Should I finish this one first, or the Malkin or the Boston one? I’ll do this one. No, the Malkin one.
Notes:
1 – Cf. Jane’s carefully researched and honest timeline of the same course of events, which is especially welcome to us because it shows that other people can see the weird happenings that we’ve been seeing.
2 – Of special interest to those fascinated by wingnuts in the way that we are: as children are fascinated by sharks and dinosaurs, or no, more like weird bioluminescent deep-sea fish and those feathered birdosaur things that they find in Liaoning — or maybe the analogy never had as much potential as I imagined — is the expertly bare-assed way Malkin fakes out her readers, who apparently don’t care and keep believing her as though to teach people like us a lesson. A lesson in what, it isn’t clear.
One example among the nested layers of total lyingness and linking-as-concealment that makes her Tea Party timeline stink like a ripe owl in the chimney is this one:
Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly. I met the head of the state AFP for the first time on the steps of the Capitol. No conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters. It was a union of like minds in an impromptu show of outrage against the legislation-without-deliberation process in Washington.
More big-money conspiracy! I promised to bring a roasted pig. Paid for out of pocket. No corporate lobbyist pitched in. Tasted great and worth every penny:
Basically, then, after the February 16 Seattle protest, readers suggested a Denver protest to take place on the 17th that was identical to one already being held by a notorious corporate-funded astroturf foundation. And fine, okay. Because who among us hasn’t made dinner reservations as much as a day in advance only to hear that a corporate-funded astroturf foundation was planning to go and order exactly the same dinner, causing us to become merged with them through no specific process or volition?
Because no, let’s back up here: Is it actually possible to be like, “Oh, I promise to bring a roast pig tomorrow,” and to dial a number and be like, “Hi, roast me up a whole pig, please, and do you deliver, or should I bolt the ol’ pig winch onto the pickup comme il faut?” I mean fine, okay, who among us hasn’t needed a sheep on deadline and called Foosh! It’s Mutton or Baa Baa Boom or another such retail concern to have the animal shaved, dipped in perhaps vinegar or tamari, and flamethrowered.
But rush a pig and forget about getting the full flavor out of it. You’ll end up tarting it up with sauce, is what will happen.
No, it seems things were already set up before the Seattle protest, including separate arrangements for pig and Malkin, and darned if we haven’t stumbled upon one of those nests of foundations, usual suspects, and activist Ning sites that is to Republican shenanigans as Mycobacterium leprae is to noselessness. Also, invitation only? Also, Bob Beauprez, Tom Tancredo, and other name-brand Republicans? Duh?
But the main thing is the way this whole narrative is constructed to make it seem as though Malkin had had a single innocent brush with Americans For Prosperity, and met one of their guys at the event — and “no conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters,” and something-something impromptu, and look at how the crazed liberals are twisting reality. Because as we saw awhile back, what she actually means is just that she met Jim Pfaff, the recently hired Colorado State Director of AFP, for the first time that day. Not said — and we’ve noted this once before — is that before that meeting, she was in with some foundation called Americans For Prosperity.
That conference, you know, was reputed to be the big skill-training digerati event that would bring the conservatives to a tipping point of 360-degree-integrated Internet activism, with recombinant, light-speed ganging up on liberals and endless, disposable Ning sites that would, um, enhance the social networking with the New Media and the Old Media, and how the one is actually alike and yet also different from the other — and also, wait, how there are two basic kinds of media: New, and Old, and you want to go with New while at the same time there is also still Old, and here’s something that you maybe haven’t considered: What about using the skills you use in the online world when you’re actually not online but in the offline world, huh? What about that? Because what about using your New Media skills to critique the Old Media — or even the other way around!?
