Dogged Blog

Farhad Manjoo, get off my lawn!

Farhad Manjoo at Slate was waxing nostalgic about the Web in 1996. Being only 30 years old, he didn't remember it himself, though; he inferred what it was like by, I don't know, visiting the web archive or something.

Dude. You should have called me.

But not to find out what the Interwebz were like in 1996. By 1996, we had the World Wide Web. We had reasonably fast modems. We had search engines.

When I first went online in, I don't know, maybe 1990, it was on a DOS computer, using a DOS version of AOL, which had something like 500,000 members. You could IM Steve Case, or hang out with him in a chat room.

There was no Web. Which was a good thing, given the 9.6K dial-up connection.

That's correct, you cute little young uns. We did have the Internet; we had bulletin boards and email (although if you used AOL or Compuserve or some other proprietary service, you couldn't email anyone on a different service).

But there was no Web. No pictures, no search engines... well, we had 'em, but nothing like what we have now.

Raise your hand if you remember Gopher.

We had Usenet, and believe me, until you've participated in pre-spam Usenet, you don't know the meaning of untrammeled freedom of expression.

But by 1996? Pffft. As Manjoo says:

A few newspapers and magazines have begun to put their articles online—you can visit the New York Times or Time—and there are a handful of new Web-only publications, including Feed, HotWired, Salon, Suck, Urban Desires, Word, and, launched in June, Slate.

Exactly. I mean... they had Salon. He may have called his article "The Unrecognizable Internet of 1996," but I'd argue it was, in fact, recognizable. Basic and slow and featureless, but recognizable.

No, if you want to see an unrecognizable Internet, go back in time to when it was really different. When we had no web at all. Nothing. Zip. Black and white text. Words on a screen. That's what we had.

I didn't even have Windows back then. I typed little white letters onto a black screen. For those too young to remember, if you're on a Windows machine, go open up your DOS prompt window. Maximize it.  That's what we had.

And yes, it did just strike me that I'm just one or two sentences away from saying, "When I was your age" and telling Farhad Manjoo to get off my lawn.

The article is here.

Interview and other kinds of mojo

My interview mojo has been just toxic lately.

First, I had a big problem getting an interview on one particular subject, period. No one I contacted would talk to me, and it wasn't even anything controversial! It was like I was cursed. Finally someone agreed, only to keep rescheduling until it was literally too late for me to use the interview in my article.

Then I actually had to cancel an article due to problems lining up an important interview.

Then I had to spend a week getting a freaking comment from one person, this time having to reschedule the article.

Then I spent the last week and a half trying to get someone who had agreed to talk to me, again about something totally non-controversial, to actually spend ten minutes on the phone with me.

Well, I just did two of those much-delayed interviews, and am having them transcribed by the good folks over at escriptionist.com, and I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders.

Now I have to interview the two gay contestants on the next Design Star, so if that goes okay, perhaps it means the curse has lifted.

Speaking of mojo, I wrote a diary over at Daily Kos about Barack Obama being adopted as a member of the Crow Nation... that is the top-recommended diary over there for the last 24 hours! I've been on the rec list there a few times with pet food recall pieces, but this is the first time with general political blogging.  I even got asked to cross post it at Native American Netroots, where it got front paged.

*iz proud*

Also, my coverage of the lesbian side of the GLAAD Media Awards in San Francisco is up over at AfterEllen.com... with lots of photos of Sharon Stone, Jennifer Beals, and more.

Media Gods '08

Thank you to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Keith Olbermann. You took the bad, bitter taste out of my mouth.

In other news: "Body of War" is opening in San Francisco tomorrow. I saw it in Austin, and I've blogged about it a couple of times... if it's opening near you, go see it.

Wherein I love Jon Stewart for money

When the Daily Show (blessed be its name) launched its new website and video clip archive last week, I was all over it like, well... you know, white Borzoi hair on black wool slacks.

And I convinced my darling editor Michael Jensen at AfterElton.com to let me write an article about the best of the gay (or maybe it's the gayest of the best) clips. And he said oh, well, if you must, I guess you must.

So I turned it in yesterday and it's up today and you know, that must mean he really liked it because that never happens.

And even though it's hideously immodest of me, I have to say it's pretty funny, and not just the embedded clips. So hey, you know... read it.

