Kos Konfab Kraziness

Should bloggers unionize? Should we be forcibly subsidized by taxpayers?

Kossies say "Yes!"

I say, "For once we are on the same friggin' page, amigos! Viva la dola publica!"

NOT SO LONG AGO, progressive bloggers relished their outsider role as "citizen journalists" driven by passion not cash. Yesterday I attended a workshop entitled, "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize!" during which a moderator posited, "I think all bloggers, in one way or another, view themselves as professionals" and a woman bemoaned the travesty of her and husband's inability to quit their jobs and become full-time bloggers because the "social safety net is in tatters." In other words, Why won't society foot the bill for her hobby? Better organize!

It sounds like a spectacularly unserious endeavor, but Big Labor and its enablers apparently disagree. Representatives of the AFL-CIO, armed with "Kicking Ass for the Working Class" stickers, were on hand, as was a DNC employee, a D.C. District Court administrator, a Working America official and the man who got the National Writers Union up and going. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters not only posted Blogger Wanted: Inquire Within signs everywhere, but also handed out free T-shirts festooned with the slogan Working Class Blogger.

Ummm... As Allah asks, once you "organize," whom, exactly, will you be negotiating with?

Blog friendly shirt vendor Those Shirts? Are we to threaten strikes against them? Unless... what? They advertise on knitters blogs (who, as the link will tell you, want to be included in the "union")?

Longtime sponsor Killing Time doesn't advertise here anymore, due to the changeover to PJM only ads. Um, I'm kind of not getting how I can unionize in order to pressure him to buy ads. Maybe we can create a "virtual picket line" of google-bombed websites protesting Killing Time's decision to not pay PJM's higher ad rates? Will that finally bring this dirty enemy of the working man to his knees?

I... uhhh... this seems... what is the word... well, one word is "implausible." Another word is "quixotic." A better word is "delusional."

Is that what these people do all day? Spout off fantasies to each other as if the whole world is some Massively Multiplayer Live Role-Playing Game in which one needs to remain "in character" and play along with the fictive rules of their imaginary dreamworld, in which magic and miracles are not only possible, but depend only on a simple majority vote for their invocation?

"If You Can Dream It, You Can Make It Real!"

Here's the problem with that: it's not true. Otherwise my pud would be the length and heft of a hydraulic cylinder on a Hercules crane.

You guys should stop with that crap. Grow the fuck up already. It's goddamned embarrassing, is what it is, even for those not involved in such nonsense. The public out-of-control drunk at a party doesn't just embarrass himself, but makes everyone else who has to witness him uncomfortable and ashamed.

Control your lunacies, guys. We're sick of the social horror of the preternaturally submoronic making us wince in empathetic shame with every stupid, insane word they gibber.

posted by Ace at 03:37 PM

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