This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Something Stinks About America


Ann Coulter, an ugly American adam's apple,
horse face, or not



I could have let the two trolls continue posting at DFQ2, but they were ruining this blog. One is certifiably cuckoo bananas. The other is a historic troll who emerged out of the Daily Kos School for Fake Lefties. Here's a quote from the MLW thread, in which Donkeytale (Joseph KKK) was promoting sexual relations between adults and minors to go with his advocating 13 year old boys sexually experimenting with one another.
One hopes that global capitalism will become the ultimate replacement for war. War by other means, so to speak.
Here's a quote he made on this blog a while back, one in which he exposed himself as being the ultimate waste of time. I was plugging The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. I mentioned Herbert Marcuse, as I also had on this diary.
Socrates in many ways embodies eternal adolescence. The Left of the Frankfurt School?

Marcuse taught school in Calif back in the day. He taught Angela Davis I believe. Otherwise, he was barely a blip on the leftist radar screen.

He was considered a Marxist. I'm also a Marxist as well as a Freudian. Check out Marx. He held nothing but scathing contempt for leftist idealism. Did that mean he wasnt a leftist?

The Left, as Socrates depicts it, is simply a dead religion. It worships dead Gods at the altar of idealism which provides nothing for nobody except an obnoxious sense of self righteousness. Change? What change?

The Left's condescending self righteousness is why it shrinks instead of grows in times when it should grow: like today with the spreading crisis of capitalism in the west.
Can people see how idiotic he can be? Marcuse combined Marx and Freud for his groundbreaking Eros and Civilization. Marcuse is also well known for his epic takedown of the Military Industrial Complex with One-Dimensional Man. But to donkeytale, "[Marcuse] was barely a blip on the leftist radar screen." And to repeat, also according to donkeytale, "One hopes that global capitalism will become the ultimate replacement for war." Basically, donkeytale is just another version of right woos left. I also figure donkeytale was for capitalism, before he was against it, based on those two polar comments.

I'm done with that fool. Nothing he posts ever again will remain on this blog. Bob thought he was doing me a favor with his latest entry by taking care of the donkeytale mess. Perhaps he will eventually do that, but unless he addresses the many perverted comments made at My Left Wing, Bob's effort was more akin to the feeding of a troll. Of course I'm perhaps doing the same thing right now. I just wish to get this out of my system. Soon enough this entry will pick up steam on other matters, those I hope good readers will appreciate and contribute to with some civil comments. However, troll posts will never again be allowed. If this makes me a hypocrite, because I despise censorship at big blogs, then so be it. This is a small place. If trolls were allowed to remain as regulars, their presence would truly turn DFQ2 into a scum pond.

There's simply no way to make comparisons between my censorship of trolls with what is done at big places like Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. It's now time to move on.


Something Stinks About America


Those were the Hollywood Ten. They were only the tip of the iceberg of folks blacklisted for being suspected communists. One of the others was playwright Lillian Hellman. Yesterday I watched one of her brilliant plays turned into a movie called The Children's Hour. There are going to be some spoilers, so before reading further, one might want to watch the movie here.


Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine in
The Children's Hour



Hellman tried to downplay the story's theme having been centered around lesbianism. She claimed it was more about how big lies can ruin lives. What I found most fascinating about the picture is how for most of it, the flick seemed to condone homophobia. The point seemed to be that if the big lie were true, that the characters played by Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn were indeed lesbian lovers, then it was moral for the students to be withdrawn and their school ruined. Or maybe it was merely showing how rampant homophobia was in the early 60's. This 1961 movie would now be considered dated. I think the better description is that it has historical context.

My bet is that Hellman downplayed the lesbian theme as being integral, because the concept of lies ruining lives would get people thinking of the horrific influence the HUAC had on Hollywood's development. The play was first written in 1934. I have found a study guide (pdf) written by Craig Joseph, Dramaturg which gives most of the backstory.

