Either Relevant or True » My 15 Minutes Of Internets Fame by Becky, Aged 44½

My 15 Minutes Of Internets Fame by Becky, Aged 44½

Well that was fun, wasn’t it? I’m not exactly sure what the point of it all was except, of course, to once again paint Our Mr. Olbermann with the brush of negativity. As I mentioned earlier, it also accomplished some nice things for our little blog here including some attention from big media blogs and a fourfold increase in site traffic for the day. And it was certainly more pleasant all the way around than the last time his name was linked to a blogger!

If you’re scoring at home, here’s where we appeared: Jossip, TVNewser (who put up my reaction), Gawker, Inside Cable News, The Huffington Post (who merely reproduced the blog post, but under a lurid headline), Chickaboomer (who think I’m Miss Katy), and the pièce de résistance, this morning’s Page Six!

(Oh, and we were Stumble Uponed, too!)

Thank you all who stopped, commented, and said kind things about my letter. I hope some of you will stick around.

Now let’s get back to the business of blogging, shall we? Our new recapper, Arrow, does her first of hopefully many Tuesday night gigs tonight. For you late-nighters and West Coasters, Gilbert is on for the post-debate, Michigan primary political coverage. And with any luck, I’ll have the time and energy to actually do some tumblelogging today!

Does anyone find it wrong that a National magazine is soliciting people for “letters to the editor” and to give a false name for that letter? I asked my husband, who has written for various publications for over 20 years, if he had ever heard of “letters to the editor” solicitations. Never, he said. I called two newspaper friends who said the same thing. I get the impression that many here on this blog seem to be involved in journalism in some way. Am I being naïve about journalistic integrity? I don’t know, I find this whole episode somewhat disturbing and many seem to have missed the point of the original solicitation from an editor of a major, national publication.

Again, lets reverse the situation, and say a Bill O’Reilly fan who runs a fan blog was asked to write a positive letter for him (maybe Playboy has already done this?), but I guarantee, you all would be protesting quite strongly, not to mention a big fat “Worst Person” from our Mr. Olbermann. I think I would feel better about this knowing that Playboy readers aren’t fans of Olbermann, that is fine will me, a good thing, actually. But instead of laughing about that, it has been shown that there has been a bit of a journalistic fissure in a national magazine’s “letters to the editor”. It just makes me question other editorial content now, (especially concerning Keith).

Becky, I don’t think the right-wing sent out anonymous tips to other publications. Those publications already seem to have it in for him. Sadly, with Playboy’s editor showing his bias (for whatever reasons) and allowing you to participate in this, seems to prove a point about a liberal bias and give ammunition to the neocons. I think we are better than this, and should not “bask in the limelight” over something that we (as progressives, libs, dems, independents) are better than. I do commend your honesty on disclosing the full story and am glad it is bringing more viewers to your site.

I noticed that HuffPo there spelled your pseudonym wrong.

Hey, it’s important!

GM, I completely understand. After I got over the initial shock of, “who, me?” when the request came, I did think it was a bit odd. I don’t know diddly about how these things work though. There were two conditions that would have given me pause - if I had been requested to not mention the circumstances of my involvement or if writing under a pseudonym was a problem. Since Mr. Rowe had no qualms about my disclosing anything save for his email address, I didn’t think about my concerns again. After all, I wasn’t dealing with the National Enquirer here.

I realize that it sounds like a conspiracy theory for me to think that this was some wingnut sending tips. But I have been on this block too long with my ear too close to the ground to be able to think otherwise. When I say that this blog is obscure, I mean that if you Google “olbermann” it doesn’t come up until somewhere around page 12. And while traffic here is good enough for it to be a “mid-level” blog by Technorati’s standards, that doesn’t mean much more than I’ve got people besides my friends and family reading it. The idea that this was some sort of round robin, each outlet cribbing it from the next, is fine. Except pro blogs will always cite where it came from, like NY Magazine and Conde Nast Traveller did today in citing Page Six. By and large those cites weren’t in place, making me reasonably sure that this wasn’t a game of Follow the Leader. (I won’t go into how this morning’s spate of nasty taunts full of the usual code words has corresponded to a larger than usual influx of site referrals from webmail.)

I never wanted ERT to be big and if I did, infamy is certainly not the path I would have chosen to achieve that. Yes, I have found the entire situation to be hella amusing. It’s also been exhausting, as I am quite uncomfortable with attention. If I hadn’t kept a sense of humor about it all I would have ended up hiding under my blankets. I’m sorry you see it as basking - I’m just trying to make the best of being thrust into a very strange situation.

HA!

I wondered if you were not on overwhelm with all of the additional attention.

I have been checking the links and am still laughing over the term “Orgasmatron” from the Chikaboom piece. If I had been called an Orgasmatron I might be tempted to ask for its inclusion on my tombstone, to shock all future generations.

This is the only place where I blog, and I have such limited experience of this process. I had no idea that all of that wildness was out there.

(I started my own blog once and had one response and then could not figure out how to get back into my own blog to keep it going.)

I have posted a few times on some of the political sites, such as Huffington, and even received an invitation from them to become a regular guest blogger, but I can never remember the elaborate passwords they all insist on. Here, it was so simple, just sign on and be remembered.

My online experience is primarily through Yahoo groups, and I belong to over 40, two of which I own and manage.

I am mentioning this as I discovered a weird phenomena which could come into play here now that the word is out about EROT.

There are some people who either have no lives or do have specific agendas, and quite possibly a combination of the two, who sign on for all kinds of free email accounts and then join groups as different people from several accounts, write inflammatory posts, and then write in as their alter egos to agree and fan the flames.

