchase of Twitter deflate like a hot air balloon dropping from the sky. Because I knew that without advertisers, he'd be forced to dip into his own money, and that breaks the golden rule as stated above. So in my head it turned into a question of how he'd lose: would he embrace his self-proclaimed victimhood and let Ex die naturally, or would he pump billions of his own money into something so broken that it can't be fixed? I expected the former but hoped for the latter.

Because you would think that advertisers, who are used to ruling the roost as those who pay for everything, would band together and squash Elon Musk and Dana White (and probably Theo Von, too) like bugs and then move on to the next thing. But that didn't happen.

What happened instead was what I like to call the Lindell Effect. Meaning, a morally bankrupt advertiser would take up the slack left by the others until other likeminded advertisers can join and therefore make Ex profitable. Goddammit.

Holy fuck, I never thought I'd be on the side of the advertisers. We're mortal enemies. But I guess there are some people worse than advertisers.

If you want to look at it another way, it comes back to journalism. It usually comes back to journalism. Who is the real person with power at a newspaper? Certainly not the journalist. The writer always gets the short end of the stick. And it's not the editor. It's not the publisher either, although you're closer. It's advertisers. An advertiser will pull their life-sustaining ads from a newspaper if they see reporting that they don't like, even if it is solid journalism. Who do you think gets fired in a case like that? Not the publisher or editor, I'll tell you that. But regardless, the newspapers know not to fuck with the advertisers. Then again, they're on life support right now, anyway. They can't afford to lose a single advertiser. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see a world with no physical newspapers . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #782: INK BY THE BARREL

 

Mark Twain said that, and he was talking about journalists. I always bring my shit hammer of truth down on the lack of journalistic ethics these days, but tonight is about saying fuck you to the Man. Because there's a startling new trend going on in local communities when it comes to the press. The way those in power deal with reporters is by ticketing them or even arresting them, both things in clear violation of the First Amendment.

I'm not going to go too deeply into these stories. If you want to, here's one. Here's another. And this third one is what brought the whole thing to my attention. I'm going to talk about that a little because Calumet City isn't that far from me, and this reporter's editor had a few important things to say.

The Fourth Estate is important to any society that at the very least pretends to be democratic, like our own, because they're the ones whose job it is to call out the powerful for their bullshit. If you're throwing journalists in jail or even so much as vaguely threatening them, you are not just standing in the way of democracy, you are also supporting fascism. By being a fascist.

So yeah. People who ticket and jail and threaten journalists for doing their job are lower than whale shit. It's odd that it needs to be said, but it needs to be said. Here is what the Calumet City editor said about it:

“You get used to it a little bit on the national scale, but now we’re seeing it in very small municipalities with mayors, and that’s a disturbing trend and we need to call it out when we see it,” Pugh told The Associated Press. “A public official ought to know better than to basically use a police force to try to intimidate a reporter who’s just doing his job.”

Which warms the cockles of my heart, by the way. It means there are still journalists actually doing journalism instead of the clickbait and the rushed stories you see plastered all over the internet. If politicians are threatening to throw you in jail for telling the truth about them, you're living life correctly. They're the ones who are fucked.

If you remember nothing else that I've said in these GF columns, please remember that one.

PS: Every day should be a day to say fuck you to the Man. Please retain this for your records.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #762: SKULLS

 I was about to get up on my soapbox again about the failings of American journalism in this day and age, but maybe I'll just settle for pondering a little. Besides, this isn't about my usual complaints when it comes to reporting the news. This story was not shoved out there in an attempt to beat everyone else to the scoop. It's just a lack of follow up, that's all.

Last month in Goodyear, AZ, a Goodwill store reported to the police that someone had donated a human skull to them. Just Google "Goodwill skull," and you'll get a lot of hits. A bunch of articles about this one story, all dated Sept. 6-8. You won't find any new developments after those dates because this news story, apparently, wasn't important enough to get more details. The media all got together and decided this one was just worth the shits and giggles and nothing else.

Here's what we know. Someone donated the skull. Who? Eh, an unimportant detail. Not worth looking into. The skull was examined by the ME, and it was determined that it was human and that it was not involved in a crime. At least not recently. This, as it turns out, is an historical skull. Possibly ancient. We can get answers, but no one is willing to ask the questions. Also, we know that it had that glass eye you see above. So we know that whoever this person was, he only had one eye.

If I was just one (1) of those journalists, I would have circled back to find out more about this story. It's fascinating. Why would anyone drop off an ancient human skull at a Goodwill? Did the police even investigate? I don't imagine they did. Once they found out it wasn't evidence of a crime that could be prosecuted, they understandably lost interest. It's not their job. But surely someone must have wondered where this fuckin' thing came from. I get it. It's difficult to go to a news site and find any headlines not about Trump or Israel vs. Hamas or the speaker of the House. Everyone's focusing on these things, which is why I would argue that someone *should* investigate the skull. A lot of journalists are covering those three things. Put someone else on the skull thing.