In previous entries on a number of occasions I have mentioned the Hays Code. The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, its formal name, wasn't truly enforced until 1934. As PBS.org explains,
...In 1934, Joe Breen, a strict Catholic moralist from Philadelphia, was hired to run Hollywood's Production Code Administration, set up to enforce the Code. The PCA had the authority to review all movies and demand script changes. Any theater that ran a film without the PCA seal of approval would be fined $25,000. The Code had power at last. "The vulgar, the cheap, and the tawdry is out. There is no room on the screen at any time for pictures which offend against common decency. And these the industry will not allow," pledged Breen.

Moviemakers and scriptwriters acquiesced. They accepted the Code as the rule by which they had to work and created films that met Breen's standards. Some actors survived; others were not so fortunate. Under the watchful eye of Breen and the PCA, Jean Harlow learned to play the all-American, girl-next-door and her career flourished. Others, like Mae West, were ruined in part because sexual innuendo and the double-entendre -- her trademarks -- were forbidden by the Code. Hollywood Censored shows reel-to-reel evidence of Breen's influence. The films released after July 1934 were radically different from those that had come before. "It's the difference between Mae West and Shirley Temple," explains film historian Thomas Doherty in the film.

The Production Code's days were numbered in 1952 when movies were finally granted free speech protection under the First Amendment. The motion picture industry officially abandoned the Code in 1968 and soon replaced it with the system of age-based ratings that still exist today....


multi-talented actress, singer, and writer Mae West


Folks are encouraged to check out the pdf study guide linked to above for The Children's Hour. They will see that Hellman's play was based on a true story from Edinburgh, Scotland in 1810. They will also read of how a 1926 play The Captive, one that also included lesbian themes, was shut down by police with the main actresses arrested.

Despite Hellman not using the word lesbian, the play was banned in various cities such as Chicago, Boston, and London.

The author of the study guide, Craig Joseph, Dramaturg, came up with an interesting chart concerning the four times Hellman's play was produced. I'll put those up here. Those interested in more info, please go to the pdf. You won't be disappointed.




I'm going to wrap this up by posting pictures of a few of the people whose careers were damaged and a few of the jerks who were on the wrong side of this specific slice of American History. The biggest lie of them all is that America is a democratic society with a glorious history. One can read Howard Zinn and get the real scoop on our past. Apparently we continue to ignore the mistakes of the past by repeating them. Capitalism continues to reign. America continues to be a cultural wasteland. Nonetheless, there are pockets of awareness, and some people are quite aware of what social reality truly is.


Some Blacklisted Victims

Playwright Lillian Hellman


Actress Kim Hunter


Actor Edward G. Robinson


Actress Gale Sondergaard


Influential Writer Dalton Trumbo; photo courtesy The Trumbo Family


Some Cretins On This Specific Wrong Side Of History

Former President Ronald Reagan


Director Elia Kazan


Dumbass Actor Gary Cooper


Smarmy Actor Adolphe Menjou


Animator Walt Disney


IMAGE: Joseph McCarthy © Bettmann/CORBIS
DATE PHOTOGRAPHED May 04, 1951



Related Reading:
Johnny Got His Gun published 1939

15 comments:

Tokyo Shemp said...

"Bob" is not who he seems. I have figured out a few of his aliases, ones he promoted as being real names. Bob's some form of paid astroturfer, imho. It will take a while, but I'll write up a new entry explaining his internet presence. It should all make clear sense for ye then. Thank you for your patience.


"Bob" made two mistakes which led to this discovery. For one, he shouldn't have deleted TLNL's post on his last entry. I do thank him for revealing a while back that individual blog authors have powers of deletion regardless of not being admins. That saved me a lot of time. Secondly, he shouldn't have used a specific email address to sign up at my other blog. He's been tossed out of that one also. That email address leads directly to who he has been posing as all over the internet. It's very shocking. There's been a fair bunch of material to wade through, and I don't want to write it up as a rush job.

Anonymous said...

No, don't tell me....Bob, too?

Amazing....can't wait to read your take.

But are you absolutely sure that TLNL didn't push the button on his own comment?

Anonymous said...

He's not.....no, he couldn't be......the great Shadowthief, is he?

That would be so great.

Eagerly awaiting your expose, Soc

Tokyo Shemp said...