There’s a whole lotta gay going on in the brand-spanking-new archive of The Daily Show video clips launched last week by Comedy Central. Ever since 1999, when a relatively unknown political humorist named Jon Stewart took over as anchor and made “fake news” a household word, the anti-gay elements of society have been one of the main targets of his increasingly impassioned, brilliantly funny fake newscasts. So let’s check out the best of the best by looking at the highlights of the last eight years, stopping along the way to note a time or two The Daily Show really blew it (and not in a good way).

It does bear mentioning that there are plenty of queer comics doing pro-gay political humor. And Stewart isn’t even the only straight comic who supports gay rights. Kathy Griffin, Roseanne Barr, and many others have championed our issues and earned large queer followings. Stewart isn’t even the only straight male political comic with his own TV show who supports LBGT equality; so does, for example, Bill Maher.

What sets Stewart apart, aside from his tremendous mainstream popularity, is that his humor conveys a deeply-rooted sense of personal outrage at anti-gay policies, laws, and attitudes. He doesn’t, like Maher, support gay civil rights as part of an overall libertarian or progressive political ideology, but because, as he told conservative pundit Bill Bennett in what may be the greatest interview of Stewart’s career, gay equality is part of “the natural progression of the human condition” because “every gay person [is] someone’s son or daughter.” And in Stewart’s mind, apparently, you just don’t treat your kids like that.

It also has to be said, no matter how much it hurts, that Stewart isn’t perfect. Oh, his sense of humor rarely misses, and his hair actually really may be perfect. But when it comes to gay political humor, sometimes The Daily Show gets it wrong – hello, Stephen Colbert gay-baiting the inventor of “Gaydar,” a little electronic device that will vibrate whenever anyone else in close proximity has the same device.

It’s also true that The Daily Show and its spin-off, The Colbert Report, haven’t been making a lot of friends in the MySpace generation or the blogosphere lately. That’s because those buzz-killers at Comedy Central have been rampaging around YouTube and other video-sharing sites for months now, getting those shows’ clips yanked as fast as they went up. The reason is now clear: They’ve been building their own little Daily Show video universe, where every single clip of every segment of the show since the day Stewart joined its cast in 1999 can be viewed and embedded. The Colbert Report will be getting the same treatment soon.

The Daily Show site launched in mid-October with the butt-covering word “Beta” scrawled under the logo, probably to account for the fact that a lot of times, the videos just won’t play. Still, those seeking the gay can lose many, many hours in The Daily Show vaults, reliving past moments of queer glory and discovering many others previously unknown. After all, no fan, however obsessed, can ever really have seen every single episode – until now.

It's all here... have fun!

And I thought my hate mail was bad...

I get a fair amount of hate mail, generally from people who don't believe in amputating dogs' legs, spending money on veterinary bills, or  lesbianism.

I once heard from someone who felt... I can hardly bring myself to type this... that Lucy Lawless cannot sing.

Gina and I both frequently get hate mail from the vocal minority that hates all pets and believes that those of us who write about them are going to the hot place, and as far as they're concerned, the sooner the better.

Lastly, I get a lot of hate mail over at PetHobbyist.com from people who believe that actually enforcing our Terms of Service is an act infringing on their most precious liberties. I believe a lot of them think I should go to the hot place, too.

But the next time I'm feeling sorry for myself about any of that, I'm going to read media god Mark Morford's hate mail, because you know? People really, really hate him. Case in point:

Conservative values and the people who adhere to them are going to crush you liberals. I don't care if you do elect Hillary, which you won't, we will crush you. I despise liberal values, your cowardice and blind stupidity. We will finish you off. You are a danger to the country and with the help of talk radio we will destroy you. You are cockroaches, nothing else. Reading your newspaper is like paying the cops to beat you, then thanking them.

Feel the hate at SFGate.com.

Speaking of SFGate.com reminds me -- my column there ran a day late this time, because of the holiday Monday. It's a scintillating... SCINTILLATING, I TELL YOU!... piece on canine bladder infections.

If I absolutely swear to you it's interesting and even a bit funny, will you go read it? I'm arguing with someone in the comments section, too. And you know you love it when I do that.

If not, please direct all my hate mail to Mark Morford, kthnx.

It's all about ME

So, I have been having computer problems, but they seem to be fixed now, although some of my email is apparently lost and gone forever. If you emailed me in May and I didn't respond, please try again -- it's history, babe.

