Strictly Business

Posted on | November 1, 2011 | 142 Comments

“The Pagan Right is a vigorous defender of conservative values and classical liberalism in an arena that few other conservatives have access to. It is time the movements were linked together so that both are strengthened.”
— Rob Taylor, Jan. 22, 2001

In January 2008, I interviewed Roger L. Simon, CEO of PJM, for a feature article in The Washington Times, in which I wrote, “In this Wild West online frontier, Mr. Simon might as well be John Wayne.”

Between the time I interviewed Roger and the time that interview was published, I tendered my resignation at the Times, so that this feature profile was actually my last bylined article for the paper.

Though entirely a coincidence, this was perhaps fitting, as I subsequently have made my career as a gunslinger in that “Wild West online frontier.” And for a while, I was an occasional contributor to PJM, for example reporting on a July 2008 campaign appearance by John McCain in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and reporting from the Democratic National Convention in August.

That friendly relationship continued until Sept. 12, 2009, when my PJM coverage of the 9/12 March on Washington — the biggest rally of the Tea Party movement — proved to be the spark that lit the fuse of Charles Johnson’s final meltdown at Little Green Footballs. Although Roger professed continued friendship toward me, my future offers to contribute at PJM were rebuffed by the editors (not Roger himself) and, with the exception of an April 2010 article specially solicited by my friend Charlie Martin, I ceased to be a contributor.

Certainly this was not the result of any animosity on my part. Many of my friends are associated with PJM and link me in their blogs. However, it gradually became obvious to me that something (most likely my role in the LGF meltdown) had made me persona non grata in the eyes of influential people at PJM. Someone within the organization had decided I could never officially be affiliated with PJM.

“It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

It’s frustrating, this inability to remedy a problem I understand completely: Being “controversial” makes it impossible for friends to offer me positions for which I am otherwise qualified.

Charles Johnson understood this, too: If he could do nothing else to harm me — and I have continued to succeed despite all his deranged viciousness — Johnson knew that his attacks would attach a permanent taint to my name, forever casting me under a penumbra of suspicion that would damage my career as a professional journalist. So I am sympathetic when my friends at PJM and other organizations profess their personal friendship for me and their admiration for my work and yet, inevitably, pre-emptively strike me from the list of names to be considered when it comes to hiring opportunities or other recognition.

Not a Synonym for ‘Crazy’

No one will ever say this to my face, of course, and I sometimes wonder if perhaps my friends are no longer even consciously aware of why they hold me at arm’s length. Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure, and there is a sort of momentum to things like this, whereby one snub leads to the next rejection and so on until, before you know it, you find yourself on the receiving end of backhanded insults. And when you attempt to halt this snowball of negativity by calling attention to such contemptuous treatment, the friends who have insulted you will redouble the insult by accusing you of “whining,” and others act as if you have lost your mind.

About a month ago, when I e-mailed friends to express alarm at an apparent increase of negative attitudes toward me, one friend responded by urging me to seek professional help for a “chemical imbalance”!

Well, maybe I get so jacked up on coffee that my e-mails sometimes seem crazy, but there is nothing irrational in my perception of the situation. Nor is there anything insane about my efforts to prevent the problem from snowballing by publicly calling attention to occasional snubs.

My methods may be unusual, but “unusual” is not a synonym for “crazy.”

Keep this in mind: If you find yourself excluded where you expected to be included, one of two explanations is possible:

You have been considered and rejected; or
You were merely ignored.

This is applicable to many scenarios in organizational dynamics. If you find yourself passed over or excluded in such a situation, a judgment has been rendered. Your natural sense that you have been unfairly rejected does not justify anger toward the person or persons who have rendered this judgment. Nor is a self-pitying attitude of victimhood helpful. Your emotions, although perfectly understandable, cannot explain or resolve your problem.

In a situation where you have been considered and rejected, the decision may reflect an honest assessments of your shortcomings. More likely, however, you were merely ignored — overlooked, “out of sight, out of mind,” a name that never occurred to the decision-maker when they were compiling the list that did not include you. For some reason, your abilities and achievements have not earned the positive attention you had hoped.