I don't think regular bloggers can totally erase their posts, as if they never existed in the first place. What I could do is set up a test author and see if what I'm alleging Bob did is possible. Maybe I'll try that now.

There's a third thing about Bob which raised my eyebrows. He set up a post pretty much enticing yourself to return. Yet, he didn't take even five minutes to check it out for himself and make a comment. It was something a concern troll would do. Act like someone who cares but do nothing about it. We were both asking him to be the ref. He returned for one comment, which had nothing to do with our disagreement.

Maybe I should trickle out the expose? I swear I'm pretty much done as someone blogging a lot. I did what I did, and it's all there for anyone interested to check out. Some of it was great. Some decent. Some mediocre. I definitely think I was above average and unique. You were too. Same with TLNL and some others.

I think we should call a truce. You see, I don't care if this blog trickles down to no comments. It just doesn't matter, as Bill Murray said in Meatballs.

Bob's not shadowthief. He's from a completely different milieu than soapblox. I'm starting to think the trickle down blog theory might work with getting this story out. I truly don't want to go down this specific rabbit hole any more than I need to. First things first, I'm going to sign up a test author account and see if one has the ability to completely erase a post, not just the content. That's not really a big deal. I am always willing to admit if I make a mistake. It makes sense to me that Bob would erase it, to make TLNL doubt my intentions. It fits in with him bringing up the thing about the MLW thread but never commenting on it. You see, before I added Bob to the roster, I asked him whether he was a lefty. That was the only criteria. The real DFQ was into more and better Democrats. So am I. Bob is a conservative. I think he is paid to make posts on the internet. Those people do exist. It goes beyond CIA or any other numbnut cointelpro talk. There's Netvocates. Damn, you know this is a legit topic. There's Netvocates, Advantage Consultants, Bivings Group, Rendon Group, various political operatives have been busted. There are even websites that market for people to make fake posts. E.G., They then have you show up at various websites and start plugging certain crapola. I need to go step by step with this Bob story, so he either responds to it or scampers away like the Cold Spy-Meno Argenti did.

I am good at trollbusting. I've come up with a lot of good stuff. I admit a small part of it was wrong, here and there, and I always tried to make retractions or whatever when I could. The reader decides. They can look at my junk and find the various nuggets. They're not hard to find, whether here or at my other blog. But there's no money in what I do. There's no point in me making a career of it. There's no career to be had. Guys like Brad Friedman made it seem there could be. When I realised he was a fake, I went after him. What's that tune, I did it my way?

Tokyo Shemp said...

I figured it out. I made a google account and then invited it as an author. I made a test diary. I made comments as socrates and other usernames. No, I do not use sock puppets. It was a test.

It took a while to solve, but this is it. There are two different pages where comments are seen. One can click on the main entry, and there's also the post a comment page.

I was able to delete everything on the comment page. On the main page, I was only able to delete my own posts as the test author. It's confusing. There's a glitch. Donkeytale, on every entry you wrote, if you wanted to, you could have erased everything. Bob definitely had the ability to completely erase TLNL's post, because he authored the page. I think he did delete TLNL's post. I'm very careful with things like that. Yet to repeat, this really isn't the big issue I have with Bob. The other stuff is a thousand times more shocking than if he was trying to drive a wedge between myself and TLNL. It was to me. I thought he was a regular guy.

My advice to anyone with a blogspot is do not allow anyone to be an author unless you know them very well, or else they could wreak havoc. The one good thing about places like DKos and other soapbloxes is non-admins and non-mods cannot delete their posts. MattyJack at FSZ got busted deleting lies he wrote about his helping out Dave Weintraub. MattyJack hates me because I put together the truth about his teaming up with UGOG's and throwing Dave under the bus. It wasn't rocket science. Anyone watching it going on could see it. But I put a lot of it together for prosperity. I'm not saying I'm all that, never did, but I have troll-busted a decent number of losers, many of them with real names like Brad Friedman, Brett Kimberlin, and Steven Hertzberg to name a few. Regular guys deserve anonymity. Astroturfers and other forms of confidence players and disinfo numbnuts do not.


