Why I’m Ending My Appeal Of My Latest Wrongful Twitter Suspension

On Tuesday, January 5^th, I wrote and posted the following tweet:

“Why nothing changes. Imagine being in a time where the federal government is deeply loathed and distrusted and thinking letting a corrupt President completely off the hook will make everything alright. What a fucking cunt…#FuckJamesComey #ProsecuteTrump”

In between the angry words and the hashtags, I linked to the source of my disgust:  a Guardian article about the former FBI Director and the aforementioned, misbegotten argument he makes in his latest book.

My comment first appeared at 10:48 p.m.  The following morning, unbeknownst to me until mid-afternoon, Twitter had flagged it and locked my account.  An automated email was sent at 7:13 a.m., seven hours and 25 minutes later, informing me of the bad news.

But I first learned about the suspension by going directly to my account.  Awaiting me was a screen grab of my tweet and the supposed rule I broke.  You know, the one about “hateful conduct”?

The rule states:

“You may not promote violence against, threaten or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

None of this really explains why I was punished for calling a powerful old white guy, a notorious abuser of civil liberties, a cunt, which quite frankly, is too kind a word for James Comey.

Now, I could’ve done the easy thing.  I could’ve just deleted the tweet, accepted my 12-hour limited features sentence and then move on.

But this bugs the fuck out of me.  Twitter has already falsely accused me of being a fucking bot.  Twice! The second time, I waited 10 goddamn days for a resolution until I gave them what they wanted.  Then, they finally wrote back and everything was cool again.

This is the only time a tweet of mine has supposedly crossed the line.  Anyone who follows my account (and I thank the over 700 of you who do so) knows I’m a prolific tweeter and I curse a lot.  (I mean, for God’s sake, it says “Full Time Venting Machine” in my bio.)  I have over 90000 tweets.  Although it is rare, it is not unusual for me to call a guy a cunt.  And I only do so when it’s completely warranted.  In the eight years I’ve been on there this remains the only occasion Twitter felt it was wrong.

The former leader of a supremely racist American law enforcement agency is arguing in favour of the outgoing President of the United States, a man who instituted a travel ban against innocent Muslims, drone murdered young children in the Middle East, pardoned convicted war criminals and cruelly separated thousands of harmless, desperate refugee families, to be given a free pass for all of his criminal actions.  This isn’t a flippant comment, it’s a published assertion from a longtime lawyer and government official.  That kind of idiocy deserves the strongest possible condemnation with the strongest possible language.  I make no goddamn apologies for calling James Comey a fucking cunt.  He is a fucking cunt.

The day I was suspended, shit got crazy in Washington.  Shortly after Twitter sent that email, Donald Trump had a rally for his most extreme supporters just outside the White House.  Behind a very large transparent screen, he cut a promo on Congress urging them to not certify Joe Biden’s victory over him, an otherwise mundane, routine process never really worthy of wall-to-wall cable news coverage.

Trump urged the fervent crowd to go to the Capitol building because it’s better to show “strength” than weakness.  He laughably claimed he would go with them which obviously was never going to happen.  He’s a moron but not completely stupid.  His increasingly unhinged lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, egged them on further saying it was time to have a “trial by combat.”

Republican Congressman Mo Brooks screamed that old cliché about “taking names and kicking ass.”  That was all the encouragement this foolish crowd of misguided yahoos needed.  Soon, they marched over, directly confronting a shockingly thin, mostly outmatched police line, punching and grabbing them, spraying mace in their faces, stomping and whacking them with sticks, some of their weaponry attached to American and pro-Trump flags, all the while chanting “USA!” and “Hang Mike Pence”, the man overseeing the certification which eventually resumed and concluded just after 3:30 in the morning, making the whole spectacle a complete waste of time.

The chaotic scene saw numerous Trump fanatics climbing up to the top floors, breaking windows to force their way in, marching down that interior red carpet with all the statues, ransacking government offices.  Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nameplate, placed high in the entranceway to the hall leading to her own section of the building was ripped off and broken, gleefully shown to a TV camera as a prized trophy.

When a female protester tried to get beyond the last section of doors leading directly to Pelosi’s blocked off designated area, she was shot by a guard and later died.  Three others perished, as well, as did one of the few officers on the scene.  A middle-aged protester did manage to get into Pelosi’s office where he wrote a menacing message on one of her file folders (“WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN.”) and posed for a silly photo while sitting in her swivel chair with his foot on her table.  He has since been among the dozens arrested.

The madness interrupted a rare, pointless debate about the certification in the Senate and soon, everybody – politicians, their aides and members of the media – were eventually ushered out to safety moving from place to place to avoid the attention of the bloodthirsty mob, some of whom ended up in the chamber posing for their own photos. One was captured holding onto a collection of plastic handcuffs.

It wasn’t until a 6 p.m. curfew was announced and the belated appearance of more law enforcement, who were far less combative when brutalizing Black Lives Matter protestors during more peaceful demonstrations for more just causes, that eventually the unruly crowd was dispersed and order was finally restored.

And Comey wants the man who inspired such a fiasco to not be prosecuted for anything, anything at all?  What a fucking cunt.

Anyway, back to my Twitter suspension.  It has been 8 days since I appealed.  I have received no response.  Rather than nag them repeatedly, as I did when they erroneously thought I was a bot for the second time last November, which only slowed things down, this time I decided to wait things out.  Surely, they would either agree with me and unlock my account or urge me to delete the tweet after just one complaint.  Either way, I just wanted an answer.

I was originally willing to wait this out for as long as I could.  (It was nice having some free time to focus on other things for a bit.)  But then I did some research online.  There are many cases where people find themselves cut off from the Twitterverse and even after they appeal, sometimes repeatedly, there is dead silence.  Nothing.  Not even a “Shut the fuck up. We’ll tell you when we tell you.”

One woman, a pro-choice activist got into a Twitter argument with an anti-abortionist, cursed at him and got flagged for three of her tweets.  She filed an appeal and didn’t hear anything.  So, like me last year, she got understandably impatient and kept complaining and complaining.  36 days went by before she was finally reinstated and only because her absence was noticed by her supporters who complained to Twitter themselves resulting in the eventual reversal.  Must be nice to be missed.

Her case is not an anomaly.  Others have waited for even longer.  One person claimed on Quora that they haven’t had an answer in 2 years.

How could Twitter forget them like this?  What is the point of appealing at all if you never get a prompt verdict or any response for that matter?  It’s all so needlessly frustrating and infuriating. It’s almost as if they have no intention of actually entertaining a reexamination of their suspensions and simply stay silent until you give in.

Reading these stories made me realize that at this point I’m punishing myself by not taking matters into my own hands.  How many more days can I stay away when Twitter gives you no indication it’s going to give you any kind of ruling?  Honestly, I would rather learn they were not going to reverse their wrongheaded decision than be left in permanent suspense.

As a result, effective immediately, against my own wishes and under protest, I have cancelled my unresolved appeal and deleted my tweet. Upon doing so, Twitter has now “fully restored” my account which I’m about to take a look at. Looks like the 12-hour limited usage sentence won’t apply any more. I will resume my usual ranting as soon as possible.

It didn’t have to be this way.  I didn’t need to be suspended at all. And regardless, I should’ve gotten an answer by now. I’m not waiting any goddamn longer.

Twitter’s appeal system is seriously flawed and unjust.  It’s set up so that after ignoring you for a prolonged period, you get so fed up with the silent treatment you ultimately back off, give in because you’re tired of the impasse and do what they want you to do, even though you know you didn’t break their rules.  I have never broken their rules. I am not a fucking bot and I have never engaged in “hateful conduct”.

I did not “promote violence against, threaten or harass” James Comey.  I called him a “fucking cunt” for his idiotic desire to not have the racist rapist Donald Trump, who had just instigated a fucking insurrection last week and was impeached for a second time yesterday because of it, federally prosecuted.  I stand by that.

