Just an amusing note that I know men, though not as many as she, and particularly 2 men on the front page of Daily Caller today! No, not Obama and Gadhafi!

Image via Wikipedia - Andrew Breitbart of Big Hollywood

These are guys I know from LA Press Club wild parties. Actually they weren’t very wild, but these men are seriously entertaining.

Andrew Breitbart is being called out for being racist on the Huffington Post – what else is new. I still have to write about that non-racist cartoon he published on the other day. He absolutely is not. And since he worked with Arriana Huffington long before she became the liberal icon she is today, when he was taking a break from the Drudge Report, and he actually helped her start the HuffPo, I have a feeling she doesn’t care about the charges against him. (But who would know her thoughts? Her unpaid writers do all the grunt work, anyway.)  Daily Caller reports:

Breitbart’s post about NPR and the Tea Party infuriated Color of Change. In a Wednesday alert to supporters, the organization said that its prominent placement on The Huffington Post “shows a lack of journalistic integrity, and it’s frankly an insult to our communities.”

Image via Wikipedia - Mickey Kaus of KsusFiles everywhere

I’m not familiar with Color of Change, but I did laugh at the idea that PuffPost is known for journalistic integrity. Can you spell “content farm for news stories”?

The other is Mickey Kaus, of course, formerly of the KausFiles at Slate. The last time I saw him was at an LA Observed party in August, and I complained to him that Slate doesn’t pay enough, and pays late. He laughed and told me what they offered him to come back after his run at the Senate, and then said that he had a secret gig coming up…which turned out to be Newsweek.  I had no idea, however, that he quit there so quickly and moved over to Daily Caller until now! No wonder that his first column (that I’ve seen) skewers Newsweek!

Side story: at one of the first Press Club parties I went to I only knew 2 people, and journalists aren’t the most friendly people, so I was rather lost in this old, downtown, ghost-ridden hotel. I saw one guy that people kept coming up to talk with. I had no idea who it was, or what he was talking about, but I decided to stand a few feet away and see if anyone talked to me. After about 20 minutes, no one (still!) had said a word to me, and finally 2 men said, “So you’re his wife?” I guess people assume that if you stand near a man and don’t say a word, likely you are his wife! Is that funny or sad?! And the man I stood near to was Mickey Kaus.

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Gizmodo and iphone cartoon

I was interested in the news about Gizmodo and the iPhone last week, even though I don’t read/have either one, just because I like tech news.  It took me a couple of days before I had time to read the details.

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo blog dropped a bomb on technology enthusiasts Monday with information and pictures of what looks like a prototype for Apple’s next iPhone. Gawker paid for access to the device from a person who found it at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., Gizmodo editor Jason Chen said. Gawker founder Nick Denton coyly acknowledged in a tweet Monday that his company has paid for exclusives before.

I was outraged at this! And happy to find this article from Daily Finance on how Apple could easily sue Gizmodo for knowingly buying the stolen iPhone. The author actually talked with Nick Denton.

Gawker Media has admitted — boasted, really — that it paid $5,000 to get its hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo.

Now that I’ve had a few hours to digest all this, I am somewhat scandalized, even outraged. Put simply, Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/aGnF2V

What Jeff  Bercovici doesn’t bring up, however, is how Gizmodo also stole and used intellectual property, known as trade secrets.

Business Insider says that Denton now claims he LOST money because of this big scoop! 

With characteristic humility, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton describes his company’s acquisition of an iPhone 4Q — two months before Apple (AAPL) was set to unveil it — as “pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever.” But while there’s no question the story brought Gawker millions of page views, what it hasn’t brought so far, Denton says, is money…

Today the LA Times says the police raided the house of the blogger who wrote on Gizmodo. ‘Bout time. Not exactly police, it was a REACT task force.

Wiki describes Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, as British and openly gay. Well, he’s openly bitchy, that’s for sure. He has a bunch of blogs, some worse than others. Defamer is his most famous. Nice graphics, boring gossip. (I guess sites like this are for people who don’t live in Hollywood and are jealous.)

But the first blog of his I even noticed was Wonkette, which is supposedly Washington DC gossip. Well…I guess. Lots of slurs, sexual innuendo, and just plain swearing. Reading the comments and the ad demographics, when I had to, which I’ll explain, I think the average reader is a college-educated 25 year old male who is pretty sure he knows everything and is the center of everyone’s world. If this is not your favorite demo group, stay away.

Anyway, there is a blogger on Wonkette who calls himself the Comics Curmudgeon. He reviews (says hateful things about) editorial cartoons each week, and his posts get about 15,000 views. That’s popular, in my little world. Mean comments follow his posts. I would never have found him, but he included my cartoons in his roundup the first week I went on Slate. The 4th time he posted a cartoon of mine he called me “the mysterious D. Barstow.” Well, mysterious would be a good description if one had never learned to use google, I guess, or read what Slate says about me ON THEIR SITE.