Donkeytale, you're not even the real reason moderation is on. It's the other guy, the one who jerks off to Theresa Duncan's ghost. That crowd. God forbid anything happens to me, but I'd hate for them to take over this place in my absence.

the_last_name_left said...

I deleted two of my comments FWIW - because what I was responding to had gone; because I don't much care for all the carping; because I think someone else must have deleted one of my comments too.

I don't see the point if comments might disappear. I also don't get why you'd offer blog-access to people whom you don't know very well - especially when you're so inclined to suspicion, S, and so quick to fall out with people. Oh well - lessons learned I suppose?

Tokyo Shemp said...

I don't much care for the carping either. However, you're not telling the exact truth, because plenty of your blogging has consisted of interacting with it.

I'm not saying you are a carper, but be reasonable. You have been carped at for most of your blogging history. If it upset you that much, you could have tried harder to avoid it.

I didn't delete your post. I'm sorry that happened. Yes, lessons have been learned about the limitations of blogger software. I wish it weren't necessary to have comment moderation on, but the troll fixated on Theresa Duncan won't stop disrupting DFQ2.

I'm definitely suspicious in nature. I have every right. It makes sense that I was suspicous of your intentions when we first met years back. A sophisticated cybersmear script was put in place against me. I documented it. Your username was actually involved. You know all this. You even interacted with a person who I reported to police for cyberstalking, someone who goes by the alias of Louis Aubuchont. You haven't been harrassed anywhere near the amount I have been, so I can cut you slack for not empathising more for what I've been through.

You're darn right I'm suspicious. But I back my schtick up with proof. Fools like Brad Friedman, Larisa Alexandrovna, and Steven Hertzberg learned the hard way not to mess with me.

I'm so quick to fall out with people? What, I'm supposed to allow trolls like Larry and the Duncan wanker take continuous dumps on me? I think my problem has been more akin to not falling out sooner than I should. I take folks at face value. Unless they give me reason to suspect something's amiss, I don't look into their agendas. For example, Brad Friedman didn't show up on my troll radar system, until it became obvious he was ignoring the Hertzberg story. His non-response didn't add up. Hence, I started digging. Hello Speedway Bomber. Hello Agent 99 and Big Dan. Hello Bradblog is a twisted moneymaker centered around hoaxes of its own creation.

Why didn't "Bob" look at the MLW link? He's the one who brought it up. Then when he did respond, it had nothing to do with it, even though myself and donkeytale were waiting for him to step in. Bob wrote that he was disturbed about my disclosure about Donkeytale. That's hearsay. He needed to go to the provided link and comment on that actual content. He didn't. So I took a second look at Bob, and the finds are startling.

Would a true lefty have done dirty work for Big Tobacco? Of course not. He did, and that will come out in the next entry. It will become much clearer why I have "fallen out" with Bob.

Now seems a good time to repost your writings from the last thread and in context. I'm sorry your best post was lost. I'm sorry because of my newbiness as a blogspot admin that for a second time, you ended up responding to a post that I had personally gotten rid of. That will never happen again. With comment moderation, it will no longer be possible. I am not sorry for having trusted Bob. Just because I have been burned a lot, I refuse to become hardened and suspect everyone I meet. After a while, however, I should have known better, due to his close association with "Theresa Duncan wanker" trolls.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Ugh, I just figured out why TLNL's one post went missing. I apologise to Bob for thinking he had deleted it. Though I do feel better now being solely responsible for anything deleted. If this latest brouhaha and its effects mean this blog will end up with little to no guest comments, so be it. It is what it is. I also think comment moderation must stay on. It's not that I am for censorship. I am simply against the persistent Theresa Duncan wanker troll getting even a sniff of a chance to post here. I am also more at peace knowing that if by chance I am unable to keep an eye on this blog, such trolls will be unable to defecate on it.

There is a new blogger folder for spam. It's gobbling up some legitimate posts. One of them was the TLNL post in question. What I don't understand is how I had a copy of it sent to my email address. There is a new post in there by donkeytale, yet that one wasn't sent to my email. I don't think I can figure this out completely. There can be glitches, as I found out how authors can delete any posts they want to on comment pages but not on the main url's of entries.