Does Twitter stand by its erroneous suspension of me?  I’ll probably never know.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 14, 2021
5:54 p.m.

Twitter Suspends Me For Calling James Comey A Naughty Word

The former director of the FBI has a new book coming out. Yesterday, The Guardian, which acquired a copy, made note of one revelation. He doesn’t think the current President of the United States should be prosecuted.

In Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency and Trust, James Comey argues that the incoming Attorney General, which President-Elect Joe Biden is hoping will be former President Obama’s rejected Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, should steer clear of any investigations of Donald Trump, the man who famously fired him four years ago, asserting it would look overly partisan and biased:

“Although those cases might be righteous in a vacuum, the mission of the next attorney general must be fostering the trust of the American people.”

He goes on to compare Trump’s situation with that of Richard Nixon who ultimately resigned in the face of impeachment over covering up the illegal Watergate break-in. Nixon’s Vice President Gerald Ford, originally the Speaker Of The House before replacing tax cheat Spiro Agnew who also resigned, would infamously pardon his former boss and would pay the price for it in the 1976 election when he was defeated by Jimmy Carter.

“By pardoning a resigned president, Ford had held [Nixon] accountable in a way that Trump would not be, even were he to be pardoned after losing re-election. That might not be enough accountability in Trump’s case. Or it may be, especially if local prosecutors in New York charge Trump for a legacy of financial fraud.”

It’s the absolute stupidity of this argument (how is letting an unrepentant crook off the hook by not putting his feet to the fire or by giving him a clean slate “accountability”?) that prompted me to write this angry tweet about it:

“Why nothing changes. Imagine being in a time where the federal government is deeply loathed and distrusted and thinking letting a corrupt President completely off the hook will make everything alright. What a fucking cunt.”

Then, I linked to The Guardian report and added two hashtags: #FuckJamesComey #ProsecuteTrump.

The tweet was posted at 10:48 p.m. I was able to continue tweeting, retweeting and scrolling down my timeline well into the early morning hours until I called it a night.

Today, however, when I went into my account mid-afternoon, I learned I was suspended. According to the geniuses at Twitter, the tweet had been flagged for supposedly violating “our rules against hateful conduct”.

“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

The very white and very straight cisgender male James Comey, who is neither physically or mentally handicapped nor seriously ill, is an extremely privileged 60-year-old Irish American who has a very questionable human rights record thanks to his two decades working for the federal government first as a US Attorney, then Deputy Attorney General and finally, the head of the FBI, all jobs he held in the aftermath of 9/11. (Before that, he spend years working as a US Attorney in both New York and Virginia.)

As I told Twitter in my inevitable appeal, I neither threatened, harassed nor incited violence against this man. I don’t follow him, he certainly doesn’t follow me and while I’ve been highly critical of him both on their site and the one you’re reading, I have never directly interacted with him. I’ve never DM’d him nor used his handle in a public tweet.

And yet, here we are again having to beg the Twitter gods to allow me back onto my account. When does this end? When does this obvious bullshit cease? I’m beyond tired.

I mean, if you don’t want me calling James Comey a cunt, just say so. Make it a rule. Don’t call the man directly involved in George W. Bush’s torture program a cunt. Don’t call the man who endorses an FBI technique that allows the bureau to pretend to be journalists in order to nab suspects a cunt. Don’t call the man who supports sending informants into the Black Lives Matter protest movement a cunt. Don’t call the man who supports bogus sting operations against vulnerable, powerless Muslims a cunt. Don’t call the man who became the legal muscle for Lockheed Martin, the federal government’s biggest defense contractor which supplies weapons that have murdered and absolutely decimated innocent Muslims in the middle east a cunt.

The weird thing is I’ve used the word cunt to describe dickhead guys on Twitter for years but admittedly not very often and this is the only time it’s been flagged. Why? Did someone complain? Did your oh so brilliant algorithms once again mistake harsh criticism, which is perfectly legal, for a non-existent threat?

Since I filed my appeal, Twitter has acknowledged it on my account (“We’ll take a look and will respond as soon as possible.”) and through an automated email message. But, because I decided to appeal, I remain locked out. For now, the only way to get back in is to cancel the appeal, delete the tweet, live with being in Twitter jail for 12 hours (DMs only) before everything is back to normal.

I refuse to cancel. Once again, they fucked up. It would be nice if they were accountable for a change.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
7:51 p.m.

UPDATE: It appears, based on the time noted on the aforementioned email I was sent, that I was officially suspended at 7:13 a.m., seven hours and 25 minutes after my tweet was posted. An obvious question: if my disparaging comments about James Comey were so objectionable to the Twitter gods, why did it take this long to flag it and suspend me? I’m hoping for some immediate answers shortly.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 7, 2021
12:21 a.m.

Twitter Still Refusing To Unlock My Account

It’s been 6 days since Twitter wrongly froze my account for supposedly exceeding the number of times a user can retweet, the second time this has happened to me, both occurring during American elections.  I have complained at least half a dozen times and while I have received both an automated response and a personal one, I remain locked out.

Common sense would tell you that if a human being is complaining about being unable to tweet every day for almost a week then he is probably not a goddamn bot and he probably didn’t break a precious Twitter Rule.

There is this strange paradox about Twitter.  They want you to maximize your enjoyment of the service which I have for almost eight years but by God don’t you enjoy it too much or we’ll think there’s something wrong with you.  You’d have to be a fucking replicant to want to tweet and retweet that much.

But that’s the problem.  How much retweeting is too much?  Twitter does not establish a limit.  I have no idea what is considered “aggressive” to the point of arousing suspicion.  And that’s the other problem.  It’s not human observers at the company suddenly noticing something amiss.  It’s a fucking computer picking up something by mistake.  Goddamn fucking algorithms.

And here I am once again reduced to grumbling in public as well as privately.  It’s fucking insane.  (My 99-year-old grandmother died suddenly over the weekend and I can’t tweet my 700 followers about it.) It literally says on my profile page that I’ve written for The Huffington Post.  I have my own author’s page on there.  I have my own website on WordPress.  I’m being followed by some pretty prominent people in the media some of whom I’ve become friendly with.  How many actual bots can fucking say that?

None of this matters to Twitter.  They don’t give a fuck, otherwise this would all be resolved much quicker.  In fact, the first time I was locked out in 2018, it was resolved so quickly I even got a welcome apology.  

So, what’s changed?  Are there fewer people manning the controls now?  Why is it taking so goddamn long to reinstate me?  If you go to the contest a suspension page, there’s a message that basically says they’re backlogged and there will be a delay in responding to complaints.  As I said to them in my most recent complaint, I understand and appreciate that they’re dealing with too many cases at once.

But as I also said, my case is simple.  Drop the requirement that I have to input a cell phone number (I do not own a cell phone nor am I planning on getting one) to get a confirmation code and simply restore my full access.  Takes two seconds.  Honestly, why is it taking so much longer now to do what took roughly a day to accomplish two years ago?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, November 9, 2020
10:37 p.m.

UPDATE: I’ve just discovered that I’m no longer following anybody on Twitter. Before my wrongful suspension, I was following several hundred accounts. No longer. So fucking infuriating.

I’ve contacted two Twitter friends via email to let them know what’s going on and they’ve said they’re going to vouch for me to Twitter Support which is very sweet of them to do on my behalf. I’ve also noticed that my account is labelled “Restricted” for “suspicious activity”, a completely ridiculous assertion based on zero facts. I love how being engaged in American politics through retweets arouses their suspicion.

