Category: Barrett Brown

‘A Communicational Schematic That Is Superior to Anything Else in Existence’

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On April 7, 2002, a university professor in Tennessee posted this:

I keep hearing from people that they started a weblog because of InstaPundit. About a month ago, I asked everyone who did so to email me. I got so many that it took me a while to find the time — and energy — to compile them into a list.

You can go look at that list, which includes such well-known names in the blogosphere as Stephen Green, Ed Driscoll and (believe it or not) Matthew Yglesias. The list of Instapundit-inspired blogs was subsequently collected by Jeff Wolfe with hotlink URLs and an addendum.

What is interesting, in looking at all those blogs, is how many of them have faded into oblivion, even as blogs that started much later — including this one, which became a full-time project in March 2008 — have endured and flourished.

Blogs come and go, but Instapundit still dominates. Imitated, but never excelled. And while that success continues to inspire emulation, it also excites envy. (Such are the perils of success.) Who is this guy, whose mere “heh” can mean so much? Why should his enigmatic interests, his particular likes and dislikes, have such overwhelming influence in Blogland? Continue reading ‘A Communicational Schematic That Is Superior to Anything Else in Existence’ →

Barrett Brown’s Lawyer Sends Me an Email Threatening ‘Legal Proceedings’

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Yesterday, I noted that Barrett Brown had threatened a libel suit in response to my post, “Narcissism, Isolation and Trolls.”

The first thing to remember about such a situation is that the threat of a lawsuit is just that — a threat. And this is true even after someone gets a lawyer to send you a threatening letter, as Barrett Brown has now done:

Mr. McCain,
You recently posted several articles dedicated largely to the subject of my client Barrett Brown. One such article includes the following passage:

Notice, however, that Brown speaks of “my colleague Michael Hastings,” expressing a collegiality that probably exists mainly in Brown’s mind. Brown and Hastings both had blogs at True/Slant, the now-defunct site which, despite funding from Forbes Media and Fuse Capital, flamed out in 15 months after publishing such memorable works as Rick Ungar’s “Send the Body to Glenn Beck.” But while Brown and Hastings were both True/Slant contributors, it wasn’t like they were hanging out around the office coffee machine, swapping stories.
So here is Brown, staring into the camera and addressing “Rich” as if he were talking to a buddy, while referring to Hastings as his colleague, in a video recorded July 15 — three weeks after the June 23 publication of theVanity Fair piece that Brown references, and two weeks beforeTrue/Slant’s July 29 shutdown. The timing seems significant, as if this were a cry for help.
You might get the idea that Barrett Brown is kind of a moody loner, isolated and alienated, attempting to invent a social context for himself where none exists.

You state, as supposed fact, that Barrett Brown and MIchael Hastings are not colleagues or friends and rather that Barrett Brown is in essence a fraud who uses a false association with Hastings to ‘invent a social context for himself.’ Any amount of investigation on your part would have quickly and easily determined this to be false. Brown and Hastings’ relationship is professional, substantial, and well documented.

Your post falsely insinuating that Brown is fraudulently representing himself and his professional relationships is especially damaging as Michael Hastings wrote the blurb for Brown’s upcoming book and Brown’s reputation and relationship with certain figures such as Hastings is integral to the development of Project PM, Brown’s distributed think-tank. You have published lies which you’ve claimed to be fact that, if taken seriously, substantially damage the financial interests and professional reputation of my client. As these lies are quite easily shown to be untrue it can be assumed that either you printed with malice what you knew to be false or you wrote your article with reckless disregard for its veracity.
My client would like to resolve this matter quickly. We request that you link to the refutation he has posted and that you do so from the post from which the above passage is taken, and also that you publish the entirety of that refutation in an additional post at your blog. Alternatively, you may run a satisfactory retraction to the passage above, although Brown is not requesting that you take down any of your work.
Please be informed that if this situation is not resolved we are prepared to begin legal proceedings to protect my client’s interests.

Best,
[Name of Lawyer]

First of all, as anyone could see if they would care to investigate, Brown’s response is linked from my original post as a trackback. So the terms which Brown’s lawyer seeks “to resolve this matter quickly” were satisfied even before he threatened me.

Second, as to my alleged “reckless disregard for . . . veracity,” this was addressed in my follow-up post yesterday. Barrett Brown himself has admitted to perpetrating falsehoods online as a “troll” in a post called “Confessions of a Phony Internet Muslim.” Given Brown’s self-confessed mendaciousness, my skepticism toward his assertion of collegiality with Michael Hastings would seem entirely justified.

