Silly Old Twit

Way back , back in the old days , the nineteen sixties to be exact I used to walk around with my hands in my pocket. Sometimes I would stand up and sometimes I’d just sit down. I would look to the left and the right. I was always looking. You had to be on your guard. They were everywhere.
But they have always been there , pretending they are on your side but you knew deep down inside that they are only looking after number one. In my young days they were called hippies. I never liked them. I remember looking at them and thinking , “They are from the same class as the old guard they claim they want to overthrow”. They attended the same colleges and universities. They said that these institutes of learning had to be torn down…. but they already had their degree in their pocket. They talked about free love and bringing down the barriers but they had a contempt for the working class …..they were the Me generation.
I used to sit in the dining room. I had a record deck , the kind that you used to plug into the back of an old valve radio to make the sound come out and I would sit for hours listening to Elvis Presley while watching the RCA label spinning round and round. They didn’t like Elvis. They tended to sneer at anyone who did. It was a class thing and behind all their progressive posturing they were very conscious of their class. They criticized their own parents but sounded remarkably like them for all that.
They smoked pot and experimented with sex …..free love , they used the word free quite a lot but like I said nobody was fooled. I used to think …”Give it a few years and they will all be back to working for Daddy….” And they were. This is the generation that gave the world Global Capitalism.

Another time and another place. And here they are again. But the’re not called hippies any more. Today they call themselves Bloggers. And this time round they are still peddling that word ‘free’. The free exchange of information and the new open networks…..a brave new world that’s going to make the old ways redundant. But we have heard it all before. And the universities they came out of are the same institutions that gave us George Bush and Enron. Look them up some time on Boing Boing and Information Aesthetics. They even sound like Corporations and they didn’t get to where they are by being rebels….there are no free spirits here , they all walked the line. Like father like son.
And as a friend of mine used to say , ” At least with Hitler you knew where you stood”. They are in control. They own the network. They will tell you over and over again that it’s a democratic media , the Internet. You can be just like them or so they would have you believe but make no mistake , they ARE in control.
Who was it who said , ” the liberal opposition and part of the regime”? Whoever it was he was a wise man. As my mother used to say , “Walk softly and carry a big stick …..and watch your back”. And you would need eyes in the back of your head with the likes of these people. As the Americans are fond of saying , “follow the money”. You wont find any of these people among the broken and destitute littering our city streets. No suffering for their art here. They listen to their pop idols in the stadium just like any other Nero. They have taken to Soccer football just as the working class are being priced out. They will sell out their blogs some day too , when the price is right.
“Who’s afraid of Cory Doctorow “? Copyright and trade policies!! You can’t tell a book by the cover but you can take a damn good guess .So what’s he really selling?. He’s selling Cory Doctorow Inc.
Dispatches from Blogistan or Triumph of the Will. You pay your money and make your choice. Red Bull or Jack Daniel’s. “Words , Words, Words”. And the truth?.
….Well the truth is that Elvis is dead and business is business

ps. just read this in Dispatches from Blogistan. “We’re figuring out how to get the masses involved (in blogging) without mob rule”(Craig Newmark/craiglist.com). (note the ‘we’). You have to read it twice but take the smile off your face first.

COMMING SOON TO THIS BLOG: IAN BRADY , MICHAEL COLLINS AND THE GENTLE ART OF QUEUING.