Anyway, despite my ongoing frustration with this bullshit, I think I may have found a possible solution. I’ve been doing some research and I might be able to get that elusive confirmation code after all if I input my landline number instead of a cell phone which I don’t have. Google locks out users of their Gmail service and offers them a choice of receiving the code through text or an automated voice message. Twitter may do the same. I’ll try this tomorrow and see if it works.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, November 12, 2020
2:31 a.m.

UPDATE 2: Well, that didn’t work. But the good news is I’m back in, no thanks to Twitter Support. We’ll just leave it at that. Also, I think all the accounts I was following have been restored so that’s a relief. Now to get caught up after a 10-day hiatus.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, November 13, 2020
7:19 p.m.

Twitter Froze My Account For Tweeting & Retweeting Too Much About The 2018 Midterm Elections

Last night, I was tweeting and retweeting about the Midterm Elections in the United States.  Apparently, I was tweeting and retweeting too much for Twitter’s liking.  How do I know this?  They’ve locked me out of my account.

A warning popped up that suggested I wasn’t human but rather an “overly aggressive” bot, an automated replicant of some kind that couldn’t possibly be that interested in the American political scene, at least not from an independent, leftist perspective.  Oh no, in the eyes of Twitter, I must be some kind of “suspicious” artificial intelligence for constantly tweeting and retweeting election updates to my near 800 followers (something I’ve done through numerous elections for half a decade) while also offering quick personal commentary regarding the horror of Ted Cruz being re-elected and goofing on Wolf Blitzer’s metaphorical election boner.  (The CNN anchor always seem overly excited when anticipating and delivering results live on the air which sometimes leads to verbal blunders and the unnecessary interruption of colleagues.)

According to Twitter, doing all of this while also tweeting about unrelated political articles, is not acceptable.  White supremacists who threaten fellow users?  Perfectly ok.  Huffington Post Contributors reporting and tweeting about the election?  Freeze that bastard’s account.

Twitter does this annoying thing where they give you a chance to prove you are flesh and blood and then after you prove it they still won’t let you access your account.  It’s a program called reCAPTCHA.  It works like this.  First, they ask you, “Are you a robot?”  Seriously.  If you’re not, and last time I checked I still bleed like every other living thing on this goddamn planet, they ask you to click the box next to, wait for it, “I’m not a robot.”  In other words, if you are a robot, you have to lie in order to proceed.

After you click that, a picture puzzle pops up.  It’s either one shot cut up into nine squares or nine individual ones that collectively make up nine squares.  You’re asked to click specifically requested objects within these frames a varying number of times.  Sometimes you have to find a bus or a car.  Sometimes, it’s traffic lights or crosswalks or fire hydrants.  After you get through this bullshit, you should see a green checkmark declaring yes, you rascal, you’re a human after all.  Our bad.

And then, nothing.  Instead of moving on to the next step to Twitter freedom, whatever the fuck that is, after an eternity of no progress, a message pops up saying your path to verification has “expired”.  Oh, and “Check the checkbox again”.  Maybe next time, impatient one, we’ll let you through.  I must’ve repeated this process dozens of times to no avail.

Now, that’s on a fast library computer.  Using my own slow-ass PC is even more frustrating.  I frequently receive the dreaded “Cannot contact reCAPTCHA.  Check your connection and try again” message.  So I try again.  And again.  And again.  Same deal, although one time clicking the “I’m not a robot” checkbox results in that blue snakey circle endlessly rotating.

Once in a while, I get “lucky”, the puzzle pops up and if I get all the way through, here comes the checkmark followed by the “Verification expired” nonsense.  But usually the “Check your connection” error message returns well before that happens and I’m back to square one again.

As you can imagine, I’m not terribly happy about being unable to communicate on a medium I’ve been using regularly for almost six years.  (I’ve tweeted well over 70000 times.)  Perhaps, I should’ve seen this coming.  Not that long ago, I called Hulk Hogan a “racist” and got an automated warning saying my use of Twitter would be “limited” for 12 hours.  It was weird because 1. Hulk Hogan is a racist and 2. I was able to carry on using my account without any apparent restrictions.

But once they freeze your account, you’re fucked.  Unless you can somehow get past the reCAPTCHA gatekeeper, you’re powerless to do anything except appeal to Twitter directly.  So I tried that and got an automated email in return.  The instructions are useless.  When I go to my account, I’m stuck at the “Are you a robot?” screen so no, I can’t “select” my “country/region” from the nowhere-to-be-seen “drop down menu”, and then enter” my “phone number”, which means I won’t be getting a code sent to my nonexistent cell phone.  So it’s impossible to type in this elusive code and click Submit when the “Your Code” and “Submit” boxes aren’t visible on my screen, which means I won’t be getting a confirmation email informing me that my “account is now unlocked”.

I’ve written them back to inform them of this (along with my irritation, a writer for a high-profile website, of being locked out of my own account in the first place) and have yet to receive a reply.

So, what now?  How long am I going to be in Twitter Jail before someone wakes up and realizes a mistake has been made?  And more importantly, how many other poor saps are going through the exact same annoyance?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
11:24 p.m.

UPDATE:  Well, that was fast.  Unbeknownst to me until this moment, just before midnight tonight, Twitter replied to my emails, told me they had unlocked my account and even apologized.  Twice.  I also got an explanation:

“Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules…”

A few hours after this message was sent, having not yet seen it, I decided to try getting on my account again.  When I was able to see my notifications and news feed as before, I cannot tell you how I relieved I was.  That’s when I checked my email and spotted the above message.

Many thanks to Twitter for resolving this issue swiftly and for the apologies.  It’s good to be back on.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, November 8, 2018
4:12 a.m.

In An Attempt To Ban Overzealous Trump Supporters, John Cusack Accidentally Blocks 2 Journalists On Twitter. I’m One Of Them.

Being blocked by a celebrity on Twitter is something of a surreal experience.  Out of the thousands of mentions and messages they receive daily, somehow you’ve managed to break through and be acknowledged.  But then, just as quickly, rejected.

Sometimes, there’s a response before you get blocked.  Sometimes, nothing at all.

Usually, when I get blocked by a famous person, there’s a good reason for it:  I’ve pissed them off.

As I noted in this space four years ago, Obama apologist Sophia Bush wasn’t terribly thrilled with my harsh criticisms of her.  After lamely engaging with me twice, she ignored me for a couple of months.  Then, fed up with more criticism, I was blocked.

After arguing with Rosie O’Donnell about an article Radley Balko wrote in The Washington Post, she blocked me, too.

Porn star Eden Alexander, who I was friendly with for years on Twitter, didn’t realize I’m anti-Hillary Clinton (my roughly 800 followers know this wasn’t exactly a state secret) until I pointed out to her the former Secretary of State’s questionable human rights record.  After noting her awful history of espousing policies that disproportionately hurt already suffering people of colour, according to Alexander, an Asian-American, I was exercising my “white privilege”.  Then, she blocked me.  We haven’t spoken since.

I didn’t even realize Bill Cosby was aware of me until out of curiosity I checked his account to see if he was publicly addressing the numerous women who’ve accused him of sexual assault.  Barely active on the social network, I was shocked to see he had blocked me.  I didn’t realize he knew I had been tweeting article after article about his predatory behaviour.  When I was younger, I was a huge fan of his.  But way too slowly over time, as an adult, I’ve eventually grown appalled by his actions.  Honestly, I’m pretty proud of that block.

The same thing happened with Jerry “The King” Lawler.  He was accused by his girlfriend of physical abuse and I tweeted some articles about the incident.  (The matter was eventually dropped altogether.)  That was enough to get me blocked.  John “Bradshaw” Layfield apparently doesn’t like people who support Mauro Ranallo, the former Smackdown Live play-by-play announcer he once worked with and allegedly bullied.  (Ranallo has since resurfaced on NXT.)  I was one of many who suddenly found themselves unable to read his tweets, even though I have never engaged with him on Twitter.