I told a little tiny lie earlier in this piece. If you Google Goodwill skull, there is one hit that stands out from the rest, and it's this li'l guy here. Almost ten years ago three (3) human skulls were donated to *another* Goodwill, this one in Washington State. Was it the same person who donated one in Goodyear, AZ? And is Goodwill a decent place to get rid of a skull if you have one taking up space at home? At least there was some follow up with that story, but if you'll allow me to revisit last night's topic a little, that was nearly a decade ago. Our attention spans have dwindled since then, have they not? So maybe that's what's happening here.

Does no one have a healthy sense of curiosity anymore? I hate to end on a trite note, but while curiosity may have killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back.

So let's not end on a trite note. Instead, let's talk about something this news story reminded me of. Maybe twenty-five years ago I heard a story about a guy who bought a smoker from a yard sale. When he got home and decided to fire it up, he opened it and discovered a human leg in there. The original owner of the smoker had only one leg. It turned out that he'd used the smoker to store his amputated leg because he didn't want to get rid of it.

Goddammit, they let him keep an entire leg? But when I wanted to keep my first amputated toe, they said it would be impossible? That it had to go in the incinerator or to a funeral home to hold onto it until I die? What the fuck?

Anyway, the guy tried suing to get his leg back. I was about to say that I didn't know how it all turned out, but I Googled it right now and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THIS ONE! It's called Finders Keepers, so I'm going to have to watch that sometime soon. It turns out that my memory's bad. It was more like 20 years. And it wasn't a yard sale. It was a storage auction. Ordinarily I'd go back and rewrite this portion with the corrections, but I wanted to illustrate how you can get it wrong sometimes. If I was posting this to a news site, I would have gotten it wrong because I would be in a hurry to beat the others to the scoop. I would have then had to post a correction that no one would have read, so everyone who read the original article would go the rest of their lives thinking that was the truth.

THAT'S why it's important to get it right the first time. THAT'S why you can't rush real journalism.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #754: RON WIGINTON

 

I went to Elmhurst University back when it was still called Elmhurst College. Class of 2000. During my last two years there I worked on the newspaper and the literary magazine. I was a double major, English and philosophy, so naturally I took a few courses taught by Ron Wiginton. He also advised the newspaper, so I worked with him there, too.

Almost no one reading this will remember, but back then I had a writing partner on the paper, my high school friend, Jesse Russell. Together we were GonZo and THE STRAIGHT, and we investigated the primitive underbelly of Chicago. We called ourselves, unsurprisingly, Primitive Underbelly. Today I got a text from Jesse notifying me that Ron Wiginton had died of a heart attack on his way back from vacation. My first thought was, "At least he didn't make it back to work first."

But I thought I should talk about him a little tonight because of all the creative writing teachers I've had, he had the most influence on my writing.

I remember when I first met him. It was for an American Lit class. He was a bald guy with a ponytail, and he didn't have a lot of teeth. He looked like an aging hippie, but aside from his love of playing bongo drums, he didn't act like one. I remember thinking, who the hell is this guy?

I think he came from Tallahassee before he got his job at Elmhurst. He'd worked there as a journalist, if memory serves correctly, which made him the one and only creative writing teacher I ever had who made a living as a writer. He was a no bullshit kind of guy. He was harsh, but he was that way because of love. He wanted his students to be the best writers they could be.

Now that I think about it, I've mentioned him before in Goodnight, Fuckers. He was the professor in question from this column. He believed in tough love when it came to learning how to write, emphasis on the love part of that. He taught me to be tough with my own work, so I thought I'd list a few things I learned from him as a memorial tribute.

I made a horrible blunder while I was reporting for the Leader. I was assigned a masturbation story. I swear it was not my idea. It was the editor-in-chief's idea. It's just, well, you all know me. Who else would work on that kind of story? I was supposed to interview people about how normal masturbation is. Part of that was interviewing the college minister. The minister wanted to see a copy of the article before publication, and I said I'd do it. I was lying a little bit, though. I figured I'd slip it under his door the morning the paper was supposed to be printed so it would be too late to STOP THE PRESSES! STOP THE PRESSES! I did that only to learn that there was a problem with the printer, and he was able to stop the presses and get the article kicked out of the paper. Dr. Wiginton took me aside and told me to never do that again under any circumstances. The subjects of your article should read it in print, not one second before.

I also wanted hate mail pretty badly. Yeah, that's kind of a weird thing, but that's what I wanted. I never got anything UNTIL I wrote a negative review of The Blair Witch Project. Everyone on the planet at the time was talking about how awesome and scary the movie was. I said that I'd give it an A if it was a student film, but as a movie it did nothing for me. I finally got hate mail for that, and I wanted to respond, to open a dialogue (which was code for "get in a flame war over something that doesn't matter"). He told me to never respond to hate mail. NEVER. If you're responding to hate mail, you're fucking yourself as an author. Never do that. Ever. Did I mention that you should never respond to hate mail?

Now for some creative writing stuff. When in doubt, cut it out. If something doesn't fit into a story, get rid of it. It doesn't matter how brilliant you might think it is. If it doesn't serve the story, it has to go.

Character motivations are important. That I already knew, but he wanted me to constantly ask myself this question: Why today? Why did the character decide to do the thing today instead of yesterday or tomorrow or whenever?

