2005 - A Nude Beginning

OK

I only started the blog as a campaign tool, and as a living diary of a political campaign. Let's leave aside the wisdom gleaned from that Quixotic tilt at the Windmills of the Yokels and move forward. I am now unashamedly and unabashedly a pornographer.

I am, as well, a reporter.

I base that on the definition provided by the late Jim (Mr. Magoo) Backus in DEADLINE USA, a 1952 Humphrey Bogart vehicle that seems to have been an arch commentary on McCarthyism, and is eerily apt as regards tabloid news destroying real news. The reporter (Backus) recalls being asked by the late founder of the newspaper whether he's a journalist or a reporter.

Backus says he didn't know what the difference was. The newspaperman replied that a journalist was the hero of his own stories. A reporter was an observer of the stories.

To the best of my ability, I'm only a journalist here.

For my reporting go to my AVA OREGON! archive.

There's a lot of catching up to do here, of course. And, you might wonder why I'm blogging again.

Well, 1) mostly because the world has been overtaken by blogs. and 2) because most of them are FUCKING GODAWFUL!

And I'm talking about the PROFESSIONAL ones. The others are even worse. Case in point, Roger L. Simon's blog referred to by James Wolcott's blog (also, sadly, HIGHLY journalistic, if you catch my drift). The difference? Wolcott can write in this form. Simon can't. He's a smug, elitist Faux Nooz fan who thinks that his command of the occasional polysyllabic ennobles the monobrow knuckle-draggers of Neocon-dom. (Or is that Neo-condom?)

Whatever his merits as a novelist and a screenwriter, the muse of social commentary evidently left him standing on the street corner when her bus drove by, because I have seldom, if ever, seen a man so ill-fitted to that endeavor. Yes. There are right wingers who can write right wing stuff that are readable (David Brooks comes to mind); but, alas, Mr. Simon is NOT included in that elite guild of troglodyte gilders. (for Guilders, now that I think about it, when they've got the Yen, but rarely because they are Franc.)

In sheerest reaction, I thought, jeezis SOMEBODY needs to comment about this crap. And I thought, Golly, if only I were a big time blogger, too.

And then it hit me: I AM a big time blogger. I'm already set up! So, here we go.

Lots of bile, vitriol, polysyllabics and un-spellchecked text (this puts me in the majority, I think). If I spell good, well, that's just because I've always spelt well. But I fuck up on occasion, too.

Welcome to the rebirth (albeit intermittently) of Skiing Uphill.

HW

Oh yeah. I didn't say ANYTHING about pornography yet, did I?

Well, that, kiddies, is what's known in the biz as a "hook." Stay tuned.