GM –

As a former journalist, I did think that the Playboy “Letter” request was a bit odd but not all that unusual.

First, I ‘betcha’ my pension that many of the letters came from those anti-Olby sites as many of other Playboy letters (and comments that followed here) echoed the same tired topics and terms that always appear whenever KO is mentioned — his ratings vs. Fox, his “bathing habits” and his dating preferences only three examples. Just as KO fans may have RSS feeds to all things KO, the opposition do as well. And in most cases, people with a negative ax to grind are those most likely to write a letter.

In such cases of an obvious organized campaign, a publication may seek out a differing opinion for an op-ed, a quote or even a letter. Heck, publications featuring an interview or story about KO or Countdown often ask the OW webmasters for what, in all likelihood, must be a scathing remark. So it is not out-of-line for an editor to ask for a positive comment when s/he see a (most likely) calculated attack against someone.

The use of an alias by the Letter write, again, is not the norm, but not necessarily unusual in this case. In no way was “Becky” hiding the fact that she runs a Olbermann fan blog — as she was very above board in printing what happened here. Any news media organization or blog could easily picked that up and ran with it — as many seem to have done.

She did request that Playboy not use her real surname as she had reason to believe she would have personal attacks from people because of it. Often a news publication will print a letter and state “name withheld by request” because the writer has a concern with coming forward with a comment. The news organization knows the writer’s name and deems that enough. In this case, Playboy knew her identity (as the ERT blogger) and chose not to disclose it not only to protect Becky’s privacy but to protect her from potential harmful actions by the anti-Olby nut jobs as they have done in the past. That is a legitimate reason, in my journalism notebook.

What is disgusting is NOT that Playboy had to solicit a positive letter about KO but that some bloggers have slipped so low in civility and sanity that they orchestrate attacks on a person’s character just for having a different view. Instead of discussing issues, we attack people. To me this is not only unprofessional but hateful. Yes, we can call out someone when they do something stupid, inhumane, unethical, etc. Folks like Britney, Rush, O’Reilly, “W” often open themselves up to that. Keith does, too, and when he does even his supporters (and this blog) call him on it.

But the main difference is this — KO’s supporters (and editors of this blog) would never attempt to look up a person’s e-mail address, check out the commentator’s background, attack that person or that person’s family, just because they have a different viewpoint about Keith Olbermann. That’s what makes the Playboy incident necessary.

And that’s the main difference between people who love Countdown and those who really think Bill O’Reilly can summon “Fox Security” to fight his battles.

Well, everyone needs their 15 minutes of fame, so congratulations!
I’m glad it steered me to your blog, which I’m enjoying immensely. Thanks for taking the time to blog on one of my favorite TV newsmen!

I’m sorry Becky, I did not mean to imply you were enjoying this unwanted attention. I thought the Chickaboom lady was very cruel. I do like your site because you post both positive and critical views and people here seem to engage politely or ignore completely, both of which is nice.

My point was that it does seem a bit journalistically unethical for Playboy to do what it did, and no one was really bringing that issue up. I went to your Gawker link and found a very good comment on this matter, (the person said s/he was on Countdown, I wonder who it could be):

BY MORDECAI1908 AT 12:21 AM As a liberal, a Playboy subscriber (yes, we still exist) and a former guest on “Countdown,” I’m very troubled by this revelation - even though I know that this most likely has happened before at both Playboy and other publications of all sorts of genres and political affiliations. If a segment of an issue gets 99 percent negative (or positive) feedback and said pub has a letters section, then it’s not the job of the editors to balance things out with solicited missives for the sake of appearances. That’s bad mojo, and it can come back to bite you on the ass - like it has now for Playboy

Houstonian: Two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because hate sites like OW do “disgusting” stuff, does not change the fact that what Playboy did was “odd” and “not the norm” and, I feel, was not honest. I was not arguing the merits of opinion journalism or hate sites like OW, I still think when one stoops to their level, one only gives them more ammunition. Like I said, I like to think we are better than that.

I think you are right Becky, one can only laugh at the crazy coverage of this. Check out the headline from the neocon website Newsbusters: (Mistaken for his lover, maybe not such a bad thing! cue Tweety’s HA!):

Playboy Seeks Keith Olbermann Lover to Stem Tide of Hate Mail

I am a Stumble Upon-er…

And I’m Staying.

Keith Olbermann, I salute you.

Thanks for putting Keith on the pedestal he deserves. But an aside to Becky: I think you should change the text above this box to
“Your SPECIAL Comment” ;}

Okay, maybe I am just naive, but I hardly think a magazine that features naked women in absurd poses (check out our naked weather-girl of the month - page 12!)is a bastion of journalistic integrity. I am okay with some types of pornography, and I think it is fine if they want to interview the movers and the shakers out there to give their “readers” (viewers?) something else to do between pics - but, really, since when are they required to adhere to the strict rules of journalism? They aren’t exactly Newseek.

So I can’t see much problem with anyone asking Becky to write her letter. Especially since it is clear they weren’t trying to cover anything up. And that magazine seldom does anyway (sorry, I know, very bad pun. I couldn’t help myself…)

You know — I just realized our major error –

Becky was NOT asked to write a letter of praise about KO in the “Dear Playboy” letters to the editor. WRONG!

Nope! Rather, she was asked to write an answer to one of those “Ask Playboy” letters, those asking help about such matters as only an experienced woman of 44-1/2 years would be able to provide. Those are extremely unbiased and unsolicited missives as well.

Sorry about that — reading the wrong column again. And, good job, Becky!! Keep up the great work. I’m glad your reputation for such insights is really getting around. You go, girl!!

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