How weird to be blocked by two former colour commentators on Raw.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling doesn’t like those who support BDS for a free Palestine so she blocked me.  I still don’t know why Wil Wheaton won’t allow me to see his tweets any more.  I was actually following him for a while.

Certain journalists aren’t too fond of me, either.

I don’t remember what I did to annoy Tom Hawthorn years ago.  But he blocked me.

Cancer survivor and Boing Boing journo Xeni Jardin, who I otherwise had positive exchanges with, didn’t appreciate my listing of Obama’s worst policies, so, she rescinded my follow and shut the blinds on her tweets.

The Huffington Post’s Lauren Duca had some mysterious issue with me which led to me being blocked by her.  But, much to my surprise, I’m now unblocked.

I’m pretty sure the reason Alexa O’Brien temporarily blocked me was because I’m an Edward Snowden supporter.  Her animus towards him is baffling considering her strong, unquestioning backing of the recently released Chelsea Manning.  (I’ve been a Manning champion, as well.)  We had nothing but pleasant conversations, too.  Strange.

Arthur Chu and Media Matters For America’s Oliver Willis, who I called a “transphobic moron” for his anti-Manning views, don’t want anything to do with me, either.  (The feeling is mutual.)  I blocked Warren Kinsella, the controversial Liberal strategist, before he curiously blocked me.  Used to be friendly with him, too.  Not anymore.

Disappointingly, I can now add John Cusack to this growing list.

Recently, the actor (whose best movie remains The Grifters) and political activist (he was a Bernie Sanders supporter during the 2016 election) decided to mass block a number of overzealous Donald Trump “trolls”, as he frequently describes them, who have been swarming his timeline for months.  (Before that, he had been responding critically to some here and there.)  Unfortunately, this decision has led to some Trump critics getting blocked, as well.  Cusack seemed to anticipate this in a couple of subsequent tweets:

“Block lists have weeded out many of the [Trump] troll bots – but I’m sure some [were] blocked who aren’t trolls so sorry!”

“If you know any non maga [Trump’s campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’] trolls who want to be unblocked let me know – ”

Shadowproof managing editor Kevin Gosztola was puzzled by his blocking, as I was by mine.  Considering the fact that I have been nothing but supportive of Cusack (we’ve had few exchanges but they’ve all been friendly), I’m more than a little miffed by his sudden rejection of my follow.  How did I, and Gosztola for that matter, end up on a Trump troll block list when neither of us have exactly been gung-ho for this misogynistic, racist, serial abuser?

Anyway, the longer I’m blocked by Cusack without explanation, the more irritated and offended I feel by his mistake.  I asked Gosztola on Twitter if Cusack unblocked him yet.  He didn’t respond.

What’s really ironic about all of this?  Like Xeni Jardin, Cusack’s on the board of the Freedom Of The Press Foundation.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, July 6, 2017
2:52 a.m.

UPDATE:  Cusack had unwittingly blocked a third journalist, Luke Savage, who noted with irony today that the actor was nonetheless still tweeting out his articles.  After word got back to Cusack, he thankfully unblocked him.  As Savage remarked in a tweet, “I like John Cusack. Blockchains are bad, folks.”

So, when am I going to get unblocked?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 12, 2018
6:52 p.m.

How The Real Suey Park Is Just As Ignorant As The Fake Stephen Colbert

It’s so easy to be ignorant.  All you have to do is act without reason or compassion.

Last week, Suey Park did just that.

The 23-year-old Korean-American activist ordered her more than 20000 Twitter followers to make her hashtag – #CancelColbert – a trending topic by including it in their own tweets.  As a result, the campaign attracted massive online media attention.  (Salon.com posted no less than seven articles about it on their site alone.)

Now why did Park want to cancel The Colbert Report?  Because of this joke posted on the show’s official Twitter account.  (Both were eventually deleted.)

She found it offensive, arguing that fighting racism with more racism is still racism.  (The joke was taken from a segment mocking Washington Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder and his insultingly named charity, The Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.  Native American groups have been trying unsuccessfully to convince him to change the name of the team.  His response has been to half-heartedly pander to them in the most insensitive manner imaginable.)

First of all, who made her the spokesman of what is and isn’t acceptable satire?  Second of all, if only her simple logic were so persuasive.

Throughout the last several decades, numerous comedians and actors have used the language of racists in order to discredit and make fun of their dangerously false ideologies.  It’s always a risky technique.  If your pointed barbs don’t get laughs, the audience can easily turn on you.  But when done effectively, they’re laughing and thinking simultaneously.  Comedic satire is always at its best when it clicks on multiple levels.  It’s not meant to be taken literally, obviously.  Ms. Park knows that despite struggling mightily to be successfully satirical herself.  (Choosing “Angry Asian Woman” as your Twitter name and then proceeding to be just that in interview after interview is clearly missing the point.)

Consider All In The Family.  Its lead character was Archie Bunker who regularly insulted his Polish-American son-in-law Michael by calling him a “dumb Polack” even though he was a thoughtful Liberal.  Archie made numerous remarks about various ethnicities that were often offensive (his reference to Latinos and African-Americans as “spics and spades” in the pilot, for instance).  But because the character was inarticulate and clueless (he frequently misused words and employed distorted reasoning without any self-awareness), and his terminal grumpiness (he was rarely kind to his long-suffering wife Edith), he was a hilarious self-parody, an artificial, uninformed object of deserved derision.  Not unlike Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Also consider stand-ups like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle, Patton Oswalt and Chris Rock who’ve often used racially charged language to make broader points in their own comedic social commentaries.  Or how about Nigger Hatin’ Hat, a recurring song parody heard on The Howard Stern Show which knocks former rival Don Imus’ awful treatment of black people?  Or Throw The Jew Down The Well, the song Jewish-British performance artist Sasha Baron Cohen convinced unsuspecting white Americans in a bar to sing along with as Borat on his old Da Ali G Show?

Stephen Colbert is part of this rich anti-racist comic tradition.  The Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, as Ms. Park also knows, is the satirical version, a know-nothing conservative pundit specifically designed to emulate the closed-minded, anti-science paranoia of Fox News Channel types like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and longtime radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh.  He’s a carefully designed buffoon meant to savagely eviscerate all of their one-dimensional perspectives while being blissfully unaware that he’s even doing so in the first place.

Since the show’s inception in 2005, the fake Colbert has dove headfirst into race.  (The Ching Chong Ding Dong schtick that got him in trouble with Ms. Park and company was one of the first gags he did.  It was resurrected in 2011 when Limbaugh foolishly attempted a fake Chinese accent during his radio show while describing the then-Chinese leader Hu Jintao.)  It’s one of many complex subjects he and his writing staff have been fearlessly mining for material four days a week for almost a decade to much acclaim and popularity.

So when Ms. Park and her followers decided to take him on for one anti-racist joke they didn’t care for (out of probably many more they could’ve chosen from), it was a clear mismatch right from the start.  When Colbert dedicated an entire show to the controversy, he effectively killed off any momentum the misguided campaign had left at that point by cleverly and humourously mixing his real thoughts on Park herself (he wisely told her jerkiest critics to stop harassing and threatening her on Twitter and to let her speak her mind) with the fake Colbert’s obliviousness on his own undetected bigotry (“white American male is neutral”).

He also slyly noted that Michelle Malkin, the frequent Fox News contributor who once wrote a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 (she is Filipino, by the way), has enthusiastically supported #CancelColbert, a rather uncomfortable fact Park’s supporters haven’t seemed too eager to mention.  Park herself has been silent on the subject.

Shortly after Colbert’s rebuttal, Park was interviewed by Salon.com.  Despite what the increasingly out-of-touch Bob Somerby over at The Daily Howler would love to believe, the young activist has no one to blame but herself for her pitiful performance.  That said, even he couldn’t deny the “rambling” nature of her often contradictory, nonsensical comments.