My interview with HGTV's David Bromstad is out on AfterElton.com today:

Whether they're demonstrating their willingness to eat worms, whip up a soufflé, get a makeover, or have their living room redecorated with items currently languishing in their own garages, reality TV has always been a pretty good place for the gays. Striking a note more of gentle subversion than in-your-face sensationalism, most of the home decorating, cooking and fashion makeover shows treat queer guests and contestants pretty much just like everyone else. 

The Home and Garden Network is no exception, regularly fixing the severe organizational problems and real-estate woes of same-sex couples without batting an eye. And when they decided to do a home decorating reality competition show called Design Star, they didn't bat an eye that one of the contestants — and its ultimate winner — was David Bromstad, an out gay designer from Miami.

David was a great interview, and I had a lot of fun talking to him.

And I was in USA Today this morning... me me me! And of course, Gina, Ben Huh from itchmo.com, Therese from PetSitUsa.com, and Kim from petfoodtracker.blogspot.com. Elizabeth Weise did a couple of pieces on the pet food recall and the pet power bloggers -- that's us, apparently -- and she singled me out not for my brilliant political commentary and powers of analysis, but my ability to type really really fast while liveblogging. Woe. Still, fame is fame:

Early on, there was extreme confusion about the number of pets that had been sickened or killed. The Food and Drug Administration had been reporting fewer than 20, while anecdotal reports indicated numbers well into the hundreds, if not thousands. In human cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would track such numbers. But there is no such reporting system in place for animals.

To fill the gap, the Pet Connection team created an online database where owners could list their pets, symptoms, outcome and veterinary information. The numbers stand at 2,527 cats and 2,365 dogs dead.

Because no "official" number has ever been released, their figures became the only ones available, and are likely to remain so until academic veterinarians begin publishing their research, which could take another year.

The site also started an innovation that became surprisingly popular — live transcripts of FDA phone news conferences. It was something of a shock to people listening in when they began getting e-mails about something a federal official had just said seconds before.

Pet Connection, it turned out, had elected its fastest typist, contributing editor Christie Keith, to "live blog" the teleconferences. She was typing a verbatim transcript onto the site as the officials spoke.

Thousands now log in for every press conference, Spadafori says.

Full article here, sidebar here.

I was also in the LA Times, which I didn't mention before because... ummm... well, I could lie and say modesty but I think it was more like exhaustion and overwork:

The pet food campaign has the hallmarks of other big blog-driven news stories, with dedicated crews of site owners highlighting, commenting on and linking to media reports and official statements. The bloggers dig out and post documents, such as the FDA's missive advising that pregnant investigators not examine human foods that the FDA has said repeatedly are safe, and they e-mail reporters, government officials, company executives and anyone else who might have a part in the story.

They listen in on FDA conference calls, patiently awaiting the rare chance that the agency's public relations staffers will call on them, and some "liveblog" their own running transcripts.

"I don't know of a comparable case," said Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor who writes the media criticism blog PressThink. "It shows what's possible when people get outraged and they ask themselves, what's happening here? They actually have the tools to start finding out."

[...]

Pet Connection, one of the larger sites that has devoted itself to recall issues, has the advantage of being organized by trained journalists who also write a syndicated pet column for newspapers around the country.

Their work now is a long way from what Gina Spadafori, the site's executive editor, and Christie Keith, a contributing editor and blogger on the site, were doing before the recall hit.

"In February, we were covering the latest in litter boxes at Global Pet Expo," Spadafori said. "And in March, I'm suddenly embroiled in an international trade story."

And my head is still spinning from that one. Full article by Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Abigail Goldman here.

My new banner

I was up WAY too late with my friend KT, and this whole "Girl Reporter" thing started and then, I don't know, I went to bed and got up in the morning and was all normal again, but KT, not so much, because she made me this Christie Keith, Girl Reporter banner for my blog.

I am CERTAIN when my parents sent me to journalism school, this is exactly what they had in mind...

Sunday afternoon crashing

If I had known on March 16 when Gina and I were talking on the phone about some of the horror stories we were hearing from vets about pets sick from eating recalled foods, and said to each other that we needed to dig more deeply into this story than the mainstream media was doing, that it would completely consume my life for the next three weeks... well, I might have tried to get more sleep.