But I run on. The conference began with an event called, “Winning in a Web 2.0 World,” which, look, Web 2.0? Why not just be like, “Cyberspace: Log On and Surf the Web?” or “You’ve Got Mail: Thinking Out Of the ‘Inbox?'” Why not just call it “OH MY GOD, WE SUPER-SUCK AND WILL NOW CRY AS YOU SCALD US WITH BOILING CAT PEE?” I mean, if you wingnut tech gurus were to do that, we’d at least be puzzled. It would at least slow us down a bit as we wondered what you were up to. “THIS IS OUR LAST REQUEST BEFORE WE DIE FROM SUCKING: PLEASE DON’T HIT US WITH OW! OW! STOP! OW! OW! COUGHSPLAT WOO! GHOST! MUST HAUNT THIS PLACE UNTIL OW! OW! DAMMIT! OW! HOW ARE YOU EVEN DOING THAT? OW!” I mean damn, I’d pay money to attend that event. You could have GOP cyberwhiz Eric Odom giving that presentation, and I wouldn’t imagine a giant penis crashing through the wall and whapping him over and over on the head, whapping and whapping up and down with a sound like bare feet on a hardwood floor, like when you start to imagine something and can’t stop, and it speeds up to a whappita-whappita and Odom looks uncomfortable but resigned, and pulls out of his pocket a bendy disc-shaped thing that looks like rubber jar opener.
“It’s my new idea,” he says, “Would you like to buy one?” You reply, “Is that a thing you’re calling a Tuit, so that when a person doesn’t finish things, a friend or family member can buy him one and he’ll say, ‘What’s this?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a Tuit. I made sure not to get you the square or triangular kind. You need this, believe me.’ And he’ll be like, ‘So this is a what, a Circle Tuit?’ and the dialogue will go back and forth like that until he realizes that the reason he didn’t complete tasks effectively was that he just needed to get a Round Tuit, and now he has one. Is that what that is, the thing you’re selling?” And Odom says, “I’m calling it a Cluebub. I can totally sell these.” And you watch the whapping for a few strokes and reach into your jacket pocket, pulling out the piece of spare fabric that came with the jacket. “I only have a few of these left,” you say. “The demand for Brainmorans these days is just, wow.” “Just a few, huh?” he says, squinting. “I’ll trade you for my last few Jobubums.”
Where were we? Oh yeah, Malkin. Now, if we remember this conference so vividly without even having been there, you’d think Michelle would somewhat remember it. But fine, okay, who among us hasn’t accepted a high-status celebrity engagement at a convention sponsored by corporate-funded right wing foundations, for a fee presumably greater than the roughly $10,000 that each of us usually charges for a speaking gig, and then later gone about our business all like doop-de-doo, when some maniacal evildoer crashes out of the bushes and gibbers, “Hey wait, what’s this with the foundation gig?” making us not only refuse to dignify the insult by mentioning any such thing, but explain patiently that any who believe such a deranged conspiracy fantasy are psychotic Morlocks zonked out of their pumpkins on hate and viciousness, who will stop at nothing to smear their farcical and rage-drenched lies on the face of this little thing that some like to call ‘reality.’ At which point they’re like, “WTF, here’s a picture of you doing that exact thing that you’re…” And you go, “Oh wow, get a load of what the glue-huffing Kook Bund has vomited from their hateful, tinfoil-wrapped lie organs this time! All I do is speak to fellow conservatives, and their frantically spinning masters hand down a dictum to blast feces in the face of reality by accusing me of heading an all-powerful cabal that controls every single last thing that their stinky poop breath has ever wafted upon in this world, I suppose from atop my pile of gold, acquired no doubt by Israel, which, by the way, I control via tinfoil satellite.
And then they’re all, “But the…? Oooh!” And you’re, “Moving right along, the complete grass-rootsness of this unplanned thing that no utterly hallucinated right-wing so-called ‘foundation’ has ever allegedly ‘assisted’ shows the volcanic, screaming hatred of the syphilitic-brained wacko brigade.” And so here we are, and isn’t that just what we’ve been talking about this whole time?