Late last year when Park’s #NotYourAsianSidekick Twitter campaign started to catch fire she told one interviewer how surprised she was that it ever became popular at all.  I suspect she is even more surprised by all the attention #CancelColbert received this year.  As a result, because she now claims she didn’t actually want the show to be cancelled (she says she’s a fan but it doesn’t sound like she’s a regular viewer), when the media asked her what the point of it all was, she hasn’t done a very good job of fully explaining her true motives.

If she didn’t want The Colbert Report yanked off the air, what did she want exactly?  Beyond her basic I-don’t-like-it-when-white-liberals-use-racist-language-to-knock-racism talking point, she won’t say.  In fact, at least two interviewers have been scolded for even trying to get more answers out of her, most notably Huffington Post Live’s Jeff Zepps.  (She told him it was a “loaded question” when he asked her why she singled out Colbert.)

In the Salon interview, she told Prachi Gupta that she was more interested in the “reaction and conversation” she “was trying to create” rather than having her (and us, for that matter) fully “understand my context” which doesn’t make any sense.  When someone launches a public campaign to cancel a TV show it’s clear they’re more interested in censorship than actual dialogue.  The fact that she couldn’t even be bothered to watch Colbert’s full-show response is very telling, as well.

Indeed, when it comes to this business of having a conversation, Ms. Park would prefer it to be completely one-sided.  Anyone who disagrees with her is part of the problem whether it’s those unnamed, evil “white liberals” she frequently rails against or fellow Asian Americans who either thought the joke was funny (in and/or out of context) or were also offended but disagreed with her cancellation campaign.  To her, the latter are those unacceptable “good Asians” who act more like “sidekicks” to us dreaded Caucasians rather than independent thinkers like her.  So, by that rather rigid logic, the only acceptable Asian-Americans to her are those who are always in line with stunts like this?  She’d make a hell of a dictator.

There’s a troubling, fascistic narcissism heavily sautéed with growing defensiveness to her public statements and actions that make you wonder how she attracts so many willing supporters who, for now, are standing by her rampant foolishness.  It’s clear that the sheer volume of attention the #CancelColbert campaign received overwhelmed her so much she has thus far been unable to articulate to a satisfying degree why it really matters and where we go from here.  (Or maybe she just doesn’t care.)

Nor is she interested in persuasion.  Her blatant hostility to white liberals in general (yet curiously, not white conservatives) and her startling inability to accept that not all Asian-Americans think exactly like her is so unbelievably hypocritical, not to mention deeply insulting, one wonders why she doesn’t immediately recognize this bogus double standard.  Is she as clueless about her own prejudices as the fake Stephen Colbert is about his own?  The evidence isn’t comforting.

On her Twitter account, she recently acknowledged the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest civil rights leaders in American history.  While King’s primary goal was to be a big, strong voice for Black Americans and to help improve & secure their rights and freedoms in a country that has a long history of denying them & their humanity, he didn’t do so at the expense of White America who he viewed as allies, not enemies.  The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, one of the most important pieces of domestic legislation ever passed, would not have happened without the support of hundreds of Caucasian Representatives and Senators, both Republican and Democrat.

But when Park was asked by Salon, “What is the best way to work with white people, to get them on our side?”, regarding her own causes, she responded, “I don’t want them on our side.”

Martin Luther King gave his life to bring the races together.  The divisive Suey Park would rather piss on that proud legacy.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, April 5, 2014
3:13 a.m.

What Sucked In 2013

1. Nelson Mandela died.

2. Roger Ebert died.

3. Lou Reed died.

4. Monday Night Raw became completely unwatchable.

5. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to military prison for 35 years because she exposed American war crimes.

6. CM Punk lost the WWE Championship to The Rock at The Royal Rumble in a match that did not live up to expectations.  Not even close.  Punk should still be the champion.

7. Evil Dead.  Not an improvement over Sam Raimi’s overrated original.

8. The Bella Twins returned to the WWE.

9. The Miz’ babyface run.  He gave you no reason to root for him.

10. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper hasn’t been prosecuted for lying to Congress.

11. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford didn’t resign his office and hasn’t been arrested for any of his publicly disclosed legally dubious transgressions.

12. Dolph Ziggler’s unfortunate concussion which led to an abbreviated World Heavyweight Championship reign.  His unpersuasive face turn is even worse.  Like The Miz, he hasn’t changed anything about his character.

13. The media’s blatant misrepresentation of Pope Francis.  He’s no liberal reformer.

14. Howard Stern’s misguided support for the NYPD’s discredited, discriminatory Stop and Frisk program, which is now thankfully on the decline.  Maybe if he was Black or Hispanic he would understand the outrage.

15. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin.  A botched, overzealous prosecution got in the way of real justice.  We may never know the whole story.

16. My nasty migraine that lasted for weeks back in the late Spring.  (Thanks to my doctor for suggesting Aleve.  That shit works.)

17. U2’s next studio album didn’t get released.  (It’s out in March.)

18. Austin Aires wasn’t fired from TNA for being a sexist dick to ring announcer Christy Hemme on Impact Wrestling.

19. Paul Walker died.

20. Jeffrey Toobin’s dopey comments about Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald’s husband, David Miranda.  Why has he been taking the government’s side on the mass surveillance issue?  Is he really this ignorant about the importance of whistleblowers and respecting privacy?

21. The new WWE Championship belt.  It did the impossible.  It made me nostalgic for the Spinner strap.

22. Evan Bourne still hasn’t returned to the WWE.

23. The firing of Jim Ross.  Is it his fault Ric Flair can’t be muzzled?

24. Renee Young on Vintage.  She’s even more annoying than Matt Striker.  I can’t watch it anymore.

25. Gitmo remains open despite a mass hunger strike involving most of the unconvicted detainees that caused a firestorm of controversy for much of the year.  (It’s still active today but with fewer participants and no more military updates.  The truth makes America look bad, you see.)

26. The unlawful force feeding of many of those same detainees.  Obama loves torturing innocent people just as much as Bush and Cheney ever did.

27. Cory Monteith died.

28. Along with the aforementioned Evil Dead remake, all the other awful movies I screened this year:  Zero Dark Thirty, Grown-ups, Beastly, House At The End Of The Street, Friday After Next, 50 First Dates, Texas Chainsaw, Beetlejuice, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, The Three Stooges remake, Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke, No Time For Sargeants, Meet Monica Velour, The Gate, The Purge, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Hold Your Breath, The Apparition, Spice World, Paranormal Activity 4, A Haunted House, Nanny McPhee and all 7 Saw movies.

29. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West hooked up and are now procreating.  Please make it stop.

30. The American federal government shutdown.  Way to piss off America, Republicans.

31. Dennis Rodman’s bizarre friendship with ruthless North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un, a man who just had his uncle executed.

32. Curtis Axel.  Even the great Paul Heyman couldn’t get him over.

33. The Boston Marathon bombing.  Watching the footage of the bombs going off is still deeply unsettling.

34. The death of Paul Bearer.  Rest.  In.  Peace.

35. Tiger Woods started dating Lindsay Vonn.  She must have a bad memory.

36. James Gandolfini died.

37. The Egyptian military coup.  America truly doesn’t want Muslims to control their own destinies.  The Muslim Brotherhood are far from perfect but they were democratically elected.  How are they exactly “terrorists”?

38. The flood in Calgary.

39. The massive fire on the boardwalk on the Jersey Shore.  More heartbreak for citizens and business owners after the treachery of Superstorm Sandy last year.

40. Ted Cruz’ incredibly stupid filibuster against the Affordable Care Act.  A total waste of time and extremely self-serving.

41. An important element of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was struck down by the American Supreme Court.  It needs to be restored, pronto.

