Monday, April 12, 2010

The Midnight Review Comes Under Attack From Right-Wing Blog The Midknight Review

I had a comment recently left on one of my blog posts from a person by the name of J Smithson. It has since been deleted, but here is a screen shot of the comment before I clicked on the little trash can:


I was a bit perplexed by the comment until I noticed that J Smithson had a Blogger account. When I clicked on it, I finally found out why John Smithson was so upset. Apparently, he had a similar sounding website name, but more importantly, it was one of extreme right ideology and he obviously was upset that my name was similar and my views are critical of the far right.

I was going to just dismiss his comment but as I browsed his website, I felt a desire to publish a response, seeing that he spent the time to come onto my website and insult me.

John Smithson's website is called "Midknight Review" (see the similarities?) and is a right wing "anecdotal political review and origninal commentary" website. Is it fair of me to label his site "right wing?" Yes, and I come to this conclusion from viewing the titles of what Smithson calls "Our Most Important Articles," or that after reviewing various blog posts to confirm my suspicions, the author goes on to refer to Michelle Bachmann as a "center right hero."


Something even more humorous and entertaining?  John Smithson wrote an article about my website, The Midnight Review, claiming I am a Marxist obstructionist employing Saul Alinsky's tactics, attacking my IQ, and then claiming I had plagiarized the name of my website from his.  He then goes on to post my "links" page as proof that I am some subversive operating under false pretenses.  Hardly a flattering review.

The following is an excerpt from Smithson's blistering article "The Midknight Review - a blog by a fellow who has decided to plagiarize our blog all in the name of Marxism. Rots of luck, Kevin."
Here are links apparently referenced by a fellow named Kevin Kelly. Kelly is a Marxist/Socialist who has decided to try to add to the confusion that exists, for some, with regard to the political debate. The title of his blog ? The Midknight Review. Geeeesh. Wonder where this clown got that name?
If you cruise around on his blog, he appears to support GOP candidates but, with a little time spent reading his blog and viewing his "Links" page, copied below, one soon realizes he is another of these "means justify the ends" Saul Alinsky radical types who thinks he is pulling one over on the rest of humanity with a rather transparent pretense of concern for where our country is going. More than pretending to be "conservative' and beside the fact that he plagiarizes this blog's title, he also purports to be intelligent. We will not take time to illustrate this last point for fear of dropping I Q status as we quote from the fellow. You will just have to trust us.

You can scroll down a couple of articles on our main page and find the front page of a site we revealed yesterday (we were the first, you know) that lays out the battle plan for those who have nothing better to do than confuse and pretend. They are destroyed as they attempt to debate the issues, so they turn to misrepresentations and lies. --- ala all the unfounded commotion of late about the use of the "n" word and racial crap they hope the watching world will accept as typical of the freedom rallies sweeping the nation. Kevin Kelly is one of these Marxist obstructionists.

We think it humorous that Kelly thinks CNN is a "world leader" in the arena of news broadcasting when, in point of fact, FoxNews has four times the audience during its evening programing and more Democrats watching Fox than exist in CNN's audience.
Where do I begin?

First, after looking at John Smithson's profile, apparently John Smithson is a good Christian man, with years of ministering and lots of biblical studies under his belt.  This must be why he has taken to insulting me by initially calling me a "grunt face" and then writing an article on his own site accusations me of plagiarism, insulting my intelligence, and writing terms of endearment, such as "rots of luck." I suggest Smithson should go back to seminary.

Secondly, looking at Smithson's articles, I would have to bring into question his IQ score. First, he constantly gets my name wrong. It is at the end of every blog post I make, yet Smithson failed to take notice, but then, why should he care? His only purpose was to attack, which of course is the Christian thing to do.

He also claims I plagiarized my website's name from his, claiming mine is even spelled the same, writing "The title of his blog ? The Midknight Review." Maybe he didn't notice, but the "midnight" in my website's name is not spelled with a "k." Maybe he was being quirky like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or Def Leppard, when naming his, but I doubt it. I have come to the conclusion that Smithson can't read, otherwise he would have picked up on the difference between my site and his (also reference his inability to identify the "e" in my name and his poor use of grammer and formatting in his posts).  My blog is spelled differently then Smithson's, and the content is different.  Just maybe we had both independently come up with a name variation of "midnight review," much like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who both independently theorized natural selection, but I bet Smithson believes in Creationism, so we could just ignore that comparison altogether, much like how Smithson ignored reason and intelligence when addressing my blog.

