{"id":545,"date":"2010-03-20T10:52:15","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T14:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=545"},"modified":"2010-03-20T10:52:15","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T14:52:15","slug":"whoa-look-out-ive-been-picked-up-by-gawker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"Whoa, look out! I&#8217;ve been picked up by Gawker!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-546\" title=\"flugennockgawkercite450w\" src=\"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/flugennockgawkercite450w.jpg\" alt=\"flugennockgawkercite450w\" width=\"450\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/flugennockgawkercite450w.jpg 450w, http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/flugennockgawkercite450w-118x150.jpg 118w, http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/flugennockgawkercite450w-394x500.jpg 394w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>A couple of days ago, <em>Gawker&#8217;s<\/em> Alex Pareene penned <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5497483\/the-most-cynical-political-story-ever-written\" target=\"_blank\">an excellent article<\/a> about the quality and attitude of the reporting at Washington political rag <em>Politico,<\/em><\/strong> specifically referring to their article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0310\/34671.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Drama Queen Caucus&#8221;.<\/a> Over the past couple of months or so, I&#8217;ve been spending a lot of time reading <em>Gawker<\/em> for their excellent reporting on the O&#8217;Keefe\/Breitbart &#8220;ACORN Pimp&#8221; scandal as well as their media critiques and &#8212; I must confess &#8212; their edgy and unique style of gossip reporting; so, when Pareene&#8217;s article on <em>Politico<\/em> appeared, I couldn&#8217;t help but play a little bit of Devil&#8217;s Advocate regarding the nature of the current Washington scene and the importance of healthy cynicism in this comment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Awesome article, Alex, and you&#8217;re right on about Politico.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Still &#8212; I was born, raised, went to school, grew up and spent pretty much all my life and career in and around Washington \u2014 throughout Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy &#8220;Crisis&#8221;, Reaganomics, New Democrats, you name it &#8212; and I can tell you that anyone in this town without a well-developed sense of cynicism is easy pickings for the likes of Clinton, Bush, Obama &amp; Co.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;ve learned to read the Washington Post the way a Muscovite learned to read Pravda way back in the day.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Your characterization of Politico is right on the nose, but, let&#8217;s face it \u2014 the current ruling class in this country really is a bunch of self-centered, vain, preening sociopaths who really do live for the foto ops, the CSPAN Moments and the Sunday morning talk show gigs. Many years of experience have taught me this.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>They may be right totally by accident, like a busted clock, but Politico really is right about Dennis Kucinich: he really is a time-wasting, gutless, pussified faux Progressive attention whore who talks a good game about serious policy reforms, but is totally ready to roll over for the Democratic Party \u2014- especially when it comes in the person of a slick flash bastard like Barack Obama, who probably promised him a new pony, just like he did to the rest of us in &#8217;08. By rolling over for the Democratic leadership on the healthcare bill, he pretty much pissed away any credibility he had left on the Left \u2014- assuming he had any to begin with, after his dickless performance at the &#8217;04 Convention.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, imagine my surprise when I logged on to Gawker last night to scan for the latest Teabagger\/O&#8217;Keefe\/Breitbart shenanigans and found myself annointed a <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5497719\/comment-of-the-day-dickless-in-dc\" target=\"_blank\">Comment Of The Day<\/a> along with my <a href=\"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?m=200702\" target=\"_blank\">2008 Kucinich Campaign Poster!<\/a> That&#8217;s right, gang; the Kid&#8217;s a hit in the Big Apple! When it rains, it pours, I guess.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Kucinich &#8217;08: He&#8217;ll Waste The Left&#8217;s Time,<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/democrats08\/kucinich08.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">medium-res jpeg image, 516k<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, Gawker&#8217;s Alex Pareene penned an excellent article about the quality and attitude of the reporting at Washington political rag Politico, specifically referring to their article &#8220;The Drama Queen Caucus&#8221;. Over the past couple of months or so, I&#8217;ve been spending a lot of time reading Gawker for their excellent reporting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10,158,132],"tags":[53,214,21,144],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-media","category-obamarama","category-party-animals","tag-democrats","tag-gawker","tag-healthcare","tag-kucinich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}