42. Despite winning the WWE Championship twice, Daniel Bryan never got a chance to have a lengthy title run.  Maybe in 2014.

43. The Bangladesh tragedy.  A jolting reminder of the importance of unions and the heartless indifference of greedy corporations.

44. The North American ice storm.  Shades of 1998 on a thankfully much smaller scale.

45. The tragic train explosion in Lac Megantic, Quebec.  Completely preventable.

46. Rolling Stone/Buzzfeed reporter and author Michael Hastings died.

47. Detroit filed for bankruptcy.

48. All the insane fuss over George, the Royal Baby.  Nobody cares.

49. The unfair prosecution of Justin Carter.  Drop it already.  He’s been punished enough.

50. The excessive coverage of the Jodi Arias murder trial.

51. Glenn Greenwald left The Guardian.

52. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruthless crackdown on LGBT citizens in his own country.

53. The mysterious murder of American teen Kendrick Johnson.  Will it ever be solved?

54. Alberto Del Rio’s half-year run as a babyface.  It was botched from the start and never recovered.

55. Alec Baldwin still can’t keep his temper in check.

56. President Obama’s drones are still killing innocent civilians.  Where is the accountability?

57. The nine hour detention of David Miranda, Greenwald’s husband, by British airport authorities.  If they thought this would stop the former lawyer from continuing to report on the NSA’s bullshit, they completely miscalculated.

58. Omar Khadr and John Kiriakou are still in prison for doing absolutely nothing wrong.  Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond are also being punished but for committing honourable acts of civil disobedience.  Free and pardon them all.

59. The DVD player in my TV only loads discs when it wants to and rarely on the first attempt.  (I know.  Woe is me.)  Got to figure out how to upgrade to Blu-Ray.

60. All the thousands of Americans murdered and wounded by guns since Newtown.  When will the madness end?

61. The typhoon in the Philippines.

62. Rhianna reunited with Chris Brown.  Thankfully, it was short-lived.

63. Howard Stern’s cluelessness on Edward Snowden.  When you find yourself agreeing with Scott DePace, dog beater and inventor of the Video Caddy, there’s something wrong with you.

64. Jean Stapleton died.  We’ll miss you, dingbat.

65. The Canadian penny was discontinued.  A major pain in the ass for retailers.

66. The phony controversy over Rolling Stone putting one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers on its cover.  That same picture was used on the front of The New York Times earlier, so where was the anger then?

67. Storage Wars: Canada.  One spin-off too many.

68. John Cena and Randy Orton continue to get world title pushes.  Why?

69. Sophia Bush’s absolute refusal to criticize President Obama.  What will it take for her to wake up to reality and stop being such a big baby about my harsh comments?

70. I bought a new VCR/DVD combo player that was incompatible with my barely existing TV/DVD combo player.  Thankfully, it was returned for a full refund.  Still, what a huge disappointment.

71. Lara Logan wasn’t fired from 60 Minutes for her erroneous Benghazi report.

72. The return of Anthony Weiner’s penis.  Why is a married guy seeking other opinions?

73. Megyn Kelly of Fox News claiming she was just joking when she said Santa and Jesus are white.  No, you weren’t.

74. Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s awful comments about blacks and gays, and his support for marrying underage teenage girls.  Maybe it’s time for him to go back on drugs.

75. Aaron Swartz killed himself.  Shame on you, Department of Justice, for pushing him into an awful decision.

76. Time Magazine and The Advocate naming Pope Francis Person Of The Year.  Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, respectively, were more deserving.

77. Careless Teens.  See what you did, Jackass?

78. The Mali mall massacre.

79. The crackdown on Turkish protestors.

80. Nia Moore on The Real World: Portland.  What a fucking psycho.

81. President Obama remains in office despite imprisoning whistleblowers, investigating journalists, force-feeding mostly innocent hunger striking Gitmo detainees, and ordering the murders of Muslims without proof of wrongdoing via drones.  Where is the outrage?

82. The awesome Reeva Steenkamp, so much more than just a beautiful woman, was tragically murdered by her boyfriend, the once inspiring Paralympian Oscar Pistorius.  Will he get away with it?

83. The Huffington Post’s Bob Cesca.  Why is he more critical of Glenn Greenwald than Barton Gellman when they’ve reported on the exact same things?  And why is he downplaying the significance of Edward Snowden’s revelations?

84. Crossfire returned.  Was it really missed these past nine years?

85. Rand Paul’s plagiarism scandal.  Absolutely no excuse for it.

86. Alex Rodriquez was able to keep playing for the New York Yankees despite being caught using performance enhancing drugs.  Again.

87. The relentless criticism levelled against Seth McFarlane regarding his performance as Oscar host.  Feminists, I love you.  You’ve done so much good for the world, even today, but you’re wrong about this one.  He wasn’t sexist.  He was funny and clever.  (When he said you wouldn’t let things go, you proved him right.)

88. The Edmonton Oilers.  I can’t even watch their televised regular season games anymore.  Too depressing.

89. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats lost to The Saskatchewan Rough Riders in The Grey Cup.

90. Sophia Bush complained that I criticized her charity work.  Wrong.  I criticized her chronic inability to hold her “hero” President Obama to the same standard on human rights abuses as convenient villain of the moment, Joseph Kony of the Congo.  Her paraphrasing of my words is grossly inaccurate and deeply insulting.

91. CNN’s Chris Cuomo’s embarrassing prime-time interview with Amanda Knox.  Why is he so obsessed with her sex life?

92. Knox and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are being retried in Italy in the Meredith Kercher murder case despite already being cleared and the real culprit already serving his sentence.

93. The ongoing sequester in America.  Far more damaging than the three-week shutdown.

94. Nigella Lawson’s awful year.  Choked out by her soon-to-be-ex-husband in public, accused of being a cokehead in a lawsuit.

95. The Rock vs. John Cena at WrestleMania 29.  I thought it would be better than their WrestleMania 28 encounter.  I was wrong.

96. Manti Te’o got catfished and covered it up.  Many can relate but few will admit it.

97. The media overhype over the nonexistent “Knockout Game”.  Stop scaring people.  That’s the NSA’s job.

98. The shooting death of Sammy Yatim by police while he was having an episode on a TTC streetcar.  What happened to peaceful negotiations leading to surrender?

99. The murder of Tim Bosma.  And for what?  His pick-up truck?  Despicable.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, December 29, 2013
6:18 p.m.

Justin Carter, Another Victim Of US Prosecutorial Overreach

It was a stupid thing to post, made clearly in jest and in the heat of the moment.  And now it may cost him his life.

Back in February, then-18-year-old Justin Carter was on Facebook with a pal having an argument with a stranger over an online video game.  After the stranger noted that he was a bit off, a darkly sarcastic Carter wrote the following in reply:

“I’m fucked in the head alright. I think I’ma shoot up a kindergarten. And watch the blood of the innocent rain down. And eat the beating heart of one of them.”

He ended the comment with “LOL jk”.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there.  A Canadian woman somehow spotted this, did some online research and learned that Carter lives near a elementary school.  She alerted the authorities.  A search warrant was granted.

On Valentine’s Day, Carter was arrested at his workplace for making a “terroristic threat” and remains in custody to this day.  Bail bond was originally set at $250000, then bumped up to half a million dollars.  Although his family only has to pay 10% of that to have him released, they can’t even afford to pay the $50000 to take him back home.

But now the story has taken a more sinister turn.  According to this, the Texas teen, who celebrated his 19th birthday in jail, is on suicide watch as he depressingly fears he will be convicted and imprisoned for a decade, all because of a dumb Facebook comment.

It’s bad enough that the unidentified Canadian woman and the Texas authorities don’t understand that “lol” means “laughing out loud” and “jk” means “just kidding” (absurdly, they dispute these were even found in the original posting), extremely common Internet chat abbreviations.  It’s even worse that through their investigation they found absolutely no weapons or any evidence he was planning a legitimate massacre.