I'll have to go with the apology to Bob for thinking he was trying to disrupt this blog by deleting TLNL's post.

Yet now that the cat's out of the bag concerning Bob's support of Big Tobacco, I'm going to have to follow through on that. In card games, a card thrown is a card played. There are no mulligans. I believe the same should apply to blogs.

Libel is only such if the accusations aren't true. Even if the accusations aren't true, for the threshold of libel to be met, there must be malice. I do not hate Bob, and based on TLNL's post having gone missing, I made a wrong assumption.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I won't repost deleted donkeytale comments which were mean-spirited. We seem to have reached a detente in the previous thread. I will now repost TLNL's comments including the middle one which got lost in the spam bin. I'll start off with a donkeytale post which was on-topic but I deleted, because I wanted him to go away.

donkeytale's Aug. 23rd 8:45 p.m. response to Bob's 7:59 p.m. comment: The psychology of victimisation is interesting. Its also a very generalized psychology. We are all victims, you see. Its unavaoidably a part of living. We are all exploited, by individuals as well as by society. We exploit ourselves, even, when there is no one else around for us to exploit.

Show me someone who has never been exploited sexually by someone else and I'll show you someone who has never had sex.

Sex by its very nature is exploitative. We rationalise sex by inventing romantic love to sanctify animal behaviour.

The experience of life is exploitative and harmful in itself. We cannot escape the animal kingdom except through death.

I wonder if hiding onself from harmful exploitation is not the most harmful of all. Self-abegnation. Death-in-life.Don't live and you wont be exploited.

Show me someone who has never been exploited and I'll show you a God in Heaven but not a human being on earth.

Good, thought provoking essay.



The wanker troll posted something the next day purportedly showing that the gay community used to support NAMBLA. I won't repost that disruptive fiction.


TLNL Aug. 24th 5:07 p.m.: age is an arbitrary factor - one doesn't suddenly become mature at 16. likewise there isn't a great deal of difference between a 40 year old having a relationship with a 20 year old and a 20 year old's relationship with a 20 year old. People are individuals and anyone can potentially exploit and hurt anyone else. It's easy to imagine a 40 year old taking greater and more altruistic care of a young lover than a youngster would.

even in the ancient world it seems 25 was about the average life expectancy, and so if 'children' weren't getting pregnant we wouldn't be here. And why can youngsters get pregnant if it's so damaging that they do? Doesn't make sense. Of course, that's no reason to condone child molestation, but molesatation and consensual activity are two different things - with the overiding proviso that children are somewhat incapable of making their own informed choices - with another proviso that the line between child and adult is not a clear one (certainly not one simply delineated by an arbitrary and generalised age-of-consent)

Tokyo Shemp said...

donkeytale on Aug. 24th 5:51 p.m.: You crack me up.

Sure. Its a date. Next time I'm in Boston, we'll have a duel.

Its OK for you to call me a sadistic pervert even as you continually post one thread which proves I am nothing of the sort.

Thats OK, for you to create lying insinuations worthy of a tea party email chain about Obammas birth certificate but for me to speak the precise truth about you is somehow wrong?

OK, your not a censorious, thin-skinned creep who spreads lies and false insinuations about others online simply for calling a pig a pig. No, of course not.

No lipstick necessary.

TLNL makes the exact same point on this thread as I made on MLW.

Is he a pervert too?



Here's where the trouble began. TLNL wrote an extensive post which blogger sent to the spam folder.


TLNL on Aug. 24th 5:56 p.m.: the age of consent is a legalism - necessary for the formulation and operation of law (which is a product of bourgeois ideology, remember)

take away the age of consent as a definite limit and your arguments condemning the actors and actresses are only generally valid, but specifically hollow without some greater understanding of the personalities involved in the cases you mention. How do you know what these people were like, what the nature and character of their relationships were? How do you know the worth of them? Or whether they were harmful? I wouldn't feel able to comment on it personally, nor would I wish to (accepting child molestation is repugnant and evil, of course)

The wish to protect children is a powerful and wholly positive one. But contemporary morality is deeply messy and confused on such subjects as sex. Invariably people offer strict codes, moralising with strictures that are historically and rationally unsupportable. The modern age of consent doubtless had some corollary in primitive humanity - in the rest of nature it has a seemingly purely physical control as animals come into 'heat'. But humans are permanently on heat - biological fact - and one that's empirically true to everyone (isn't it?)

