Noisome St. Augustine, Florida Hate Website, Plazabum.com, Draws Politician-Posters and Their Entourages and They Are Not All "Anonymice"
At least six local politicians have apparently posted under their own names on Plazabum.com. They are City Commissioner NANCY SIKES-KLINE (who long posted on ToTT and PB as bullg8rlady), County Commissioners MARK P. MINER, CYNDI STEVENSON, THOMAS MANUEL, judicial candidate ANNA MARIE GENNUSA, former PZB member and perennial candidate CHERYL ROBITZSCH.
By posting on Plazabum.com, these politicians pandered to the warped, racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Gay, anti-progressive and pro-corruption agenda of MICHAEL GOLD (former bagman, bundler, fundraiser and campaign manager for Sheriff DAVID SHOAR). Racist postings about County Commissioner J. Kenneth Bryan (and angry defense of the supposed honor of failed Commission candidate RANDY BRUNSON) typify the genre of this hate site.
At least these politicians have their intellectual integrity to sign their own names. Others are "in the closet," so to speak, driving under the inference that their identities are not known.
Others posting include other City and County officials, their entourages and government contractors, some of whose posts show racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Gay bias and threatening, supercilious, anti-progressive and pro-corruption animus (even threatening bodily harm, kidnaping and blacklisting). We wear their scorn as a badge of honor.
Once someone ran a photo of City Manager for Life WILLIAM B. HARRISS on Plazabum.com, showing a B&W photo of HARRISS playing golf with three buddies, with a witty remark about HARRISS not being at work. It was promptly deleted, but found on Google cache, a tribute to HARRISS' lack of a sense of humor and control over the editorial content of Plazabum.com.
Plazabum.com is defiantly defensive of HARRISS; reign of ruin -- misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, waste, fraud and abuse -- attacking of people criticizing City mismanagement, ad hominems toward Democrats and others criticizing City mismanagement.
Never once did Plazabum.com or its clone, Historic City News, ever utter a peep about the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway. They consistently spew the HARRISS party line.
Plazabummers are like soulless, reckless, feckless angry energumen -- they are always Sophists Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything (SWINE). These SWINE would rather fight than switch to talking about anything to help our community. These SWINE remind me of the little girl in the Exorcist, their heads spinning out of control and emitting noisome green vomit.
Who else but an energumen (MICHAEL GOLD) would write so obsessively and hatefully about a cancer victim (Maureen Ortagus) on Christmas Eve, 2008 at 10 PM? Who else but an energumen (MICHAEL GOLD) would take publish a hateful letter hating the homeless on December 23, 2006, launching Plazabum.com in the St. Augustine WRecord?
Plazabummers don't have any ideas to improve our community – these SWINE might as well declare intellectual bankruptcy. All these SWINE can muster is an Enemies List of people they hate – like Richard Nixon on hallucinogenic drugs.
Not a peep in advance from Plazabum.com or Historic City News about our well-attended community Inauguration event on the Slave Market Square. Wonder why?
WILLIAM B. HARRISS' doormat (City Public Affairs Director PAUL WILLIAMSON) actually suggested be located due to the anticipated presence of protesters (there were only two lost souls baying at the moon on Tuesday at the Plaza de la Constitucion). HARRISS doesn't like it when people exercise their First Amendment rights – he's caused our City liability in the Rainbow Flags case (2005) and in several artists/entertainers cases. In the words of Ronald Wilson Reagan, "You ain't seen nothing yet."
Another Plazabum.com poster (and former ToTT poster) is one bieramar, former Acting Regional Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor and former member of the Federal Employee Compensation Appeal Board. Chuck Huber moved to New Mexico in 2005. That's never stopped him from stating incorrect assumptions as "fact" or expressing opinions about me (whom he's never met), while falsely writing that he and I have "talked." Either Chuck is delusional in his dotage, or else he must think typing at people is the thermal equivalent of talking.
Among other PB posters are members of city and county officials' households and entourages, apparently including the son of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS' "heyboy" and "designated javelin catcher," Chief Operations Officer JOHN REGAN (his son is named Johnny Regan and he's worked for the PGA). Johnny Reagan sometimes posts on www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com as "John," who has opined on (among other things) whether City Hall denizens read www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com (oddly, Johnny says no) and whether Plazabum.com is or is not under investigation for computer hate crimes (Johnny says no).