I'm utterly sleep-deprived, have been neglecting other work, and let's not discuss the loads and loads of laundry piled reproachfully around my washer and dryer. Or the abbreviated walks that my dogs have had to put up with on most days.

I'm not complaining. My dogs are healthy and happy, if a bit bored. We're much better off than those whose pets were sickened or killed, or those who had to worry about having fed recalled foods.

I do have two new, non-pet-related articles coming out tomorrow on AfterElton.com - I'll link when they're up. One is a review of Alan Cumming's new film Suffering Man's Charity, and the other is my interview with Cumming, which I did in Austin at the South by Southwest Film Festival, where the film premiered.

Sometime this week, or perhaps next weekend, my review of the music documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, which I also saw at SXSW, will be going up on club.kingsnake.com, and an interview with some of the people involved with that project will be on AfterElton.com on April 16, or as we call it in America, TAX DAY. I did already blog my thanks to 30 Century Man director Stephen Kijak for turning me on to Emmylou Harris' 1995 album Wrecking Ball during our interview... it's totally brilliant and it was worth the entire trip to Austin just to hear it. You can read my fannish gushing here.

I also blogged the pet food recall story over at DKos, which earned me my first ever recommended diary over there. Thanks to everyone who recc'd me, and to the Kossaks who posted more than 500 comments on that diary. That this story is NOT "just a pet story" has been crystal clear to Gina and me from Day One, and one of the biggest frustrations we've had is seeing how many people chose to trivialize or ignore it.

Gina blogged on Pet Connection this morning about a CBS reporter who was complaining that too much time was being given to the pet food recall story at the expense of "real news" like the Iraq war:

No one’s denying the need for honest reporting on the war in Iraq, and I can’t imagine a person who doesn’t care about the sacrifices of our fellow citizens there, or indeed about the suffering of the Iraqis who are living and dying in a war zone.

[....]

This isn’t about 12, 14, 16 dead pets — or even, if you extrapolate from numbers such as Oregon’s, Michigan’s, Banfield’s, the Animal Medical Center, the Veterinary Information Network or even ours, hundreds or thousands dead. (The FDA has some 12,000 complaints to investigate, more than double in a month their two-year load on all other complaints combined. More on the numbers here.)

This is about our happenstance discovery of a vulnerability in our overall food-safety system, one that we’re fortunate to have found and to have a chance to fix before something else even bigger happens, either by accident (which this pet-food disaster may well surely end up being) or on purpose (at the hands of America’s enemies).

In a brilliant comment, MFEMFEM said the reporter "is being a bit disingenuous," and goes on to say:

As others have posted, if he had used the ridiculous coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death or the constant repetitive stories making light of dishonest, selfish, arrogant politicians prancing around Washington, or the constant diet of celebrity Pablum, I might have some empathy for his point of view.

The pet recall story involves corporate lies and deceit, woeful inaction by federal agencies, deception by major pet food manufacturers, the deaths of thousands of pets, the lack of security for food products entering our country, and the exposure of appalling production conditions in plants in China that export foodstuff to our country. The pet food story has NOTHING to do with lack of reporting about Iraq. I hope Mr. Pizzey is not upset because his own reporting may not be getting all the attention he feels it should. I hope he is not trying to subtly imply that what he sees as too much coverage of poisoned pet food is an example of lack of patriotism or lack of support for our armed forces (that card is getting a little old).

He may be right about the lack of reporting of the human suffering in Iraq, but his use of the pet food poisoning story to focus on that lack of coverage is way off base. He looks ridiculous for using the pet food poisonings as a basis for his complaints.

I’m willing to bet the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith was tens times that the pet food coverage, yet Mr. Pizzey is complaining about a REAL news story?

I should probably finish up with something that ties all these things together and impress you all with my writerly prowess, but I'm done.

I'm going to be on Anderson Cooper's show tonight

I will be on Anderson Cooper's show tonight on CNN, at 10:20 PM Eastern/7:20 PM Pacific, discussing the pet food recall story.

SXSW: It's now about caffeine

My feet don't hurt anymore. That's the good news.

There is not enough caffeine to get my brain functioning this morning. That's the reality.

So, we photo blog! This is me with the Ask a Ninja guys, Kent Nichols (left) and Douglas Sarine (right), at the club kingsnake booth at SXSW. In my hands is Gina's pretty little laptop that she should give to me.

Okay, back to staring morosely into my monitor wishing I were sleeping work.