The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Speaking of Kooks …

Posted on | June 27, 2013 | 32 Comments

Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011

“A self-described anarchist, [Barrett] Brown claims he’s policing wrongdoing, at least as Anonymous describes it. . . .
“[Brown said:] ‘When we break laws, we do so in service of civil disobedience.'”
— NBC Nightly News, March 8, 2011

Dan Collins seems envious of my success at becoming the idée fixe of so many deranged lunatics. The relevant question: Is this a natural talent or an acquired skill? Maybe it’s a bit of both, but my extensive experience in the field of kook-baiting has not yet been recognized as the sort of expertise that would merit a “six-figure” book deal like the one Barrett Brown announced in November 2011, about 10 months before the infamous meltdown that led to his arrest by the FBI.

Combining narcissistic grandiosity with the arrogance of an outlaw anarchist is a pretty good recipe for a spectacular flame-out, and there is a lesson to be learned from Barrett Brown’s pathetic fate, but most of the punks who admire Brown share his worldview, so it’s unlikely they’ll derive the correct lesson from his sad saga.

Alas, further obscuring the unfortunate reality of Brown’s descent into criminal madness, the Edward Snowden/NSA story and the sudden death of Michael Hastings have led some on the Left to attempt a rehabilitation of Brown’s (deservedly bad) reputation. In separate but related items, Brown had been the subject of recent articles in The Nation, the U.K. Guardian, and the Huffington Post.

You can read all of those articles without learning the most important thing about Barrett Brown: He was completely bugfucking nuts.

Do you really need to watch this 13-minute video again?

No journalist on the planet chronicled Brown’s march to destruction as regularly as I did, and today I summarized it in 2,000 words:

. . . Brown, who hadn’t contacted me directly in more than a year, suddenly popped up and began harassing me on Twitter in early September 2012. He accused me of libel and menaced me with threats of terrible consequences if I did not immediately respond to his demands that I answer various insulting questions. This bullying motif — “Answer my question, or else!” — is characteristic of a style that I’ve come to think of as Cargo Cult Journalism. Like the rituals of certain South Pacific islanders, the Cargo Cult Journalist hopes that his simulacrum of what he ignorantly imitates will magically bring the same result as the real thing. Cargo Cult Journalism is the kind of stuff we once encountered in smudgy mimeographed newsletters, “underground” newspaper tabloids, cheaply printed pamphlets and self-published books by crackpots who warn about conspiracies involving the Bavarian Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission and/or the Military-Industrial Complex. In the digital age, however, many people have trouble distinguishing between this kook-fringe imitation of “reporting” and genuine journalism, a distinction blurred by the increasingly shabby quality of product issued by respectable organs of the mainstream media. . . .
What one usually finds among practitioners of Cargo Cult Journalism is a grandiose posture of contempt for the unglamorous toil of the workaday reporter. Many people who have never covered a county commission meeting, a high-school basketball tournament or a Fourth of July parade — such local tedium is beneath their notice — seem to harbor Walter Mitty fantasies of gaining worldwide journalistic significance. The Internet is a medium that permits these would-be Seymour Hersh types to catapult past the minor leagues of journalism where real reporters learn their craft. While I enthusiastically encourage the burgeoning phenomenon of online citizen-journalism, it is important at the same time to discourage the type of “famewhore” act that led Barrett Brown to his pathetic fate. Thinking himself a sort of one-man Woodward and Bernstein who would heroically expose the Hidden Secrets of the Surveillance State, Brown instead exposed himself as a blundering amateur who got himself in so far over his head that he couldn’t handle the catastrophic result. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

 

 

UPDATE: Hat-tip to Dan Collins again — you are following Dan on Twitter, aren’t you? — for this interesting item:

Boredom is behind many incidents of cyberbullying and trolling on social media sites, according to the first major study into the matter.
Linguistics expert Dr Claire Hardaker, of Lancaster University, studied almost 4,000 online cases involving claims of trolling.

No offense to Professor Hardaker, but hers is scarcely “the first major study” of trolling. While I don’t claim that my methods are entirely scientific, I’ve been studying this phenomenon at close range ever since Charles Johnson went crazy. This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane, of course. As far-fetched as that may seem, it would be unscientific to rule it out categorically as impossible.


Category: American Spectator, Barrett Brown, Conspiracy Theories, Journalism

Comments

32 Responses to “Speaking of Kooks …”

  1. PATR2014
    June 27th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Speaking of Kooks … http://t.co/cZzaLNc7XS #TCOT

  2. MrEvilMatt
    June 27th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    Speaking of Kooks …: Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011 “A self-described anarchis… http://t.co/2XnaUhYUZV

  3. Lockestep1776
    June 27th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    Speaking of Kooks …: Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011 “A self-described anarchis… http://t.co/VnYaQ2Edkw

  4. Citzcom
    June 27th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    Speaking of Kooks …: Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011 “A self-described anarchis… http://t.co/CECUZB2UXl

  5. jwbrown1969
    June 27th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    Speaking of Kooks …: Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011 “A self-described anarchis… http://t.co/bZgrGtEdqv