At least Johnny (more or less) thinks for himself. I've run his posts here when they don't use the "seven dirty words." (We have standards.) Furthermore, Johnny Regan correctly labels the content of Plazabum as pages of drivel. Got to agree with that!
Plazabum.com is a reflection of the changing face of the John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan and other haters in St. Augustine – they've gone electronic and no one fears them any longer.
Some 500 people in the former KKK gathering place for brickthrowing (Slave Market Square) showed that, exorcising the spirit of VIRGIL STUART (late racist, paranoid SAPD Chief and KKK supporter who blamed 1964 demonstrations on "troublemakers" and "outside agitators.").
Two glowering thugs was all the "demonstration" the Kluckers could muster. Not even the unhappy faces on FIRST COAST NEWS' bubbleheaded bleach blond Jessica Clark or the frowns on SAPD officers' faces could steal our joy.
President Obama has already moved to protect our right to openness, transparency, ethics and Freedom of Information, while moving to shut down Guantanamo, reversing Bush-era atrocities.
Like ex-President George W. Bush, Plazabum.com is authoritarian, hierarchical and extremely hostile to freedom and liberty.
Any politician who posts there on Plazabum.com needs to be questioned and held accountable.
So the next time you see one of the politician-posters, ask them, "why do you support hatred?" "Why do you post on Plazabum.com?"
And as for the "anonymice," ask them wherever you see them – work, school, church – why are you afraid to give your names (like the two anti-Obama protesters, photographs below). Like cross-burning, sheet-wearing, brick-throwing, blacklisting, immoral slope-browed KKK kluckers, these Plazabummers are a relic of a bygone era.
Say goodnight, MICHAEL GOLD, et al..
Barack Obama is President, Ken Bryan's a County Commissioner and there's nothing you Repug-thugs can ever do about it except wail and gnash your teeth like Big Bigoted Babies --- Waaaaaah!.
Alright Ed, this is probably the last comment I'm going to leave here.
ReplyDeleteI'm calling it quits to both this blog, and plazabum.com, and pretty much all the local politics, and here's why:
The number one reason: I don't want my dad's career getting all fouled up with this - John Regan has never once posted on plazabum.com, read plazabum.com, whatever. Nor does he read this blog, except when I point out posts I think he ought to read. I'm not sure if he even knows of the existence of plazabum. He might, but as I've stated before, have you seen that site? It's mostly terrible. Plus, confusion arises from, y'know, my name is John Regan. John Regan also works for the City of St. Augustine, but that's a different John Regan. The name is the same, this leads to problems.
Secondly, I just have a hard time keeping up with this blog. As I've stated before, copy-pasting entire articles is ridiculous and pointless. I have to scroll through post after post after post of text, oftentimes scrolling past several year old reposts of St. Augustine Record articles. I tried subscribing to your RSS feed and using a reader, and even then, it's rough.
Example: On January 21st, 2009, I see 23 posts, give or take a few (some are showing up as "title unknown" with no text, I'm not sure why).
Of those, about half (11 or 12) are copy-pasted articles from other sources.
Others are copy-pasted of your older posts, as well.
Of those 23 posts, there was one, decent length post that was entirely original content (which is what I'm interested in). There were a few short original snippets, too, but they were something like "Great article, take a look at this," so I won't count those.
Out of the 23 (again, give or take) articles posted that day, one was your own, original, non copy-pasted content.
I'd much rather you post that one article, maybe include links to articles. I don't want to dig through copy-pasted material, I don't think anybody does.
There's other things that drive me absolutely bonkers about this blog. Things like really huge images, that run under text. This post is a good example. I don't know if you use a *really* high resolution monitor or something, but on most displays (mine included), the image runs under "Previous Posts" links section - this looks terrible.
Or, a better example is this post. Ed, after the short write-up, you posted David Mica's really big, blurry picture six times. I had to bookmark this article, because every time I saw it I'd find myself laughing out loud - I'm sorry, but as I start scrolling past the same image for the third time, I start thinking "...this is what crazy people do."
Also, the images that get posted, Oh My God. Things like the lipstick on Dick Cheney, or the Motivational Poster with the Bush Brothers: these are not funny, at all.