All they did find was a typical dopey teenager with a sick sense of humour.  Not exactly public enemy number one and not a good enough reason to put someone away.  Whether you like it or not, his posted comment is constitutionally protected free speech.

But with renewed interest in gun massacres post-Sandy Hook, once again common sense has been replaced by mass hysteria.  And according to this, Carter isn’t the only victim of that unfortunate hysteria.

For those who still think America believes in the First Amendment, this story will strongly challenge your convictions.  At the heart of it is an increasingly paranoid police state eager to lock up anyone even remotely considered subversive for ridiculously long periods of time.  Just ask Bradley Manning.  Or Aaron Swartz, for that matter.  (Oh, right.  He’s dead.)  And for what?  To make everyone in the country feel safer?  To possibly help the private prison industry make more money by housing more inmates?  Or maybe to exterminate free speech & dissent once and for all?

Regardless, after four and a half months behind bars, surely Carter has been thoroughly punished enough for something he never should’ve been arrested for in the first place.  But no, that’s not good enough for the authorities.  To add insult to injury, they offered him a Omar Khadr-style plea deal:  admit culpability and your sentence will only be eight years, rather than the maximum ten.  How awfully generous of them.  Carter has understandably rejected that disrespectful gesture.

Honestly, what has happened to the justice system in America?  We have a President who has ordered the murders of countless people without any evidence of wrongdoing, who doesn’t recognize previously exonerated but still incarcerated Gitmo detainees as “persons” and tortures them on a daily basis against their will, who harshly prosecutes honourable whistleblowers who expose the crimes of his administration and who thinks that spying on everyone in the entire world in the name of “national security” is perfectly reasonable.

We have an economic community that systematically screwed people out of their hard-earned money and their living spaces.  And we have a media culture that thoroughly kisses the asses of these powerful, institutional elites who are able to get away with any number of these crimes because these overpaid blow job “journalists” don’t believe it’s their job to hold them to account.

How many days in jail have Obama and Wall Street spent for committing their horrible acts?  A combined zero.

But not to worry, everyone.  The harmless dumb guy who made a tasteless joke is facing “justice”, a full decade’s worth.

Happy fourth of July, America!

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, July 4, 2013
10:29 p.m.

UPDATE:  A very kind human being paid Carter’s bail, so thankfully he won’t be beaten up and put in solitary confinement any longer.  Now if only the prosecution would drop this incredibly cruel case and let the kid be.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, July 13, 2013
4:58 p.m.

Why Sophia Bush Blocked Me On Twitter

I shouldn’t be surprised.  In fact, I’m amazed it didn’t happen sooner.

For some time now I’ve been a major critic of actress Sophia Bush.  No, not because of her acting, but because of her inconsistent approach to political activism.

For all the good work she’s done defending the LGBT community, the cancer community, domestic animals, domestic violence victims, the poor and the environment, when it comes to the shoddy human rights record of her beloved President Obama, however, she’s not so outspoken.  “I don’t think the man is perfect,” is about as tough as she’s gotten.

It’s true.  She has been completely onboard with the controversial Kony 2012 campaign.  (I’ve yet to see any proof Joseph Kony is a bad man worth worrying about but if this Al Jazeera commentary is accurate, why hasn’t he been arrested and put on trial?)  And, three days ago, in regards to the recent uprising in Turkey, she tweeted, “human rights violations are the entire world’s business.  We are watching.  We will not be silent.”

But on the issues of Obama-ordered drones killing hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent Muslim and American civilians; the indefinite detention and torturing of hunger-striking, never-convicted-of-any-crime prisoners in Gitmo; the outrageous war on courageous whistleblowers including the tortured Private First Class Bradley Manning (whose joke of a trial finally began after his three years in military custody); the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya; the war on the press and the growing tentacles of the ever-expanding surveillance state, all “human rights violations”, she is completely silent.  You see, she believes The President is “a unicorn” and “heroic” so he’s allowed to do whatever he wants, war crimes and all.  No wonder he had his picture taken with her.  She never holds him to account.

It’s clear now that some human rights matter more to her than others (a commonality among die-hard Obama supporters who railed against the Bush Administration for the exact same transgressions), a glaring discrepancy I’ve pointed out in several pieces in this space and in a number of tweets.  (Silly me.  I thought all human rights mattered.  My bad.)  Back in March, much to my utter amazement, she actually responded to me on Twitter.  Let’s just say she wasn’t too pleased with my critiques.  (Who would?  They were severe and unflinching.)  Ms. Bush was even less enthused after I wrote this as a rebuttal.  (“…grow up…” “…you sound like a petulant child…”)  She absurdly claimed I knocked her charity work when the truth is I’ve always praised it.  I don’t know if she read the second update.  She wouldn’t have liked it, anyway.  The thin-skinned actress prefers to have her ass thoroughly kissed.  That’s not what I do here.  I’m too honest for that.

Since then, I’ve continued to occasionally write and tweet about her, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, without garnering another response.  Not a huge shock by any means.  I mean, let’s be real here.  No one likes to be harshly criticized, especially when that criticism is valid and can’t be refuted.  But it’s not as though she’s afraid to be combative as this aptly demonstrates.  (Too bad she was wasting her time with creepy jerks who successfully wound her up just because they could.  Sad.)

But two and a half months after our brief exchange on Twitter, she’s now blocked me.  (I consider it an honour, quite frankly.)  Yesterday, when I clicked on one of her tweets to check out the responses, the dreaded “You are not authorized to look up related results for that Tweet.” message popped up.  Weirdly, I was able to see the responses, at least some of them, after clicking “Details”.  And then that message returned as if I didn’t understand it the first time.  Also, when I now check my Twitter home page for tweets that I directly sent to her (there weren’t many), I can see what I wrote but her tweets have now been replaced with “@SophiaBush’s account has been protected”.

Protected from what, exactly?  Reality?  Thankfully, when “Details” is clicked on any of these tweets, her comments are visible.

So what was the final straw for the One Tree Hill star?  This and this.  Although, I’m pretty sure this, this and this were major factors, as well.  Who knows if she returned to this space, too.  Her reaction would’ve been the same, I’m sure.

But, like I said, this isn’t a surprise to me.  When you write brutal poetry like You’re Not As Smart As You Think You Are, Hot Girl Bubble, Silence Isn’t Justice and I’m Your Conscience as well as an ironic piece entitled Sophia Bush, The Queen Of Consistency, you shouldn’t expect a bouquet of roses in appreciation.  You should expect either some kind of negative response or none at all.

I was fortunate.  I got a taste of the former in between the latter.  Honestly, considering the sheer volume of tweets she must receive everyday, both negative and positive and not just from her near 800000 followers, she took the time to write to me on Twitter on two separate occasions.  That’s significant.

It’s also disappointing that, thanks to my typically blunt manner (it’s in the genes), I’ve not been able to convince her that Obama is no hero but rather, the latest shady ruler of the crumbling American empire.  What is happening under his watch is a fucking disgrace and the more voices, particularly the famous ones, who speak out about his betrayal of the values of The Land Of The Free, the more likely things will actually start to improve.  (Kudos to folks like Russell Brand and John Cusack for doing their part in using their popular voices to raise awareness of these issues.)  Like the situation in Turkey, governments should fear the people and not vice versa, and like my poem says, silence isn’t justice.  Ms. Bush doesn’t agree.

Despite my stubborn hope that she will one day wake up and accept that all of this heavy stuff is actually going on thanks to Obama and is not simply “theoretical”, she is remaining equally stubborn with her resistance.  And now she will no longer entertain the nuisance that is me on Twitter.  I completely understand.  It’s not easy to deal with someone who points out your hypocrisies, your inconsistencies, your blatant disregard for legitimately holding your American government officials responsible for so much suffering at home and abroad.

