No Effective Criticism of Democrats Allowed By NJ Tribe
[Update: 7/18/15 – looks like I have at least 1 friend at BlueJersey – hahahaha! That BJ reader should know why Rosi banned me the first time, back in December 2009 email, she wrote:
Winston/Bill, there are other people who contribute here regularly who don’t do a tenth of the self-promotion that you do. Your constant flogging of your own site has the effect here of overwhelming almost any point you make and dulling your credibility, not enhancing it.
And there doesn’t seem to be a shred of evidence justifying the relentless tone of superiority you take when you comment on the writing of other people. You’re going to need to curb both of those things if you want to continue posting anything at Blue Jersey. Rosi Efthim
That schoolmarm scolding prompted my exit shot. My BJ friend may want to look at that post, especially the comments on it from Rosi and her supporters.
PS – Last time around, Rosi flat-out lied, so readers hold know that here is the obnoxious response I got on 7/10/15 (just after my 2 critical posts) after my Tom Paine login was blocked and I thought I used the wrong password:
You said you forgot your password. Here it is, so you can log on to your account athttp://www.bluejersey.com:
Username: Winston Smith
Password: bye-bye ~~~ end update]
I once had a column at the Star Ledger’s “NJ Voices” page, a citizen’s journalism page where editors chose me to be the “voice” of the citizen interested in environmental issues. I didn’t call and ask them, they called and asked me. I think their choice was based on this Op-Ed that they had recently published.
But that (voluntary, unpaid) gig didn’t last too long, as I progressively stepped on more and more toes and pissed off people in high places. I’m sure reporters and editors were offended by the fact that my writing (and photographs) appeared under the SL banner and was indistinguishable – to the reader – from theirs.
The final straw for SL editors that led to my ban was a post opposing a bill introduced by US Senator Joe Lieberman in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. For obvious reasons, I opposed that as an outrageous act of censorship.
That bill, supported by Obama, would amend the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to exempt certain military or national security photos. In that post, I included a link, with a warning to readers about graphic content, to the Abu Ghraib torture photos, which at the time were censored and not being published in US media outlets, but were published virtually everywhere else in the world.
Not 10 minutes after posting that link, I got an angry call from a SL editor, who claimed I violated their contract and could no longer be trusted to use their site and they pulled the plug. In challenging any “contract” violation on my part, I appealed to senior editors, noting that the “contract” I signed said nothing about pre-publication review or editorial control on their part. Those discussions gave me a front row seat into the mind of traditional media and their thoughts on the band of “dirty hippy internet bloggers”, who they blamed for killing traditional journalism.
The SL ban turned out to be a good thing, because it prompted me to create Wolfenotes where I could write whatever the hell I wanted to – as long as I believed it and had some facts to support those beliefs.
During the initial period writing here, I cross posted what I thought were posts relevant to Democrats over at BlueJersey, under the pseudonym “Winston Smith”.
For some reason that cross posting was perceived over at BJ as either shameless blog promotion or sock puppetry or trolling or whatever internet term small minded people use to label and shun “the other” with whom they disagree but can’t mount an effective argument to rebut.
In short order, after a few cross posts at BlueJersey that were critical of Democrats – surprise, surprise! – I was banned there too. Rosi Eftim sure is no Karl Popper!
No big deal.
But after several years went by, I recently decided to try to re-engage the BlueJersey crowd, given the focus of my work on criticizing Gov. Christie, this time under the pseudonym “Tom Paine”.
I started small, by posting comments on their environmental coverage – just like I do at NJ Spotlight – pointing out issues they overlooked or didn’t get quite right. No problems emerged. I had some positive exchanges with BJ readers.
I presumed I would be welcome there – I was wrong.
Of course, my criticism is not limited to Gov. Christie and Republicans, but extends to Democrats too.
Here are the two recent posts that just got me banned again –
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Curious, like the SL ban leading to more fun, literally the same day BJ pulled the plug I got another set of huge bills for bandwidth overuse resulting from the hack and bot attack on Wolfenotes – the costs are so high I may have to shut down – and an inquiry from Rutgers University Press to write a book on Christie and environmental policy.
Think we’ll look into that.
Now all I need to do is find a real job.