He also said that you've always got to care about what you're writing. It seems kind of obvious, but take a look around. Think about the things you've read. You can always tell when a writer is phoning it in, right? When you catch one red-handed (and, I might add, he was a big crusader against clichés), you always have to wonder why they bothered. If you don't care, don't write it.

He gave a lot of other advice, but those are the big ones.

Most of my creative writing teachers focused on teaching their students how to express themselves. I suspect that's because getting students to commit to that kind of thing is like pulling teeth, especially if they're just there for an easy course credit. Of them all, Ron Wiginton alone wanted to teach me to be a better writer. For that I will always be grateful.

Thank you, Dr. Wiginton. Rest in peace.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #703: "FIRST YOU GOT TO COCK IT"

 

There's this great scene in Unforgiven. Hell, all the scenes are great, but there's one I think about a lot and how it's a lesson in gunfighting, but it can be applied to a lot of things in life. Little Bill and Beauchamp are discussing the fine art of killing people with guns (with guns) while a beaten and raw English Bob rests in the jail. The salient point of the scene is this: if you're trying to be the fastest, you will fail. Accuracy is more important than speed. Sure, you might fire first if you're trying to be fast, but you'll probably miss. If you take your time and go for accuracy, you will always hit your mark, and that is of paramount importance.

The reason I think of it is because not too long ago I found my old journalism textbook from when I was in college. This is the thing that made me think of Unforgiven:

I hope you can read that. It looked fine when I took the picture, but it looks kind of blurry here. It's late at night, anyway, so maybe it's just that my eyes are failing me. That's OK. They've been failing me since I had to get my first set of glasses in 3rd grade. Ethics in journalism made me think about how much the world has changed since I took that course and wrote as a journalist for the Leader. For reference, the year I'm talking about is early 2000, when the internet wasn't fucking everywhere and an integral part of one's life.

Our project for the semester was to find a part about Elmhurst that not a lot of people think about and write about that. Half-joking (but kinda serious) I said, "Latent bigotry." So my professor made it my assignment. I did research and found out that not all bigotry in Elmhurst is latent. On the one hand, there was a sign at a local park saying that the basketball court was meant for neighborhood kids only . . . because Black kids from Berkeley would walk down here and use it, thus invading the white neighborhood. The sign didn't say that part, but it was the latent part of "latent bigotry." Then I discovered that there were actual cross burnings on lawns not too far from where I used to play when I was a kid. A Black college student maybe ten years before my time at the college was harassed for dating a white woman, and his car was vandalized with the n-word keyed into it. That's the tip of the iceberg and not quite so latent.

My intent with the piece was to get my fellow Elmhurstians (is that a word?) to find that place inside of themselves, to look at their own actions (or lack thereof) and ask, "Am I racist? Do I do something that contributes to the bigotry of my community?" But the discovered intent was, "Holy shit, there are real full-blown racists here, and the community just lets that happen?" My lesson was this: no matter what you think is going on, it is your duty to print the truth. That's what ethics in journalism is about.

But the problem is, now that everyone gets their news from the internet, it's next to impossible to live up to journalistic ethics. Because the one thing that the internet values over all else is SPEED, not ACCURACY. Investigative journalism has taken a back seat because that shit takes time. You have to research. Talk to people. Look at all the angles. And so on.

But no, everyone wants to get the scoop, and if you get it wrong? Who cares? Just issue a correction that no one will ever read, and you're gold. I have my doubts that any online news site even has fact-checkers anymore. Maybe not even editors. It used to be that an editor had to go over the story, check everything out, make sure you can't get sued, and then (ONLY THEN) rack it up for print.

As a disclaimer, I feel it is necessary to note that even back then, when I was in college writing for the Leader, not everyone was ethical. Here's something that happened on a regular basis: newspapers printing shit they get off the AP without vetting it. Or even worse, printing press releases word for fucking word without a second thought as to accuracy. And then there were journalists who got fired for flat-out making stories up. And, going all the way back to the infancy of journalism, fighting with advertisers. If you write a story that an advertiser doesn't like, guess who's getting a kick in the ass? Hint: not the guy who pays for the paper's existence. But my point is, ethics in journalism used to be possible.

Now? I can't think of a single journalist with ethics. It doesn't help that on 24 hour news channels that opinions have taken the place of reporting. Almost every talking head you see is spouting an opinion as fact. And those who don't? They're pretty people reading things off a teleprompter. They've done none of the legwork.

That fucking sucks. I used to dream of being a Kolchak-type reporter (or, more to the point, a Spider Jerusalem-type reporter) dedicated to the truth at all costs. Worm out the evil pricks and reveal them to be what they really are and HAVE THE FACTS TO BACK IT UP. But no one wants that anymore.

It's too bad. It used to be that journalists like that kept the lying cocksuckers at bay, but without a watch dog, well, look around. See what I mean?

Here's an added bonus to tonight's GF, warning journalists about their own sexism:

I'm glad to say I currently pass the test, but I can't help but think that the general attitude of this is kinda sexist in and of itself. The textbook seems to assume that the journalist in question is a man . . .