It’s so much easier to look away and pretend it’s not happening.

Thankfully, Bradley Manning is not Sophia Bush.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
3:52 a.m.

UPDATE:  I don’t know exactly when and I don’t know the reason why but I’m no longer blocked.  After not checking her account for several weeks last year, out of curiosity I went back, opened up a tweet and was surprised that the “you are not authorized” message no longer appeared.  I thought it was a mistake.  Twitter has gone through some changes in the last little while and surely that was why it didn’t show up.

No.  It wasn’t a mistake.

Just to make sure, after a long break, I sent her this tweet on Friday.  (It went through without incident.  She has not responded to it.  Probably never will.)  Bush opposes the proposed Northern Keystone XL pipeline (as do I) but, to my knowledge, hadn’t mentioned the fact the Southern portion (which I also oppose) was already approved expeditiously by President Obama in March 2012 and is currently operational, much to the annoyance of opponents, activists and residents in the Southern United States.

However, she did retweet this alarming DeSmogBlog article this weekend.  (I retweeted it, as well.)  Reposted on Ecowatch.com, it exposes serious concerns with the Southern pipeline thanks to an outspoken whistleblower who is very worried about the possible environmental consequences to Texas land.  (One concerned, elderly citizen has been libelled an “eco-terrorist” by TransCanada, Keystone’s manufacturer, for bravely protesting the pipeline.)  Sadly, unlike the link I sent her, the DeSmogBlog report doesn’t mention Obama’s embarrassing advocacy for it.

Also, on her Twitter bio, “Activist” has switched places with “Storyteller” (for some reason, she prefers this over the more accurate “Actor”; she’s not a screenwriter and hasn’t directed since her One Tree Hill days).  Originally, Activist was first and Storyteller was second.  Now, she has reversed them.  I know to most this is not very interesting but considering all of my criticism over the last year (although I suspect it had absolutely nothing to do with the change), it’s curious.

Finally, since the original posting of this article, Bradley Manning made an official change. The persecuted whistleblower is now a transgendered woman who prefers to be called Chelsea Manning.  She remains wrongly incarcerated in military prison for exposing American war crimes going back to the George W. Bush Administration.  May she be pardoned and released very soon.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, March 16, 2014
2:56 a.m.

UPDATE 2:  Now I’m wondering if I was ever unblocked at all.  More than 2 months later, I’m unable to retweet this comment.  When I tried, I got this message:  “Your account may not be allowed to perform this action.  Please refresh the page and try again.”  So, just for the hell of it, I did try again a few additional times, just to make sure.  Same result every time.  So, I’m guessing my supposedly “unblocked tweets” were never actually seen by her.  It’s just as well.  She’s too stubborn and foolish to embrace what I say anyway.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, May 26, 2014
3:45 a.m.

Why I Finally Broke Down And Started Tweeting

Throughout my life I’ve found it incredibly easy to resist.  A suggestion to do something fun, an invitation to attend a social event, a constructive criticism to help improve shoddy work, an idea for a creative venture.  When someone makes any of these types of pitches to me in any number of situations, more times than not my natural instinct is to resist, to express disinterest, to get upset, to completely pass.  You could say I’m like Jim Carrey’s “No Man” in Yes Man.  Sad, I know.

Now, has saying no in general prevented me from making bad decisions I’d otherwise immediately regret?  Of course it has.  But hasn’t it also prevented me from enjoying new experiences in new environments with new people I might’ve liked and befriended resulting in new, fresh perspectives on various things?  Without a doubt. 

This is one of the reasons why I love the Internet.  For someone who is not naturally outgoing and forceful (for the most part) the freedom to explore the world without having to leave my home opened me up in ways not previously possible.  Now did I do stupid things I would’ve never tried out in the real world?  Yes (minus any significant consequences, it must be said).  But the information superhighway also afforded me creative and personal opportunities well out of my reach when I didn’t possess this wonderful piece of technology.

That being said, I can still be a stubborn ass.  For two years, I ignored two open invitations to join Facebook, one from an old college friend I had reconnected with after a lost decade on separate paths and a family member.  What changed my mind about joining the controversial social network?  A lousy online break-up.  It took a while to get over but I finally moved on, with thanks, in part, to Facebook.

The first time I learned about the now-defunct Writer’s Digest Community was in 2009 through one of WD’s regular email newsletters.  After bookmarking the address, what convinced me to eventually join that particular social network two years later?  I needed the hits.  My website had been on WordPress for six months and was in desperate need of a boost.  Thankfully, it got one.

Which brings me to Twitter.   For many, many years, I’ve resisted the lure of the tweet, the temptation to imitate Larry King 140 characters at a time.  (“I think Teri Garr’s a big talent.”  “Why is apple sauce so yummy?”) Put simply, I never got it.  Why would I waste my time sending out short, insignificant messages on there when I can send out long, insignificant ones right here?

After WDC disappeared this past December I wondered about other ways I could publicize my blog for free.  Sending out press releases that no one would read was instantly nixed.  So was joining LinkedIn.  (One of my college professors, who I’m still friendly with, invited me to sign up sometime last year.  But after some investigating I didn’t feel comfortable becoming part of a community that had been hacked.  And after reading a lot of bad reviews from users I wasn’t persuaded that it would help me advance my writing career.)

For quite some time I had been checking out the official Twitter accounts of Sophia Bush, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Howard Stern, former WWE Champion CM Punk and numerous others.  Sometimes I would laugh, sometimes I would get deeply annoyed and sometimes I would be moved by their postings. 

It must be said they have an astounding number of followers.  (The power of celebrity is more potent online than it is anywhere else.)  Despite being a mostly unknown blogger for eight years, I’ve never accumulated more than tens of followers directly through my site.  These famous folks are generating huge followings ranging as low as hundreds of thousands up to tens of millions of people.  If I joined them how could I possibly compete with those numbers?

That aside, over the weekend, I started to write down all the reasons I should stick with my “no policy” as well as the reasons why I should lighten up and give this thing a chance.  (I had eight for and seven against.)  In the end, despite my strong reservations, I had finally convinced myself that whatever I perceived to be imperfect about Twitter was worth tolerating if it meant exposing The Writings Of Dennis Earl to a whole new audience.

So, on January 28, I signed up.  (You can follow me @DennisCEarl.)  I have to admit that, so far, it’s not been a bad experience.  Tweeting is very easy to do.  You simply click a button, a small window pops up and you start typing.  A character counter in the bottom right hand corner of the screen keeps track of your limit.  When you’re done, you click again and voila, there’s your tweet for all to see. 

As expected, I don’t have many followers at the moment.  I had forgotten that Green Venture, a local non-profit environmental agency that I briefly wrote for in the fall of 2009, had actually invited me to join Twitter a year or so ago but I simply ignored the request.  Once I officially signed in to my Twitter homepage for the first time, they were my first follower (because their original invitation was not actually rejected).  Shortly thereafter, Monkeybiz.ca, another non-profit site that published numerous movie and music reviews of mine over the last few years, started following me as well.  And that’s where things stand at the moment.

Thus far, I’ve posted 16 tweets, most of which feature links to certain blog pieces I’ve written here.  (Expect a lot more of that soon.)  And I’ve slowly started finding accounts to follow (mostly celebrities).  I haven’t directly messaged anyone yet or started any silly Twitter wars but it’s early.  All I really hope for is to find some more readers through the service.

In the meantime, like I said, please follow me @DennisCEarl either through Twitter directly or by clicking the Follow button on here.  It can be seen right under my five most recent tweets underneath the search box on the upper right side of my homepage, right above “Categories”. 

As always, thanks for stopping by.  More entries and tweeting yet to come.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 31, 2013
12:45 a.m.