  6. preciseBlogs
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:06 pm

    Speaking of Kooks … http://t.co/ktbMgye7if #news #conservative #journalism #americanspectator #barrettbrown #conspiracytheories

  7. rsmccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:15 pm

    “Dan Collins seems envious of my success at becoming the idée fixe of so many deranged lunatics.” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @vermontaigne

  8. rsmccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:16 pm

    “… the most important thing about Barrett Brown: He was completely bugfucking nuts.” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO #p2 #tcot

  9. rsmccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:16 pm

    “No journalist on the planet chronicled Brown’s march to destruction as regularly as I did …” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO #tcot #p2

  10. wjjhoge
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:25 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Dan Collins seems envious of my success at becoming the idée fixe of so many deranged lunatics.” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @v…

  11. instapundit
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:26 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Dan Collins seems envious of my success at becoming the idée fixe of so many deranged lunatics.” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @v…

  12. thatMrGguy
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:27 pm

    Speaking of Kooks … http://t.co/udzLsBEIoB

  13. vermontaigne
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:28 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Dan Collins seems envious of my success at becoming the idée fixe of so many deranged lunatics.” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @v…

  14. WJJ Hoge
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:29 pm

    For an interesting read, google “barrett brown” + greenwald

  15. Mike G.
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:29 pm

    You just have that certain “something” that attracts the kookiest among us. What ever it is, I hope it aint contagious. 😉

  16. rsmccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:35 pm

    UPDATE: “This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane …” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @vermontaigne @instapundit @Gus_807 #tcot

  17. robertstacymccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:37 pm

    Of course: Kooks of a feather, etc.

  18. WJJ Hoge
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:40 pm

    Dan’s right. You do seem to get a better grade of kook than most of us.

  19. vermontaigne
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:42 pm

    RT @rsmccain: UPDATE: “This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane …” http://t.co/oL9giSd4BD <– Field work.

  20. rsmccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:44 pm

    RT @vermontaigne: RT @rsmccain: UPDATE: “This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane …” http://t.co/oL9giSd4BD <– Field …

  21. jakee308
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:48 pm

    Thought I’d mention that the comment counters for the posts are way off. Unless you’re deleting some comments for content yet the counters don’t roll back then something’s haywire.

    This post states it has eleven comments but at this time 14:47 edt there’s only 4 (soon to be 5) and in the latest Katelyn update below, it states 32 coments but contained less also.

  22. Charles Johnson
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:49 pm

    Barrett Brown is as smart, ethical and sane as I am! Maybe even more so.

  23. wjjhoge
    June 27th, 2013 @ 2:51 pm

    RT @rsmccain: UPDATE: “This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane …” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @vermontaigne @instapundit…

  24. robertstacymccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 3:14 pm

    The Disqus program now counts Tweets as comments, and so if a post gets 4 comments and is Tweeted 7 times, the count will show as 11.

  25. robertstacymccain
    June 27th, 2013 @ 3:16 pm

    Through long years of experience, I’ve developed a sort of kook-radar that alerts me to the truly demented freaks who are most easily provoked by expressions of fact and logic.

  26. Dianna Deeley
    June 27th, 2013 @ 3:33 pm

    Too right!

  27. Adjoran
    June 27th, 2013 @ 4:04 pm

    Of course Brown is quite insane, and there never was a “six figure book deal” – the days of large advances and guarantees to unknown authors having been long past by the time he made the claim. To the extent any information on Anonymous or LulzSec came to investigators through him, it was purely the fault of the hackers. It didn’t take a psychiatric license to see the boy was bat-guano crazy.

    But naturally it is only crackpots who warn about the Bavarian Illuminati, the fakirs and conjurers that they are. It serves as a fine distraction to the real masterminds, the Thuringian Illuminati, who are behind most of what is going on today (although it is credibly alleged the Knights Templar may have involved themselves in the War of Thuringian Succession, with the takeover by the Ernestine branch of the Wettins a couple hundred years later, Catholicism would be all but eradicated in the territory).

    Ah, but the sordid details are closely held secrets, better kept than those of the NSA – but I might be convinced to reveal them for, say, a six-figure book deal. Keep it to yourself, though, if the principals were to get wind of a leak, there’s no telling what might ha

  28. Wombat_socho
    June 27th, 2013 @ 5:37 pm

    It’s also counting Facebook “likes” that way too. :/

  29. Charles Johnson
    June 27th, 2013 @ 6:40 pm

    How do you know of those things? You are not authorized to speak of them!

  30. Gus_807
    June 27th, 2013 @ 8:13 pm

    RT @rsmccain: UPDATE: “This stipulates the hypothetical that Charles was once sane …” http://t.co/YzdGqrAdxO | @vermontaigne @instapundit…

  31. Bob Belvedere
    June 27th, 2013 @ 8:17 pm

    It was nice knowing you, Adj….you should have followed the advice Hagbard gave in Never Whistle While Your Pissing – putz.

  32. Gus of the 807th
    June 27th, 2013 @ 9:03 pm

    Barrett+Brown+Charles+Johnson is fun, too.