I got hundreds and hundreds of hits on my blogs, but it took me half a day to figure out where they came from. Because he didn’t bother to link to me. Not to Slate, Gocomics, or any of my blogs. In fact, Wonkette hardly ever links to any place, I noticed. Bad online etiquette and extremely greedy. (also bad self-esteem, worried someone will leave Wonkette and never go back.)

At first I thought it wasn’t Fair Use, for him to be using all of our cartoons without pay. I changed my mind on that. Even though he doesn’t actually review them, or even mention any of the cartoonists by name (except for me that one time – on purpose, I suspect), he does at least refer to the cartoons.

But then there’s his hotlinking. Yes, illegally. Cartoonists on Slate don’t get paid at all. We get paid only by hits. So because he hotlinks (making Uclick/Slate’s server pay the bill for 15,000 looks at each cartoon), we don’t get paid a penny for all those views. Wonkette uses the Uclick servers, and doesn’t give us one gold-darned penny for the creators or eyeballs for advertising.

The Comics Curmudgeon did agree to stop using my cartoons, at my request. A small example of grace from a low-class thieving company.

You can also view this cartoon on Yahoo or read comments on Gocomics.

Oh, and Dooce? I hate that blog, don’t you? I think she got pregnant again just for the hits – have no idea if she ever birthed it. As soon as I read her introduction of herself  – “I’m always constipated” – I knew we would never be friends. And she used to live near me, too!

Captions for blind Google: Gizmodo Nerd:“Yeah, I bought stolen merchandise, and sold trade secrets. So?” Lawyer:“Your honor, my client was practicing his religion – worship of iPhones.” JUDGE: “GUILTY!!! I sentence you to unusual punishment online, reading only Dooce!”

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I blog, therefore I am ©Bob Gorrell

To see original, and possibly comments on Gocomics: here.

What can I say? This “trend” of blogging is about 5 years too old, yet the cartoon was done just yesterday. I don’t know this cartoonist, but he worked at a paper and now he’s syndicated. He doesn’t look that old…and yet…ah, gee, this is just so bad.

I won’t even comment on it being a nerd. Has he checked out MSM lately? Or SAHMs who I think are the biggest growing group of bloggers in the world? (And so happy I don’t read them!)

I’ve been commenting on blogs for 5 years or more – I can’t remember. Have had blogs of my own for 2 years – this is my 3rd.

One certainly doesn’t have to have a blog – although they’re fun – but to call it news in any way??? Worthy of mentioning in the paper? Gee, maybe I should try syndication. It must be so hard to do.

I hope I’m not being too mean.

More cartoons:

1. Farewell to Lost cartoon.

I don’t usually read Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau. I do like it, think it’s extremely clever, but I regularly read only a handful of comics.  (list to be divulged at another time.) But for some reason, I looked over and took a look at a story arc starting October 17.

One of his characters, Rick Redfern, the journalist, about 50 years old or so, I guess, just started a blog. He’s excited because somebody finally linked to him. (I wanted to get permission from uclick to reprint it, and it took a couple of days to get an answer – No. Unless I want to cough up $50. From a BLOGGER?  You gotta be kidding.) So here’s a link.

Since I don’t regularly read Doonesbury, I was confused. I looked at the cartoon title. Was this a rerun? Nope. So…did Garry Trudeau just. discover. blogs???! If true, oh my gah. I am appalled. I just started this blog a few weeks ago, but I’ve been contributing comments to blogs for 6 years now, and have been running my Griffith Park blog for over 18 months. True, when I go to parties, most people I meet still say they don’t read blogs! Even the younger ‘uns! But Garry Trudeau is….the man au courant. Or at least I used to think so.

I found a blogger here, Robert Niles, who has a different take. He names it: What Doonesbury’s Rick Redfern did wrong:

The real-world WaPo has taken one of the newspaper industry’s most aggressive approaches to staff blogging and chatting. If Redfern had worked at the real WaPo, he undoubtedly would have had the opportunity to start a blog long before he faced a buyout. He could have developed his blogging voice, as well as an online following, with the help of one of the newspaper industry’s top dot-com staffs.

He has some interesting tips on how to start a blog before you get laid off from your paper, which would be great, you know, if one had the newspaper job to begin with.

Well, at least I don’t have to worry about Garry seeing this, as blogs aren’t on his radar – should we call it bladar- yet.

More cartoons:

1. Doonesbury predicted an Obama victory. Quel surprise.
2. Farewell to Lost cartoon.