Nothing classes up the joint like a top hat and monocle
Greetings, Wonkers, and a happy long weekend to you! In celebration of our own labors here in the snarkpits, we bring you a very important email -- yes, the art of long-form bitching is not lost -- from one "T. Winey" of the internets, with the unpromising subject line "Charles Johnson." Mr. Winey is not happy with one of our writers, it seems, so he sent this missive to everyone listed on our "Contact" page:
Evan Hurst has the vocabulary and intellect of a middle school paint huffer. Living proof that America must still be the greatest country on Earth if your Mad Magazine-level tripe passes for journalism. I hope Charles Johnson sues you for defamation and libel. I know you must think you are edgy with your pale imitation of George Carlin, but without a moral center, swearing gratuitously for the shock value loses its cache somewhere around the 4th grade.
First off, it's cachet Mr. poopyhead, and secondly, we can think of nobody who'd mock you more scathingly than George Carlin, if 1) he were still with us and 2) he took notice of you (he wouldn't). Apparently Mr. Winey was upset at Wonkette's libels of Award-Winning Journalist Chuck C. Johnson in this piece about the weird meeting Johnson arranged between Julian Assange and California Republican Dana Rohrabacher. (Mr. Winey didn't specify what article he was unhappy with, but that's the most prominent one about Johnson. And we'll assume we haven't somehow defamed the other Charles Johnson, proprietor of Little Green Footballs and a Friend of Wonkette)
We're not sure what parts of the article Mr. Winey took to be libelous or defamatory. Evan called Johnson "the internet’s greatest loser troll", and said he's not a real journalist (but then pointed out that he most certainly is -- an AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST, in fact). Evan also mentioned that Johnson's website raises "money for ACTUAL NAZIS," which it does. Sorry, truth is an absolute defense against libel, and we can document that Johnson really is the internet’s greatest loser troll.
Oh, and the piece said "fuck" a lot, which seems the only reasonable reaction to learning that Chuck C. Johnson somehow managed to arrange a meeting between Julian Assange and a U.S. congressman. That's not merely a George Carlin level of "fuck me!" That's a McNulty and Bunk investigate a crime scene level of Fuckitty-fuck-fuck-fuck:
Ah, but Winey was not done! He then copypasted an entire article on the rhetorical sins of Gawker and Wonkette. From 2004. It's actually a pretty good thinky-piece, by Jack Shafer, then of Slate, now of Politico, with the lovely headline "The Heaving Pukes Who Write Gawker and Wonkette." In it, Shafer acknowledges that both blogs were very funny and very well-written, but he was uncomfortable with their habit of "handing out rote poundings to their subjects with a monotonous sadism that makes few distinctions among worthy and unworthy targets." Maybe that was an accurate criticism in 2004, but Wonkette isn't exactly the same political gossip blog, written solely by founder Ana Marie Cox, that it was in 2004. Heck, we even do sincerity now and then.
Silly us, talking nuance in reply to a guy who thinks Chuck C. Johnson is a great journalist and thinks a 2004 article will bring us down a peg.
But Winey was not finished! A while after that first email, he followed up with an even more devastating critique, from some rightwing blog in 2011, ripping into us for l'affaire Trig. We suppose, if you're new to Wonkette, you may not know that under the previous management, one of Wonkette's writers wrote a dumb thing about Trig Palin that made a tasteless joke that was intended to mock Sarah Palin for allegedly calling her own blessed child "retarded," but which came off asWonkette calling him that.
It was a bad joke that none of us here today would make, and is the reason why "No slurs on children or the mentally disabled (the actually mentally disabled). This is well-established, assholes. " is literally Rule 1 in our commenting rules. It will also be the thing that Wonkette will never live down, no matter that none of the people involved are still here and we all abjure such jokes. It's the "Robert Byrd was once in the KKK" of blogging.
Still, it was awfully nice of Mr. Winey to copypaste the entire 2011 article ripping a previous incarnation of this website for what other people wrote here. Not just the 2011 blog post, but also the blog's "You may also like" links -- "Lieberman Defeat in CT Dem Primary Could Help GOP Nationally" and "Progressives Claim Ebola Is Caused by Insufficiently Gigantic Government" -- as well as several pages worth of 2011 comments, which by comment # 13 veered off into a passionate 2011 discussion of whether gays or blacks more undeservedly benefit from a liberal culture of victimhood.
Ctrl-C is a mighty weapon for justice.
All in all, we'd say Evan has learned his lesson: Don't be Ana Marie Cox in 2004, and if you keep libeling Trig Palin like no one who works here now ever has, AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST Chuck C. Johnson will sue you.
Also this week we got spammed by a Pizzagate moran who wanted to know why we defend pedophiles, and an article from June was visited by some dope calling himself "The Truth," whom we banhammered because we can't handle him. Among the truths we can't handle: There is no evidence that anyone in the Trump administration is racist, and even less evidence for so-called global warming, so thank god the EPA is being eliminated. But voter fraud is real, so strict voter ID is necessary, and it's not a burden since anyone can easily get a photo ID. Also, liberals are fascists who are so afraid of honest dialogue that they keep banning "The Truth" from reaching the audience he deserves to on months-old posts.
Darned if we're going to go into any detail on that loser troll crap on a nice holiday weekend. We say it's all scream shitting, and we say the hell with it.
Yr Wonkette is supported by reader donations! Click the "Donate" linky to give us money, and stop huffing paint, will you? Shit's bad for you.
Coffee Spewed on the Keyboard Award
An excellent piece that fails to take note of the fact that the English practice of "Barbadosing" was first used on other troublesome countrymen. I have read of one woman sent to Barbados for the crime of being a spinster. And before the English began sending Scots to Ulster, they sent Englishmen from the northern region whose distance from the royal government in London provided sufficient "otherness."