Either way, the best way to remedy your problem — assuming it is not irremediable — is to seek an explanation from the decision-maker. “What am I doing wrong? How may I fix whatever the problem is?” Whether you were rejected because you are a Bad Person, or omitted because you are a Nobody, you’re never going to know the answer if you don’t ask.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

All of this is preamble to an astonishing bit of news: PJM has hired David Swindle as an associate editor. Swindle evidently had been given hiring authority for “PJM Culture,” and has hired Rob Taylor among the contributors to this new project.

Friends contacted me about this, and I was at first tempted to write Roger Simon an e-mail with the subject line, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”?

The choice of Swindle is astonishing enough. It took Swindle less than two years to run David Horowitz’s NewsReal blog into the ground. Failed online projects are common enough that one cannot necessarily blame the pilots of the doomed aircraft. However, this particular crash produced complaints from some former NewsReal contributors that suggested poor judgment on Swindle’s part. Most especially, Swindle invited American University student Alex Knepper to contribute at NewsReal and, when Knepper subsequently offended readers, Swindle then mounted an extraordinary (and evidently quite personal) vendetta against Knepper.

Well, Swindle is a young man and young men sometimes do foolish things, being unfamiliar with the Ways Things Should Be Done. As weird as the Knepper episode was, however, I might have dimissed it as a rookie mistake had Swindle not subsequently permitted a NewsReal blogger to personally defame me and refused to rectify the blunder. As I wrote in June:

[L]ast December, [Rob] Taylor used his posting privileges at David Horowitz’s NewsReal blog to compare me to serial killer John Wayne Gacy (!), and when I objected to his malicious defamation, Taylor doubled down, calling my blog a “little LGF like cult of degenerates, ‘Men’s’ movement sissies and neo-nazis,” calling me a “liar” and gay-baiting me (!!) to boot.

Just as he used NewsReal to attack me, Taylor then used his posting privileges at Red State to attack me, which was the occasion of my June post, “Self-Proclaimed Pagan Rob Taylor Lectures Conservatives on Morality?”

At no point has Taylor ever explained to readers that he has been harboring a grudge against me that dates back to September 2009, when he dogpiled me in the wake of the LGF meltdown. Taylor has never apologized for nor recanted his repeated attacks on me. Instead, on each occasion when I’ve called attention to these attacks, Taylor has doubled down, dishonestly denying his personal malice, then adding further insults and accusations.

And now Swindle has brought his friend Taylor within the fold at PJM, where my own friends apparently are unable to do the same for me.

So I find myself confronted with new evidence showing that, however sincere Roger Simon is in expressing personal friendship toward me, this friendship is not sufficient to prevent his company from promoting the work of someone who has repeatedly attacked and insulted me. Not only am I apparently prohibited from further writing for PJM, but those with hiring authority have sought ways of giving new prominence to my implacable enemies, who hate me without cause.

What should I make of this? The only possible conclusion is that, while Roger is my friend, other people associated with PJM — those responsible for bringing the Swindle/Taylor team aboard — are actively hostile toward me. This is a possibility that had long loomed over my dealings with PJM: If the CEO likes me, and yet I remain persona non grata there, someone else in the organization must be exercising influence against me.

Am I Fredo Corleone, to be treated this way?

Am I a useless imbecile, who may be insulted with impunity? Am I powerless to retrieve my fortunes and vindicate my dignity against the secretive whispering malefactors who have conspired to humiliate me in such an ostentatious manner?

It doesn’t matter how this happened. I can’t let it pass unremarked.

“It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

Category: Blogging

Comments

142 Responses to “Strictly Business”

smitty
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:06 pm

I just had a good experience in the ‘Stan by doing the opposite of my approach as a young know-it-all 15 years back.
Yet, the degree to which any of my experience maps to Stacy’s is quite unknown.
smitty
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:10 pm

Blogging has been my Primal Scream Therapy.