Third, the lawyer’s letter repeats Brown’s tendentious mischaracterization of my post. I wrote that Brown’s video expressed “a collegiality that probably exists mainly in Brown’s mind. . . . [I]t wasn’t like they were hanging out around the office coffee machine, swapping stories.” This was germain to my point that trolls (and remember, Brown has confessed to engaging in troll behavior) are a byproduct of the 21st-century workplace, which often results in people working in social isolation — that is, sitting alone in front of their computers, rather than in an office environment — and that the online world causes some people to fixate on virtual relationships with people they’ve never met in real life.

This isolation has consequences. To quote a famous cartoon, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” And likewise on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a sociopathic narcissist unless, in your desperate attempts to bridge the yawning chasm of cognitive dissonance between your imagined importance and your actual irrelevance, you engage in behavior that makes your mental disorder blindingly apparent to everyone who cares to notice. Continue reading Barrett Brown’s Lawyer Sends Me an Email Threatening ‘Legal Proceedings’ →

Letter to a Damned Fool

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Tim Rogers, executive editor of Dallas magazine, decided that my flame war with Barrett Brown (which has provoked the threat of legal action) was a fit subject for a blog post that linked Max Blumenthal — of all people — as the authoritative source on me. Which is damned foolish, considering that I’m rather authoritative about myself. At any rate, the folly of Tim Rogers seemed to require correction, which I provided in an e-mail sent at 11:16 a.m. today:

You really, really need to learn a thing or two about journalism standards. Or at least learn to use Google. Also, your reading comprehension skills seem less than adequate.
“From what I’ve read about McCain” — and then you link to an error-riddled article by that notorious idiot Max Blumenthal and call me “one of the ghostwriters of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue“? Time does not permit the refutation of every error made by Blumenthal, a leading contender for the world championship of producing fact-impaired nonsense. It might be simpler to say, as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, that every word Max writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.” But two important facts ought to be made clear:
1. Sarah Palin didn’t have a “ghostwriter” on Going Rogue. Palin had a collaborator, Lynn Vincent, a professional journalist and author who has collaborated on many books, including two New York Times bestsellers. The difference between a collaborator and a “ghostwriter” is vast and important, in that the latter term suggests a species of deception.
2. I had no role in Going Rogue. I have only met Sarah Palin in person twice, very briefly, once in Pennsylvania while covering her during the 2008 campaign, and once while covering the March 2010 Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nevada.
However, I suppose I might claim some small credit. My blog on January 26, 2009:
Clark Stooksbury at The American Conservative suggests me (tongue-in-cheek) as ghost-writer for Sarah Palin’s $11 million book. Actually, I’d think my Donkey Cons co-author Lynn Vincent might be ideal for the job, since she’s already co-authored the bestseller Same Kind of Different As Me. 
As I later learned, Lynn saw that blog post, had her agent put her in for the job and was selected from among the many top writers vying for it. Lynn’s contract with Harper Collins, of course, included a confidentiality clause and so Lynn has made little or no public comment about her work with Governor Palin since then.
Max Blumenthal’s article at The Daily Beast was an attempt to do a third-hand guilt-by-association smear on Sarah Palin, using “white supremacist” accusations against me that I have addressed at some length elsewhere. To summarize briefly: I am a conservative, which means that I disagree with liberals about everything, including their dogmatic fanaticism about race. In the course of discussing these disagreements, I have sometimes unwisely written things that have been malevolently misinterpreted by others, who have attributed to me hateful sentiments that I neither feel myself nor advocate to anyone else. “White supremacy” and “racism” are terms that have actual definitions, neither of which could be properly applied to me.
In the age of Obama, many Americans have grown tired of the lazy imputation of racism to everyone who disagrees with liberalism. I’ve made a running joke of this: “There are 5 A’s in ‘raaaaacism!‘” I have learned to be indifferent to the damage done to my reputation by such nonsense. “With enough courage, you can learn to live without a reputation,” as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara. Yet I cannot permit lazy writers such as yourself to inflict political damage on innocents by repetition of the cheap guilt-by-association smears employed by Max Blumenthal and others.
Over the course of a journalism career now spanning nearly a quarter-century, I have “associated” with thousands of people — colleagues and acquaintainces, politicians, activists, authors, etc. — of every race, creed and ideological orientation you could possibly imagine. For you or others to play a six-degrees-of-separation game, attempting to make me an instrument of journalistic prestidigitation that falsely attributes to some people the controversial beliefs of other people they’ve never even heard of, is shabby and unprofessional. I’d call it “McCarthyism,” were it not for my concern about unfairly maligning the late senator from Wisconsin.
If you had bothered to do any research, Tim, you might have learned all this yourself. My e-mail address is publicly available on the “about” page at my blog, TheOtherMcCain.com, and I would have been only too happy to clarify any misunderstandings. As it is now, I hope that you will do me the kindness of publishing this communication in full.

