Eye on Winer

Back in 2005, Dave Winer got into a bizarre raging argument with other bloggers at the BlogNashville conference while he was moderating a panel on blog civility. That’s not sarcasm. The topic really was civility. Stan Brown, one of the people in attendance, described Winer’s meltdown:

As others have noted, he (Winer) got into a ridiculous exchange with John Cox that got really heated and went on and on and on to the point that people in the room began to get really uncomfortable. At that point, someone wondered if Dave was trying to conduct some kind of encounter group. As others have noted, his treatment of Robin Burk was totally out of line. He was rude quite often. About a third of the way through, he took a deep breath, slowed everything down and mentioned we still had another hour to go. I was actually feeling sympathy for him at this point. It occurred to me that perhaps he was taking medications that he had forgotten to bring with him on this trip.

That’s the back story for today’s gratuitous insult against Nashville on Scripting News, in case you were curious. Winer’s hatred has grown from one roomful of bloggers to the entire city.

Given this, it’s funny to read the recent weblog post by Rex Hammock, a friend who’s been coming to Winer’s defense for years and years:

I know that most of the people who read this blog are not from Nashville. However, my style of blogging has always been to keep it personal. And one of the most personal things about me is my love of a place I call home, Nashville, Tennessee.

Hammock’s attempt back in ‘05 to rationalize Winer’s obnoxious behavior at BlogNashville is still a pungent example of asskissery:

From what I’ve observed, Dave is a designer of (a visionary of?) and defender of common grounds. … Like Real Simple Syndication (RSS), one of Dave’s earlier battles for common ground, we’re now struggling to discover the protocols of what I would call Real Simple Values.

Dear Dave,
Get real. I suspect that there isn’t a single Republican on the planet who gives so much as half a damn what you think. For starters, this paragraph is pretty blatant ass-kissing:

I know some of you are honorable people, good Americans, taxpayers, people who love your families, pay your taxes, do your best to live by the Golden Rule. People who try to do the right thing, whatever that is. It’s to those Republicans that I wish to have a few words.

After all of the screeds we’ve read about your disdan for Republicans, how they’re stupid and evil, to then turn around and try to butter them up is just absurd. If you believe what you wrote, you owe those Honorable Republicans a gigantic apology for the way you’ve maligned them for simply having a (R) next to their names in the past. I suspect, though, that you don’t mean it, and that’s fine, because someone has to off-set the crazy Republican partisans, and that job falls to crazy Democratic partisans.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dave’s pieces get more out-there and bizarre every day and the election is still a month away. How much longer can the descent into complete lunacy take?

Dave wrote a novel today. Let me give you the executive summary:

I have a bunch of prejudices against conservatives and republicans. Allow me to explicate them in great detail. Except, instead of calling it “prejudice” I’m going to call it “truth”. Now do you see how terrible Republicans are? (Not that I’m a Democrat, no sir!)

Republicans hate me because I’m so awesome. I’m such an incredible American and they’re all just jealous of all of my knowledge and wisdom and worldliness. They’re stupid because they don’t want to go to Europe.

In summary, I am great, and the reason that the discourse in this country is so terrible is because so many people are too stupid to know they should just listen to me. But fuck them, because they’re stupid and I’m not.

That was the gist of the article. I still don’t understand what the point of it was, if not to stroke his own ego a little bit and reassure himself that he is, in fact, superior to everyone who thinks differently than he does.

Read the rest of this entry »

First off, to respond to this comment from the comments: “Eye, didn’t you once say you don’t live in the US and are not an American?” I’ve never said such a thing, and I have no idea where you’d have gotten that.

Okay. From the links: Winer for CTO of the United States?

Dear Mr. Riley,

Have you lost your fucking mind?

Signed,

People with more than seven braincells

Despite all of the press he gets for “inventing” RSS and Blogging, relative to people with real CTO capacity and experience, Dave knows zero about technology. A golden retriever would be a better fit — at least they’re likable.

Then there’s this laughable piece of logic:if Paulson’s plan is for real, Bush and Cheney should quit to prove how serious they are about it.

Pardon?

In what world does that make sense? I will say, though, that the post seems to employ so many logical and rhetorical fallacies that he may have just created a new one.

…for some insightful, intelligent, or just not completely insane political commentary out of Dave. I suspect I’ll have to wait a while. Probably forever. Substituting for those:

• Calling Palin a Stepford Wife is not at all sexist, right?
• Likening a female VP candidate to a chick-flick plot: also not sexist.
• Republicans shouldn’t get air time. Why do they get air time? Because if they didn’t it would invite some pretty serious legislation. To say nothing of the fact that, whether Dave likes Republicans or not, the goal of the media is not to promote a party, but to inform. Getting into a petty pissing contest with a political party is not exactly “journalism”.
• Dave writes: “He assumes, like royalty, that Republicans always know what’s right”. This from a post titled Frum’s annoying wrong idiotic argument. Sad he could put that all together and not notice the delicious juxtaposition. Probably because he thinks he’s always right.

