Eye on Winer

Dave has some pretty benign opinions on the new Google offering, nothing really worth writing home about, except that he claims that he “predicted” it. Is it really a “prediction” if you get an inside tip and probably break an embargo/NDA to disclose it?

It is interesting to me that Dave claims to be “really pissed” at Microsoft for “wasting” billions on Vista. That’s an awfully premature analysis, isn’t it? It’s pretty much what we hear every time MS comes out with something new… all of the linux and Apple nerds gather around and tell us it sucks, the tech community (who is very enamored with those nerds) agrees, and that’s it. At any rate, it’s an interesting choice of words because he didn’t say he thought they missed an opportunity or made a bad decision. He’s angry. Because he’s hosting on Windows and, I guess, just found out that it’s a dead end. Dave thinks it’s a dead end because it’s on Windows… but it’s more likely to be a “dead end” because it’s on Frontier.

…in other news…

Yesterday on Twitter Dave called an un-named (male) reporter a cunt. It was a bizarre response to another Twitter user expressing disgust at the latest report that McCain once called his wife that same name in a very public setting. It’s a really bizarre reaction.

“McCain is reprehensible for calling his wife a cunt.”
“Oh yeah? Well this guy I’m talking to is a cunt.”

I can’t decide if it feels more like a “So what? Maybe she is a cunt!” comment or a “Look, I can use the naughty word, too!” comment. Is it suddenly okay to use the term in (presumably) polite conversation because it’s a novel target? What about “bitch”? Would it be alright for some middle-class white guy to call Dave a “little bitch”? Could he then respond to call that guy a “nigger?”

I’m not really convinced that “cunt” is any less misogynistic when it’s used against a man, nor that “nigger” is any less racist when used against a white person.

It’s disgusting that, on top of people actually paying attention to this guy, he seemed to get no push-back on Twitter from it that I could find.

Update: Dave had a great justification for it today: “It was just a twit you twit”. How silly of me. I didn’t realize that made tossing slurs around okay.

Update 2: Dave appears to have deleted his “it’s just a twit” twit. Interesting. It’s not on his main feed, but you can still get there from the direct link. Not sure what that means.