Children used to be used as slaves. They were sent up chimmneys in even the 19th C. Large families living in hovels and sharing communal beds.......and all the way back to humans rising off their paws. What a massive hidden history of what we would today call sexual abuse?

And then to consider the Victorian epoch, only 100 years ago: even shapely table-legs were covered so as not to over-stimulate.

From primitives to Victoriana to today - it's quite a journey? We're more liberal than Victorians, but less so than the primitives, perhaps. That suggests to me that sexual concerns are largely arbitrary and culturally dependant, as evidenced by various cultures across the world and their various strictures on sex. However, there is a surely a definite but general prohibition of sexual molestation generally and of immature individuals in particular. The point is, the absolute age is arbitrary within limits - limits which are both essentially physical and actually individual, even as they are generalised into the culture as, for example, a law on a legal age of consent.
(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Previous TLNL post continued: It's for the sake of the operation of the law that we have an age of consent. Making moral arguments based essentially on such - when it's determined by one's own culture - is really very woolly. And authoritarian.

We need an age of consent so that the law can operate properly to protect individuals. But to make moral arguments out of it? The argument even extends to "teens". 19? I mean, maybe that's right.....maybe we should be protected from sex for our own good until we're 25, say? I certainly would have held a great deal of disdain for such a law. But you're not quite saying that? You just think it's ugly and (always) abusive if there's (in your opinion) too big an age gap? I don't get it - because your argument is not that there's a physical issue (a young penis is much the same as an older one, essentially). Rather it's that age-gap? [sorry if I'm missing your point here, but I've only really got interested in this from reading the comments and I'm probably inferencing from there]



TLNL on Aug. 24th 6:40 p.m.: Is he a pervert too?
---------

lol - not something I wanted to get into tbh. haha. I think I'm pretty dull in my sexual tastes actually - sex has always been amazing enough without need of any peculiar angle. Anything more always seemed like hassle, and now my libido is seriously waning I can't imagine bothering with odd stuff.

Ack! the word 'perversion' carries so much with it? essentially it's just saying "I think that's weird!" People wanna look at bonobos! But I'll readily concede it'd be a perversion to get excited watching bonobos! But still.....big deal? People call homosexuals perverts....big deal. I draw the line at watching bonobos though.
----------



donkeytale on Aug. 24th 8:22 p.m.: If my previous deleted comment had been allowed to stand you would have known that my belief is exploitation is inherent in sex.

Main ingrediaent of its thrill actually.

And try as we might, we cannot remove oursleves from the animal kingdom.

Sex, after all, is as pure a manifestation of our animal state as we can attain.

Unless we think too much, then it kills our boner.




donkeytale on Aug. 28th 11:07 a.m.: Bob-

Any comment on the recent investigation into Julian Assange's sexual activities in Sweden?

Its a confusing situation, but apparently Assange has been accused of rape by two women who admitted the relations were consensual.

Is it possible that the idealization of sex is more dangerous than the rationalization of sex, which term I believe you mistake for the realization of sex.

Can't the idealization of sex then lead easily to the politicization and criminalization of sex in the Orwellian sense, as appears to be occurring to Assange?



That about does it. That should clear up most of the confusion caused by one post ending up in the spam bin. I hope so anyway.

the_last_name_left said...

You put back the comments I deleted.

oh well.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Sorry TLNL. I thought it was the right thing to do, since your best post had made it into the spam bin, and I did repost the others with it to keep it in context.

Tokyo Shemp said...

TLNL, the conversation has gotten interesting on the last thread, if you're into it. We're talking about 40 year olds being with 20 year olds, as that seems to be what happened with Assange of Wikileaks.

the_last_name_left said...

aye, fair enough.