Salon Went Haywire Years Ago

I remember the publication when it first began in the mid-1990s. It was a truly groundbreaking publication that published articles exposing the sham impeachment of then-president Bill Clinton, the scandals of Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde, and many other excellent articles. It also boasted what was the best discussion board on the internet, Table Talk, of which I was a member for several years and then left it for good when the site went pay-to-play in around 2001. Table Talk ended a few years later in favor of the diary system ala Daily Kos (that site I seldom visit anymore or any of the other major blogs). However, Talbot, founder and a good editor despite his gullibility of believing those whacko JFK assassination conspiracy theories, left, and the site went south.

What in the hell happened to the site, now that it regularly trashes Hillary Clinton, and publishes some truly demented shit like the regrets of a would-be pedophile, the latter of which was arguably the worst article in the history of print media of the past fifty years (along with the recent Charlotte Observer editorial that pooh-poohed women's real fears about men in dresses invading their private spaces)?

The link might have an idea:

Salon tried mightily to achieve profitability, and out of necessity became one of the first publishers to test out various ways to monetize its site. Salon Premium, Salon’s first subscription product, launched in April 2001 as “a last-ditch effort to save the business,” according to a former staffer. The site began gating off a few stories every day, but by the end of the year, all of Salon’s news stories became inaccessible to non-subscribers. Later, the site would try out a middle-ground approach — if non-subscribers sat through a 30-second video advertisement, they would receive a daily pass to access the site for free.

By the end of 2004, Salon’s subscription program peaked at 89,100 subscribers, each paying around $30 annually. And while Salon Premium saved the business at the time, some former Salon staff members believe erecting the paywall stunted the site’s growth.

“We were doing this right as the whole blog moment was exploding,” Lauerman said. “There was this great democratization of the web, and we were suddenly behind this gate. It took a long time to recover from that.”

During the paywall years, readership and traffic flattened, even as other sites benefited from the mainstreaming of the Internet and the popularity of blogging, said one former staffer.

The paywall was a failure, but it was the beginning of the end of the magazine.

Media Sexist Commentary

One doesn't have to be a fan or a voter for Sarah Palin to recognize filth when they read it.

Any time there is a halfway strong woman running for president or other public office, the media has to paint the woman as a domineering, controlling, castrating bitch. Hillary Clinton went through the same damned thing.

Because to anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn't going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.


For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. "Drill, baby, drill!" the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani's speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke. The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the base yearned to drill her. (We will leave it to shrinks to determine whether the GOP hardcore has the hots for Palin because she's reaming the Democrats, or because authority-worshippers tend to have secret fantasies of being reamed themselves.)

The problem for the GOP, however, is that for independents, Palin comes across as someone who's going to drill them. Strict biblical literalism, trying to ban books, denying human responsibility for global warming and launching nasty vendettas against foes may put lead in the pencil of unreconstructed Bush supporters, but for those who haven't already signed up for the extreme GOP agenda, they're about as seductive as a great white shark in Victoria's Secret lingerie.

This Kamiya is one sick asshole to write semi-pornography like this. It sounds more like his own sick fantasy about Palin than it does Republican supporters'. How does this help Obama, by the way, whose balloon is rapidly losing air?

I got news for him: It isn't whether McCain/Palin win the election, it's by how much.

It is No Surprise

Salon, long in the tank for Barack Obama, would shit all over the PUMA protesters because they have the unmitigated gall to challenge the completely undemocratic way the "nominee" was decided.

Moron Traister thinks that because there weren't that many people protesting in Denver, this means Obama will get almost all of the Democratic vote. No he won't, not even close.

The asshole, meaning Obama, doesn't even want a full roll call of the states, something that has been done in almost all previous Democratic conventions. He wants to throw the Clinton supporters a bone and then pull the rug right out from under them.

What is he afraid of?