Robert Stacy McCain
Co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of
DONKEY CONS: Sex, Crime & Corruption in the Democratic Party

Thanks to Dave at Point of a Gun for the e-mail tip about this idiot Rogers. And a friendly reminded to readers that they can contribute to the “F*** You, Barrett Brown” Legal Defense Fund. In the 99% likelihood that my legal expenses in the case of Brown v. McCain are exactly zero, proceeds will go to help repair the deer-damaged KIA and buy my six kids Christmas gifts.

Nothing Says ‘Merry Christmas’ . . .

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. . . quite like the threat of a libel action:

Libel
Friday, December 3, 2010 5:02 PM
From: “Barrett Brown”
To: “Robert McCain”
I’ve just spoken with my entertainment lawyer concerning your libelous article about myself and my relationship with Michael Hastings as well as well as my allegedly violent character. You’ll receive an e-mail from [name redacted] either tomorrow or Sunday.
—
Regards,
Barrett Brown

Readers will kindly peruse the blog post that prompted this response, and judge for themselves whether there was anything actionable in it.

Mr. Brown has not demanded a retraction of any particular part of the post, but I suppose that’s what lawyers are for.

God bless us, every one!

UPDATE: Thanks to those readers who have noted in the comments the implausibility of Brown’s threat, although nothing is stopping you from contributing to the “F*** You, Barrett Brown” Legal Defense Fund. In the 99% likelihood that my legal expenses in the case of Brown v. McCain are exactly zero, proceeds will go to help repair the deer-damaged KIA and buy my six kids Christmas gifts.

Meanwhile, you’ll find Brown in the comments of my aforesaid allegedly libelous post, asking that I link his own response at another blog. Let’s ponder this request for a minute, shall we?

“Link me, or I’ll sue!”

Yeah, but he’s not crazy or anything like that. Nudge, nudge.

Athough I have no intention of linking Brown’s response, I printed it out and skimmed through it, making a few notes in the margin and, if I were the litigious sort, by God, I’d be suing him for libel. But since Brown assures me that he is willing to be the plaintiff — thus assuming the burden of proof — I will be glad to have as Exhibit A for the defense his response, which is false and defamatory, beginning with the very title:

R.S. McCain accuses me of being a violent militant

No such accusation was made by me. Various articles and book passages were quoted and linked in my post, and certain possible interpretations were suggested, but I am certain I did not accuse Brown of any such thing as he (libelously) accuses me of doing.

Given that he asserts — by threat of libel — that I have maligned his good reputation, Brown unwisely begins with this admission:

So, I wake up this morning all hung over and whatnot and thus decide to spend the day doing nothing . . .

This statement would, I believe, constitute evidence that Barrett Brown has substance-abuse issues of such severity as to cause him to spend entire days unable to do any meaningful work. Perhaps I could find a qualified professional to testify as to the correlation between alcoholism and other anti-social behaviors.

Brown then follows this with another admission:

The main point seems to be that I’m arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people . . .

Brown, the admitted drunkard, thereby verifies my observation and analysis of the “main point” and I ask — ladies and gentlemen of the jury — if this testimony to my credibility, which the plaintiff himself has provided, should not also be considered in regard to the various secondary points of my argument? Remember that the subject of my post was the relationship between Internet “trolls” and narscissism, as you consider what Brown next confesses:

 And speaking of trolling, a very old friend of mine who’s a news producer at an affiliate back east appears to have left a couple of comments over there in the guise of Marvin Olasky . . .

Brown here tells us that he is a close associate of someone who engages in troll behavior, posting comments under assumed names. The defense would ask the plaintiff to provide the name of this person, so that we might subpoena them for possible testimony for the defense.

