"Dear John..." : Some Things Just Make You Wonder

I used to bother people at a lot of different blogs (okay, I guess I still do, sometimes). I think the first "major" at which I was banned was DU. I was banned at Slate (under at least 10 sock-puppets), then at BartCop, and in 2007 by Atrios. Kos never even permitted me to register. Mostly it was because of my proclivity for profane epithet and scathing invective, often coupled together for effect, in the context of usually impeccable grammar and apt syntactical construction...

After Atrios, I went around to a bunch of sites, looking for a home...I usually stopped where I saw discourses not so different from my own: anti-fascist, anti-Bushevik, anti-war, anti-corporat. One was FDL (FireDogLake), an "A-level" blog, with friends in high places. For a while they semi-tolerated my profane apostasy--being almost wholly-owned subsidiary of some part of the Dim party machine, they were not inclined to much tolerance of criticisms of the accepted wisdom, and I am pretty much non-doctrinaire. In the end, they shunned me.

It was subtle. I was not ever officially, or explicitly banned, but eventually my posts were constantly--ALWAYS, every one--"held for moderation," which is the death-knell for conversation. It was definitely conscious...So I stopped trying to plunk down my 2 cents worth of profanity-laden, literate, sophisticated vituperation and criticism of the orthodoxy at FDL (and also Corrente-wire, to which I was invited after Atrios banned me; but my opinions were too coarse for the Correntists, too, apparently, as they also shunned me into retiring), and betook myself to other, more tolerant, climes.

Anyway, I was taken a little aback by the friendly, collegial tone of the following missive which I found in my in-box this morning:

Dear John,
At the end of the month, when I pay my phone bill, I'm much happier knowing that part of that money is going to groups like the ACLU and EFF. That's why I'm delighted to announce that our friends at CREDO Mobile are offering a special deal to FDL readers -- if you switch your mobile phone service to CREDO, they'll cover the cost of your current termination fee up to $200 (see below for all the details). CREDO supports nonprofits every year with 1% of their members' phone bills -- and members nominate those groups and get to vote on the how those donations are allocated.

We've worked closely with the folks at CREDO on holding the Bush Administration accountable for illegal wiretapping, so I hope you'll take a minute to read what they have to say below and consider using your power of economic choice to do something good for all of us.

Jane Hamsher
Firedoglake.com

SO because I cannot but concur with the program--though I am amused by the friendly presumption--here's a link to the CREDO page. (I don't have a cell-phone because I feel no need to make myself constantly and unavoidably accessible to every semi-simian pecksniff with thumbs.

But some folks find them useful, and the argument--'tis better to give your phone dollars to a corp with some vestiges of a social consciousness than to pay them to att or verizon or any of the rest of the CorpoRat vultures--is compelling. Also the terms are very attractive. They'll even pay off some of your contract, under certain conditions.

So screw the censorious pricks at FDL--screw, as a matter of fact, ALL censorious pricks everywhere--and avail yourself of the CREDO offer if it is germane to your existence...

PS: the word "Socialist" will trigger certain spam/moderator filters. Wanna guess why?

Look at the word.

Embedded in it is the product name "cialis"...Funny, eh?