If not pulled out of geekier channels by Stacy, I’d probably still be over on Slashdot making even less intelligible jokes.
smitty
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:12 pm

Stacy is not difficult at all, though perhaps I should qualify that by saying we have next to 0 editorial coordination on the site.
Were we to make an attempt at organization. . .hmmm, not sure it’d go so weel.
smitty
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:13 pm

Yet a sad lack of traction precludes your self-taking from getting you somewhere else. 🙂
smitty
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:14 pm

The old stable of bloggers are rock solid, and PJTV continues to rock.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:25 pm

“Blogging has been my Primal Scream Therapy.”

And you’re good at it! That’s the difference between RSM and the fearful opinionators I allude to above — they see other bloggers in the same house as threats, he sees them as value added.
proteinwisdom
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:26 pm

You’ve written my story here. Except, take away the journalistic training and accolades. Plus, I’m quite difficult.

So on second thought, nope, not close to being the same.

I feel for you, Stacy. Really. Trust me. You, like me, routinely call out those on “our” side whose thinking is troubling, or whose behavior is worrisome. I sometimes think the force with which we do so has hurt us.

Being a powerful writer used to be considered a plus in this business. Now it’s just a threat to middling writers and lazy thinkers.

Moral victories suck, but you’ve earned one. And as some point you just have to decide if you want to change your style and more carefully camouflage your principles, or if you want to just say fuck it, and keep on plugging away.

I hope you choose the latter.

And this is coming from someone who has seen actual private emails calling for his take down — followed by the next phase of his site, where he couldn’t get a high profile link were he to shoot up a high school, then file the story on it himself.
Dan Collins
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:37 pm

I’m a pretty big fan of Richard Fernandez, in addition to some of the other writers mentioned in these comments. That Whittle guy’s pretty good, too. I like Vodka Pundit.

I don’t think that’s the issue, though. The issue is whether or not the hit on Stacy has prevented people who otherwise might utilize him from doing so. It’s as I told Drew M on Twitter last night regarding the Politico hit on Cain: I don’t feel that it’s a good idea from a policy point of view to reward people being assholes.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 6:42 pm

Making virtue of convenience.
Zilla of the Resistance
November 1st, 2011 @ 7:03 pm

I don’t know anything about that Rob Taylor guy, but he sounds like a real jackass.

I agree with the other people who suggested that the so called friends who snub you see you (correctly) as competition. Instead of worrying about not being included in their empires, you can always start your own, you know. A lot of people I know don’t bother much with those big outlets like PJM and HotAir anymore because they’ve become very much like the MSM, loathe to ‘go there’ on important stuff, like the problem we have with islamization or criticizing the RINO machine establishment elitists of the GOP.

I have said it many times and I will say it again, people will go to places where they can get what they will not find elsewhere, and nowadays, a lot of people are coming to TOM because you are better than the big RINO faced snootypants people who snub you. You are far more interesting and never shy away from informing readers about important things that exist where the snootypants elitists fear to tread.
So as far as the so called friends who are leaving you out in the cold, fuckum, if you choose to recognize yourself as their direct competitor and make a TOM empire, you could probably bury them.
Just remember to not forget the people who have stood by you when you’re the next Breitbart.

If you are still alive and not batshit crazy senile by the time I have MY empire built (it will probably take me a long time since I am home with young children right now and flat broke), you can count on a big important position and a fancy title as a featured superstar at MareZilla Enterprises. 😉 Hell even if you are batshit crazy senile by then I’d probably still give you a corner office and your own page to just say whatever the hell you want on, because I am pretty sure that you won’t be boring and that will be an asset to my empire.
Megalomania dreams can come true.
Charles Johnson
November 1st, 2011 @ 7:21 pm

As soon as by one’s own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one’s own right is laid.
Charles Johnson
November 1st, 2011 @ 7:26 pm

It is not truth that matters, but victory.
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. I am in this to win.
DaveO
November 1st, 2011 @ 7:51 pm

I was a Century+ man, myself. I know demerit very well.
richard mcenroe
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:10 pm

JeffS — Not so much “he said, she said”… there were witnesses and other participants. *raises hand* Roger… did not behave well, to put it mildly.
Patrick
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:16 pm

HEH! How’s it feel?? ASSHOLE!

BWAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAW!

Best laugh I’ve had in a while.

Couldn’t have happened to a better backstabbing asshole.

Oh, BTW, you and your diamond dealing asshole friends got what they wanted. I’m outta blogging. For good. I bet your pleased now, ya asshole.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:42 pm

Not being a blogger, I have no way to know WHAT inside baseball is going on, where. I do get an occasional glimpse when someone posts about a ‘blogwar’ going on; in fact that’s how I found you, RS. Somebody linked to a post by Patterico which totally eviscerated you, and I looked up your site (no link. *sigh*) to see what all the fuss was about.

I read. I liked. I stayed.

I’m not a fan of Rule 5, but hey, it costs me nothing to NOT link, and you don’t ‘sneak’ a Rule 5 link into a real story, so it doesn’t stop me from visiting many times a day.

PJM, on the other hand… I love Bill Whittle’s stuff, but if I click through to another site, they need me to register. Hell with that… let your writers register to write, let you commenters register to add their two cents’ worth… but if you put up a barrier to me as a consumer, hey. It works.

It may well be RS, that you are too much of a Cheif and they prefer Indians who already think the way they do – whether organizationally, socially, or politically. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who will bend to the bosses wind. More like the guy to call it a fart.

Which is why I’m glad I stayed. Let’s see… where DO you hid that tip jar…
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:43 pm

And let us not forget two important factors (1) some of the folks over there [Mr. Simon included] are former Leftists who have not bleached all of the Totalitarian habits out of themselves and (2) some of the folks over there are young and, Lordy, those young folk sure do know it all.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:46 pm

BTW, I judged Patterico wrong. I read his site’s stuff if linked, but I don’t have him as a regular stop. To get an idea of me:
Legal Insurrection, RSM, Hot Air, Powerline, Michelle Malkin, Big Lizards, Sweetness & Light, Geeeeez, Lileks and Dave Barry.

…and then anywhere the link demon chases me.
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:48 pm

Well deserved!
Finrod Felagund
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:51 pm

Heh. I remember putting my time in at Slashdot, back in the day. Eventually I ended up spending more time in the rarely-visited subforums, particularly the BSD one.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:53 pm

“…proved to be the spark that lit the fuse of Charles Johnson’s final meltdown at Little Green Footballs.”

So it was you?!

Thank you, Good Sir. If you accomplish nothing else in the Wild West, you’ll have made your mark. I regret missing that marker at the time. I think I’ll take the Wayback Machine, follow your old link, and sip some fine whiskey.

Next hit at your tip jar, I’ll add something extra.
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:54 pm

They’re ideological conservatives and, thus, subject to all the faults found in everyone who adheres to a system of ideas.

Russell Kirk:
Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

Stacy: you’re a true conservative, which means you do not always follow the ‘party line’, you don’t take yourself seriously because you realize the Life is absurd. This means you have a few things no ideologue can possess: honor, integrity, and dignity.
ltw
November 1st, 2011 @ 8:56 pm

PJTV needs a good writer. They have a lot of good video-ists. Nuff said.
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:00 pm

Bravo!
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:04 pm

Dead solid perfect.
Dan Collins
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:09 pm

Patrick, I was going to link you up and express my sorrow that you’d decided to hang up the spurs. Then I read that.

I wish you the best.
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:12 pm

Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya, cretin.
Bob Belvedere
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:16 pm

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. -Hunter S. Thompson
Charles G. Hill
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:27 pm

I don’t wash dishes particularly well, but I’m the only one here, so if I don’t do them, they don’t get done.