And your honor, at this time, defense would like to introduce Exhibit B, an article published by Barrett Brown on Sept. 11, 2009 — the jury will please note the date — with the title, “Confessions of a Phony Internet Muslim.”

In this article, Brown writes that he “created an alter-ego, becoming a devout Muslim going by the name of Ali Desu Hussein,” which he describes as “my Islamic Mr. Hyde,” in order to post provocative and disruptive messages in various Internet forums. This is self-evidently antisocial and malicious. Would any psychologically healthy person falsely represents himself under pseudonyms for such a harmful purpose?

Next, Brown pretends to disprove my skeptical remarks about his characterization of Vanity Fair reporter Michael Hastings as his “colleague.” What I wrote was that, in using this term in his YouTube video lecture to National Review editor Rich Lowry, Brown was “expressing a collegiality that probably exists mainly in Brown’s mind.”

The jury will please note the word “probably” in that sentence. Of course I could not know the extent of Brown’s acquaintance with Hastings, despite Brown’s having written sundry things about that relationship, for we have already established that by his own admission Brown perpetrates falsehoods on the Internet. (See defense Exhibit B.)

Given Brown’s confessed use of online deception (his phony “alter-ego,” etc.), his mere assertion as to any particular state of affairs — e.g., an alleged professional relationship with Michael Hastings — proves nothing, as an admitted liar has no credibility. Therefore, skepticism toward such an assertion by Brown was entirely warranted. And what does Brown say of his relationship with Hastings?

We talked on the phone several times and exchanged some number of e-mails . . .

Brown does not say, “We’re best buds,” or “We hung out and had beers together.” No, it’s e-mails and phone calls. By that standard, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’ve got a whole crapload of “colleagues,” including several members of Congress. But you’ll notice that, so far as we can tell from Exhibit A, Brown and Hastings have never met in person, thus sustaining my assertion, in the blog post that the plaintiff claims is libelous, that “while Brown and Hastings were both True/Slant contributors, it wasn’t like they were hanging out around the office coffee machine, swapping stories.”

My credibility once more vindicated, I next call to your attention this statement by Brown:

. . . the rest can be confirmed by Andrew Sullivan, with whom I discussed the events after he linked to my piece.

Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan? Does the plaintiff really wish to bring to this honorable court’s attention his professional collaboration with Andrew Sullivan? Your honor, the defense would like to introduce at this time Exhibit C, showing that this same Andrew Sullivan has a criminal record for possession of illegal drugs. We also introduce Exhibit D, a blog post from Ace of Spades HQ, containing certain relevant information about Suliivan’s other behaviors, although there is perhaps no need to discuss this information at this time.

So far, then, we have established that Barrett Brown is a confessed drunkard, by his own admission “arrogant and narcissistic,” a deceptive Internet “troll” who is friends with others who engage in similar deceptive activity online, and an associate of a criminal drug abuser, Andrew Sullivan.

Given all this, your honor, it is the belief of the defense that Barrett Brown is a person of such infamous ill-repute that any negative comments made about him on the Internet could not possibly be considered defamatory. We ask that your honor take into consideration the evidence presented so far, and grant a directed verdict of acquittal. While you consider this request, we will ask that the court be recessed.

SO ORDERED!

UPDATE II: While the court is in recess, I wanted to share with you a communication I received from an attorney who, although not in a position to offer advice to me as a client, did make these observations:

First, I read the post earlier today and thought it so fantastic (for reasons having nothing to do with Brown, of whom I’ve barely heard) that I forwarded it immediately to my wife as “must read.” . . .
I saw nothing libelous in your post and would be amazed if a reputable lawyer would feel differently.  You accused him of nothing; you stated no false or private facts so far as I could see.  His threatening response sort of makes your point.

For what it’s worth, anyway. Thanks to The Lonely Conservative for the link.

UPDATE III: Predictable:

Hat-tip: William Teach in the comments. By the way, notice that the title in the cross-post at LGF is slightly different. Now Brown says I have accused him of “planning violent attacks,” which I certainly did not do.

Next? Expect Sully himself to weigh in.

UPDATE IV: Letter to a Damned Fool.