Not the "that's mean and I like this guy" kind of unfunny. I dislike Cheney/Bush/Republicans as much as the next progressive. They're just not funny images.
Maybe I've been on the internet too long, and I've just seen all these things before, I don't know. There's a hilarious article on cracked.com that discusses this: The 5 Lamest Forwarded Emails (And Why Your Mom Loves Them). Particularly, the section "Email Number 4" applies to this situation.
Also, the big words. They drive me crazy. I'll see a word, stop, look it up, and come back to the article - sometimes. Other times, I just find something else to do. David Oppenheimer, a professor of psychology at Princeton, published an award-winning paper: Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. His conclusion: using overly complex words leads to a reader making a lower evaluation of a text's author.
It's not an issue of ignorance. When I see words that I know are unnecessarily complex, my knee-jerk reaction is: Man, what a jerk, this guy's just trying to show off "Hey everybody, I'm smart!"
And what about people that don't know these words? They're not going to sit back and think "thanks for making me look up and learn a new word today!" They're going to think "Man, this guy is pretentious and out of touch."
Also, the whole changing names thing, like "ERRONEOUS JONES" and "WRECKORD." The second that happens in an article, I instantly stop taking it seriously. I imagine I'm not the only one who operates like this. To me, it's kind of on the same level as interrupting somebody mid-thought/mid-sentence - incredibly rude, and completely disrespectful. I can understand, ok, you don't respect these people/institutions, so you do these little name games. But in being this disrespectful, I get turned off and instantly discredit anything the article has to say. These little name changes are like elementary school kids coming up with mean nicknames.
Maybe these things are all petty and minor, but they're irritating enough that I'm simply saying "Forget it! I have better things to do." I imagine I'm not the first, either.
Lastly, there's a bunch of things I fundamentally disagree with.
I believe in free speech, and all free speech. I staunchly oppose any kind of censorship, which is why I greatly dislike the fact this blog has moderated comments.
I understand that, on one hand, you want your blog and all the content to adhere to a set of standards. You want to stay classy.
But on the other hand, by moderating comments and only approving those that meets your standards, people only get to see a small number of comments. I'd say, let everybody see all of them! I want to know what other people think, too.
Plus, the delay in waiting for approval drives me crazy, too. By the time my comment gets published, you've already made about 10 very long posts, and it get swamped up in all that anyway, meaning nobody will ever see it. Heck, I only know it gets published, because I check "Email follow-up comments."
Also, I disagree with your views on anonymity. I strongly, strongly believe in individuals rights to privacy, which includes personal information. I believe we should only give out what information we choose - if protesters want to remain anonymous, let them. I also believe this is a value that gets belittled every day. People sign up on websites like Facebook and MySpace, and make tons of private information available to the public, and I think that's completely insane.
The beauty of anonymity is that a thought is only worth itself. It doesn't carry any influence with it other than what it is, and I like that idea a lot.
The problem with anonymity, is that people don't like to think. If I see, say, an article was written by somebody I don't like, oftentimes I don't bother reading it. If I see an article written by somebody I do like, oftentimes I read it and almost blindly agree with it. If you see an article, written by Anonymous, you have to read it and think about it. Again, I like that.
If somebody wants to attach an identity to a thought, that's their business, not mine.
I completely disagree with how much you frown upon anonymity, referring to those protesters as wimps. That's one of the things I like about our country, is that we have control and can protect that kind of information. I'm not going to delve much into the childishness of name-calling, but I will point out: calling those protesters wimps is childish name-calling, another thing that makes me say "Ugh, I don't even want to read this."
I think that's about it. I hope I can see a response to this, so I'll watch the blog for the next couple of days, and I do hope to see a response.
I can't make everyone happy, but thanks for your candid views. Walkikng away is not an option if we are to preserve our democratic values.
ReplyDeleteWhen our City put 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, it was a tort, a crime and a sin -- one our City is only half-way remedying three years after the fact.
It's sad that when soreheads started Plazabum.com as a means of hounding the homeless and dissenters, too many public officials hid behind anonymity to take part -- with all the emotional maturity of the gang in "Lord of the Flies."
When our City leaders mature enough to listen to public comment without guffawing, our City will be a better place.