Just for information purposes, I had never come across Smithson's website in the past. The Midnight Review derives it's name from another endeavor I am involved in - The Midnight Plumbers, which is an experimental rock band that I had formed with my best friend, James Baker, almost ten years ago, and is a reference to the White House Plumbers who worked for the Committee to Re-elect the President and who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building. I also chose the name because originally, my posts were made when I had arrived home from work, after midnight.

I had never even come across The Original Midknight Review website as well, which apparently Google removed from their servers because they determined it to be nothing more then a "SPAM" site.  Also, as an interesting note, Smithson's The Midknight Review dates back to December of 2009 while my Midnight Review was registered in July of 2009, five months earlier, so it would be appropriate to ask "who plagiarized who?"  One could even question Smithson's claim to have had a website by that name prior to the creation of mine, but I will give Smithson the benefit of the doubt, despite him not affording me the same luxury.

According to Smithson, I am attempting to avoid honest debate by turning to "misrepresentations and lies," and as examples, he gives the right's assertion that racial slurs were never hurled towards black members of Congress, which he believes were invented to discredit what he called "freedom rallies," which I assume are the numerous Tea Party club meetings that have taken place around America, like the one attended by thousands, not millions, in the capitol last year. In the true tradition of conservative obstructionism, Smithson avoids debate by attacking my intelligence, but then declines to offer proof, asking his readers to "trust us," which doesn't say much for his readers should they listen to a guy who continuously gets my name wrong and can't even spell the name of the website he is criticizing.

As further evidence that my site is some sort of Marxist/socialist creation aimed at bringing down the establishment, Smithson copies and pastes my "links" page (which is a current work in progress), insulting the inclusion of CNN, and then claiming Fox News is more of a "world leader" in news then CNN based on the ratings of the audience for the evening programming, which according to a New York Times article, Fox News responded to the White House's criticisms by stating it's "news" programming were to take place from "9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays," but as we have seen, the real breadwinners in ratings have been the evening opinion shows like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. This is presumably where Smithson gets his "news" - from opinion programming, which would make sense considering Smithson's articles that echo the paranoia of Glenn Beck & Co. (see Smithson's article "Obama's Civilian Army" or his "comprehensive bio," that includes every conspiratorial piece of crap dredged from every fringe source out there).  Also, it was CNN's own words that call their site one of the "world's leaders" in news - I just copied and pasted from their own site, and maybe Smithson would have realized this had he noticed my "disclaimer" at the top of my links page, where I state "descriptions are compiled from various web sources and personal experience," and while CNN may not get the ratings of Fox, it still gets millions of views, which is hardly a miniscule audience.  Smithson also seemed to ignore that I listed links for Big Government or The Drudge Report, and should he have visited my "Magazines & Periodicals" page, he would have seen conservative publications such as Policy Review or Liberty Magazine.  Selective attention seems to be endemic to those who inhabit the fringe of the political sphere.

I also noticed mention of Saul Alinsky, a popular name to be thrown around by conservative activists.  I first heard of Saul Alinsky from reading an article by conservative activist and ACORN propagandist James O'Keefe.  It is interesting that conservatives like to use his name as an attack against those they dislike, because in doing so, they are conforming to Alinsky's rules (I had since Googled Alinsky and his rules to better grasp what conservatives were discussing).  Smithson's writes in his own profile that he is a "conservative political activist," meaning his attack is just a means to an end (which would be a world without varying ideologies).  I have been targeted because while I am a Republican, and have mentioned my interest in Republican candidates, it is evident to Smithson that I am a Marxist, who uses discussion of the GOP for "pulling one over on the rest of humanity with a rather transparent pretense of concern for where our country is going."  I myself did not realize that I did not love America and that my actions were intended to destroy the nation, but I guess my low IQ score made it impossible for me to see my transparent intentions.

What Smithson does here is he question's my patriotism to try and discredit me, but in actuality, it only proves that he is the one who hates America.  He hates the America that is not like him, which I would assume is white, Christian, and selfishly conservative.  I draw this conclusion based on the his articles, like the "comprehensive bio" of Obama, which questions his birth or even his religion.  Ignoring the "birther" argument just shows sheer ignorance, but the fact that Smithson is questioning Obama's religion, going as far as to call the administration the "Obama Muslim machine" in a particular post or insulting Tiger Woods for being "a very secular minded Buddhist" in another, is proof that he doesn't care for the other faiths that make up America - only his Stone-Campbell Reformation faith, which obviously he does not care for all too much, being that he allows his political ideology to trump his religious beliefs, otherwise, instead of calling me names and wishing me "rots of luck," Smithson would have reached out in unification, not in division. 