Narcissism, Isolation and Trolls

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“The 19th-century cult of success . . . measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against  an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. . . . ‘By the end of the 19th century,’ writes John Cawelti [in his 1965 book, Apostles of the Self-Made Man], ‘self-help books were dominated by the ethos of salesmanship and boosterism. Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.’ . . . The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captains of industry gave way to the confidence men, the masters of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

The progressive site Mahablog awarded its “even dumber than Jim Hoft” award to Donald Douglas at American Power and, when Professor Douglas attempted to defend himself, he drew this trollish response:

I figured the cops finally had you on moral’s charges when you exposed your thimble-sized member to the JH School boys gym class. I guess there wasn’t enough evidence, huh?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What kind of person resorts to such abusive insults over an entirely moot political discussion about WikiLeaks? (Moot, I say, because the public-policy response to WikiLeaks is not going to be influenced by blogs.) Well, it would be simple enough to say that the kind of person who does this is the kind of person who can’t distinguish between plural and possessive, so as to write “moral’s charge” (wrong) instead of “morals charge” (correct).

Wednesday, Donald linked to an American Thinker column by blogger Robin of Berkeley, a psychotherapist who wondered about the trolls who plagued her own blog:

Where do these trolls come from? Where do they live and breed?
Do they write in dank basement rooms while their bedraggled girlfriends (or moms) pick up their dirty shorts? Do they intermix trolling with downloading internet porn?  (I’m not being snarky here; I’d bet good money that violent smut gives them endless inspiration.)

Leaving aside such speculation, Robin proceeds:

The creepy thing is that in the minds of trolls, and other extreme Progressives, their behavior is as normal as apple pie. This is because their worldview is amoral and asocial. Therefore, the merit of hurling insults at a complete stranger is a no-brainer.
Many leftists are positively clueless about how to conduct themselves in a civilized manner.  Believe me, I have tried over and over to engage some — any — in a respectful discussion.
Although I rarely give up on people, I have had to conclude that many extreme progressives are not simply choosing to be vicious. They do not know how to restrain themselves.

Which is exactly right: These trolls are asocial and incapable of restraint. And Robin of Berkeley lays her finger on an important point in suggesting trolls “intermix trolling with downloading internet porn.”

Like online porn, trolling is a secretive, solitary, anti-social vice, pursued in anonymity. Julie Zhuo of the New York Times emphasized anonymity as the decisive factor in the behavior of trolls. It is fun to imagine a sort of “To Catch a Predator” sting operation on trolls, with Chris Hansen confronting these people with their comments: “Did you write this?”

Anonymity is clearly a factor in the anti-social behavior of trolls, but what about isolation? In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch analyzed how changes in social structures, including the family and the workplace, created different behavioral incentives and a shift of values. Whereas for most of the 19th century, the literature of success had emphasized values of discipline and self-denial, the rise of the large bureaucratic corporation resulted in a greater emphasis on the “management of interpersonal relations” and conveying the impression of “personal magnetism.” This progressed over the decades until, by the 1970s, everyone nodded in recognition at Lasch’s description:

“The upwardly mobile corporate executive . . . advances through the corporate ranks not by serving the organization but by convincing his associates that he possesses the attributes of a ‘winner.'”

The flinging apart of giant corporation — downsizing, outsourcing, telecommuting, etc. — has radically changed the typical work environment in the 30 years since Lasch made that observation. “Interpersonal relations” have little or no meaning in such careers as software programming. For many others, career communications occur far more frequently through text messages and e-mails than through face-to-face conversations. And for many, “virtual” relationships — whether personal or professional — with faraway strangers are more meaningful than relationships with the people they actually meet daily in real life. (My wife: “How was your day?” Me: “Great. I just got Instalanched.”)

What does this dynamic mean to the progressive troll? In his virtual world, he feels the need to “represent” as a loyal member of the online tribe. So when a hostile target comes into view — e.g., the self-proclaimed neocon Donald Douglas — there is a competition among the trolls to make the most vicious attack possible. Through these attacks, the troll who excels others in obxnoxious thereby enhances both his self-esteem and his status within the virtual community.

A narcissistic quest for admiration — if only self-admiration — is therefore deeply implicated in the behavior of trolls. Their comments are neither informative nor entertaining, because that is not their purpose. They are engaged in destructive activity and expect to be admired for it by others who share their opinion that the target is worthy of destruction.

Their relevant peer-group (whose admiration they seek) are not people they actually know in real-life, but rather their fellow members of the ideologically organized virtual community. And this sort of behavior is not limited to blog trolls. Continue reading Narcissism, Isolation and Trolls →