And I do appreciate your skepticism: there are times when it’s essential.
BruceC
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:49 pm

George Costanza does the opposite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUvKE3bQlY
JeffS
November 1st, 2011 @ 9:58 pm

Ah — that I did not know, Richard. Which takes it completely out of the “circumstantial” category.
JeffS
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:00 pm

What a bitter person you are. How sad.
Strictly Business : The Other McCain | www.albaliana25.com
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:07 pm

[…] here: Strictly Business : The Other McCain This entry was posted in Business & Industrial and tagged classical-liberalism, […]
Dm
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:13 pm

RSM has repeatedly indicated he isn’t all cool and casual about open displays of flamerism. And he’s had the gumption to take up the conservative side of the argument against the legal codification of homo courtship.

Now how do the people here think that flys out in Hollywood?

RSM doesn’t sugar coat his opposition to such things.

He’s simply too much of a man for the types circulating around Hollywood.
Anonymous
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:14 pm

“little LGF like cult of degenerates, ‘Men’s’ movement sissies and neo-nazis,”

Hey, was he talking about us? Your friendly commenters? Them thar are fightin’ words and I don’t mean Fight Club fighting. But taking names and kicking ass fightin’!
Joe
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:18 pm

*facepalm*

Yeah, hang up those spurs.

promises promises
Dave C
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:22 pm

Most opinionators who start their own blogs, or come on as writer at a
bigger, mult-writer blog, quietly envision themselves as not just
opinionators, but opinion makers … and even, secretly, when they don’t think anyone is around to hear, they might even whisper the term “opinion leader” to themselves, just to try out how it sounds.

He has the numbers that could lead his ego but I see this happening to Ace of Spades with his Anti-Cain rants..

“Dammit! Like the guy I like and here is why. . . ”
BLBeamer
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:24 pm

I think richard mcenroe was onto the real core of the schism between Stacy and Roger and the others at PJM: Roger is Hollywood and the almost unforgivable sin in Hollywood is to even hint a teensy weensy bit that one is not necessarily completely down with the homosexual agenda.

I seem to recall Stacy implying he had some “issues” with that agenda.
Strictly Business : The Other McCain | www.kotisearch.com
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:24 pm

[…] rest is here: Strictly Business : The Other McCain This entry was posted in Business & Industrial and tagged classical-liberalism, […]
BLBeamer
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:25 pm

Oops, and meant to add: Stacy, I hit the tip jar.
Tom Callow
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:26 pm

Robert Stacey McCain is a journalist and is also an author

Get his book from the Amazon link on this site.

Look for it, it is worth it

Keep the faith, Mr and Mrs McCain.
Dave C
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:28 pm

Asshat.
richard mcenroe
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:29 pm

Um, BL, I never said anything about that. I do know Roger’s son is gay, and a very talented artist, but I know nothing about Roger’s advocacy of gay issues beyond love for his kid. May or may not be an issue here, but I can’t speak to it.
Dave C
November 1st, 2011 @ 10:31 pm

I think I remember reading that Roger Simon’s son is gay or something like that, placing Simon in the gay marriage boat.
Charles
November 1st, 2011 @ 11:52 pm

For myself, I pick degenerate.
BLBeamer
November 2nd, 2011 @ 12:09 am

richard, I was only riffing off your observation that Roger was “Hollywood”. I know next to nothing of Roger or his son except that I occasionally read and enjoy Roger’s postings on PJM.

However, I think my comment still holds some validity, particularly since Roger’s son is gay (now that I know it). If Roger is aware of some of Stacy’s sometimes non-Hollywood-approved views on homosexuality (e.g., it being sinful, etc.), then that may be at the root of Stacy’s difficulties.

I find it hard to believe that Roger – who seems like a reasonable and sensible guy – would let a psychotic kook like CJ affect his views of Stacy’s hire-ability.

But, let someone attack his family… now it is no longer business, but personal.
Ladd Ehlinger Jr.
November 2nd, 2011 @ 12:17 am

I met Roger Simon. Yawn.
Dan Collins
November 2nd, 2011 @ 12:23 am

Let’s just face the fact. I’m a pig.
Anonymous
November 2nd, 2011 @ 12:39 am

Good advice!
Adjoran
November 2nd, 2011 @ 12:40 am

I did forget – thanks! Been reading him since the old Belmont Club.