I guess, at the end of the day, we’ve not learned anything new. Like many partisans, Dave will stretch logic, consistency, and integrity to their absolute breaking point — and then some — in order to defend his party and their politicians.

I think “citizen journalism” has a long way to go.

One of Dave’s oft-used canards is that he’s an Independent, not a Democrat. He claims this whenever it’s convenient — basically when he thinks it makes him more credible on a particular issue. After all, a Democrat might skew or exaggerate, but he’s an independent, right?

Yeah, right. Nobody really buys it, except maybe Dave himself. He clamors for respectful debate, but that seems to only apply to people who aren’t Republicans, which should really tell you everything you need to know about his alleged independence, but today’s post about McCain’s potential Vice-presidential pick really does away with any pretense (emphasis supplied):

I hope he chooses Lieberman — I think he’d be the easiest to run against. I don’t see too many Republicans going for him, and no one wants a traitor a heartbeat from the Presidency . . .

A traitor to whom, exactly? A true independent welcomes the idea of politicians who make their decisions based on ideas and ideals rather than party affiliation. I think both Democrats and Republicans can agree that there’s not a huge gap, practically speaking, between McCain and Lieberman… so, really, who’s being betrayed?

Simple: partisan Democrats and nobody else. No wonder Dave feels the way he does.

WE’RE HAPPY, DAMNIT! Who’s he trying to convince, us or himself? Actually, because Dave projects his every emotion onto the world, all this really means is that he’s happy and at the DNC. There could be fist-fights in the street and he’d still be saying everyone is happy.

In other news, via anonymous tip, Dave claims, in the comments to this post to have donated $1,000 to Obama’s campaign but neither OpenSecrets nor the FEC has heard of him. The reporting minimum is $200 in aggregate (2 U.S.C. 434), so even though Dave claims to have made ten $100 donations, he should still be showing up on these lists.

That is, if he’s actually donated anything. It would be a silly thing to lie about, but what’s the reasonable explanation?

It’s interesting to see how differently Dave sees himself compared to how the rest of us see him. Take, for example, today’s rant about the Wikipedia court victory:

While it may have been a good defense in court, their position is nonsense. Wales et al promote Wikipedia as an authoritative encyclopedia. Wikipedia likes certain people, and dislikes others — it tends to like people who say it’s wonderful and utopian, and dislikes people who have mixed opinions about it. I believe it’s used as a way to attack people they don’t like.

The fact that the court’s ruling was indisputably the right one is a topic for another blog, but it’s worth taking a look at Dave’s perception of Wikipedia. This is a man who has a profile which is watched over hawkishly by friends of his (Hi, Betsy!). Even the most benign insinuation of non-perfection must be sourced perfectly, while glowing happy-speak took a tremendous amount of effort to eradicate.

As it stands, Dave’s entry serves as a testament to the fact that the Wikipedia model works — if slowly and imperfectly — because for all of the furor around Dave and his contributions (both real and perceived) — his profile has finally made its way to being a fair statement of his work and his personality.

Want to know why he doesn’t like it? Check out the “Relationship to the public” section and the link to EOW — those two are a big part. And the fact that it doesn’t claim him as the creator of all things bloggy.

Dave Winer today:

I wrote the first howto for demoers at DEMO in 1991.

And unlike some people’s howtos, this one is still on the web.

Yeah, a lot of the ideas that people claim as theirs now were in this piece, written 17 years ago.

The massive ego was too much for commenter Barry Kelly, who responded:

Dave, *incredibly* few ideas are original. You *really* need to get over your paranoia and arrogance in this respect — it’s becoming really, really wearing; it seems that I can’t hear you on a podcast or read more than 5 posts from you without you claiming ownership on this or that idea.

It’s truly surprising: Dave wants more people to pay attention to him. He says he wants to see more “respect, listening, or teamwork.” Of course, we all know that what he really wants is more respect (for him), listening (to him), and by teamwork he means “help me do what I want to do.”

Much more interesting than that old news, though, is this little piece of douche-baggery:

Back when Scoble worked at UserLand, when I wanted to ship a product, I made everyone at the company listen to Al Pacino’s fantastic speech in Any Given Sunday.

Seriously? He ground the company to a halt to make them watch a movie clip every time he wanted to ship a product? What a self-absorbed little animal he is. Just ship your product and shut your mouth. Geez. Some people.