i am the george costanza of the greater metropolitan area of left blogsville (a blogga culpa)
Above: Dex strives to make an impression!
The three of you who read this blog regularly may notice that I yanked a post from Thursday. It's a shame, because it felt like a pretty good one.
The post in question was about Alexander Cockburn's piss-poor troika of global warming articles, how they came up way short in comparison to an essay by Garret Kaizer, and more generally the differences between shallow environmentalism and a deeper, more socially encompassing and democratic ecology. At the end of the piece, I tried to telescope down, contrasting my own observations of how this dynamic was at work in a summer job I just took - a non-profit franchise that sucks up smart, passionate people and uses them. Alas, I was not mindful, and dropped the name of the place; apparently, said place does a daily name search of the internets for things related to said place, and lo and behold, my bitchy post popped up. Friday afternoon I was asked to explain myself. Alas, I was not mindful, and was uttlerly at a loss for words. In an effort to bail myself out and avoid anymore humiliation than I was already feeling, I offered to pull the post down. It remains to be seen if I still have a summer job at said place next week. (Yay Memorial Day weekend!)
I feel poorly about this for a number of reasons: the person who hired me no doubt feels used, even though I clearly located my criticisms on the non-profit's doorstep rather than this person's own; that my post was obvisouly so poorly conceived and executed it seems as though it made no sense and I had to explain it further; that, when asked, I could not do so, never mind that the notion that I hold an opinion about the galaxy of progressivism and the non-profit industry might be a problem. There's all sorts of existential bullshit that comes with it too, some class animosity, and all of the other things that blogs are supposed to give voice to and blahdee blahdee blah (Of course, I strongly much of the blame for this whole episode lies in the terrifying idea that I have no girlfriend. I'm researching this, and will get back to you with the results ASAP).
I don't think I regret so much dropping the name of said place. I've always been open about who I was working or writing for, whether it was my weirdly unsuccessful stint as a correspondent with The New Standard, my even more weird and more unsuccessful stint as a research intern with Sourcecode, or my time as a Naropa student. Unlike a lot of better or otherwise more popular bloggers, I felt as though I had to be able to connect virtual Dex with fleshware Dex. I hoped that, since my writing isn't nearly as funny or as good as a lot of the bloggers on de left hand side, it made my writing here more genuine, being open like that, and that when it came down to it, there wasn't anything I would say here I wouldn't elsewhere. I failed miserably in that regard.
I am certain, however, that I regret being such a poor communicator, and that my point was muddled as to not have been clear. I could've done better. I should've. I was stupid. A real Costanza move.
Damn. This is not how this summer was supposed to go. Anywho, blogga culpa. I will blog smarter, not harder. Apologies for the rope-a-dope blogging, Labrateers.
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