As for Smithson's website, I had my own critiques I figured I would offer up.  The site is a behemoth to navigate.  Everything is placed on one screen that seems to scroll down indefinitely.  The formatting is horrible, making it difficult to distinguish what is what.  It is like one big run on sentence.  Apparently when designing his site using Blogger's Dashboard, Smithson just put gadget after gadget.  I also noticed that instead of shelling out the cash for a regular website, Smithson created 12 additional Blogspot pages to act as complimentary pages to his main page, each having similar horrendous formatting as the last (with the exception of a couple that use a template), which leads me to believe the Google decision to pull down The Original Midknight Review for spamming even more.  In fact, after going through some of the most recent blog posts, they resemble what you would receive in a spam letter you would find in your inbox.  Articles sometimes consist of just a single line in a different colored, larger font, or a collection of graphics that are supposed to represent a coherent theme, while others just clearly state lies (like the one claiming the federal government siezed over 50% of the private sector in the past year).  Where is the post claiming the reader is entitled to Nigerian lottery winnings?  Some posts appear to be okay, but their appearance is intermittent, and they tend to have some really crazy talking points thrown in, as if the author was speaking in tongues and channeled Glenn Beck back when he was a shock jock on coke.  The best articles seem to be the short ones that offer a graph and little explanation from the website administrators, that way a reader can ignore the rest of the written vomit that appears on their screen and feel just slightly violated as they click away.     

I suggest going into Dashboard, clicking the "layout" tab, and selecting the "pick new template" option, or better yet, drop down the "settings" tab and click "delete blog," because The Midknight Review offers nothing original.  It just gives readers the opinions of a two-bit hack who wishes to use the internet to profess hatred, lies, and just your plain old bullshit (was that too secular of me to use profanity?).

I suggest Smithson read the following books to get a better grasp on reality:

7 comments:

  1. I would hardly call him a "good Christian man" after he attacked you completely unprovoked because you decided to create your own blog page, spelling "midnight" correctly.Does he really think he is the only one that blogs politics. He seams to think a lot of himself. Biblical studies must be about the only thing under his belt otherwise why would he feel such an urge to over compensate by lashing out at a complete stranger.... and honestly, who gives a damn if CNN or FoxNews has higher ratings????????? If he's so concerned about that maybe he should take a look at your rating stats v. his own. This old "gruntface" needs to take a deep breath, step away from the computer and face himself in the mirror. The one in the "right wing" of his house I'm sure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I doubt as to whether he has a firm grasp over all 162 units of biblical studies he received...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Too much error to deal with and, of course, you will just delete it all, anyway - right Kev ??

    I have been blogging since April of '07. Check out my profile count. The Lefties took down my original Midknight Review on Dec 26 -- which explains the date problem. . . . . . Another example of "freedom of speech" and the Marxist/socialists of our world.

    Check out my challenge over at the real Midknight Review. Unlike you, I have added my comments to your's rather than delete your comments in the name of sanity and commonsense -- ala Kevin Kelly.

    (Hey I misspell your name and you misspell Michele Bachmann's).

    Mr. Anonymous has no answer for my point regarding Fox and CNN so he pretends it is unimportant.

    I have 21,000 visitors on my second stat counter so, "yes", let's compare stats. But I really do not see the point in this criticism.

    The attacks on my Christianity? I really could not care less about the thinking of those who live for the moment and then die. Such attacks are nothing more than a feel good moment for the mindless existentialists who are driving the take over of our country.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh. The recommended reading. Pretty good. :---) Maybe I could borrow them from you when you finish. Books are a huge part of my life and I especially enjoy seeing what intellectual challenges turn the "other side" on.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @jds

    Comments that add nothing to the discussion (specific to the post) or are pure inflammatory comments, commonly called "troll" comments, are usually deleted in most forums/discussions/blogs.

    Your "deleted" comment is preserved in its entirety in this post. And from the looks of it had nothing to do with the article that you initially posted it on so was appropriately deleted there.


    Post as many comments, with as varied an opinion as you want and as different from Kevin's or others, and as long as it doesn't fall into the "troll" category you should be fine.

    Now a question to you.
    Since you consider Fox News a reliable news outlet, which shows do you watch and how would you rank them in order of credibility?

    I am actually curious and would like to know, since I currently watch whatever channel I am on at the time and might be willing to check out specific shows if they are that good.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Re c said:

    Thanks for nothing on the "troll" limitation. Obviously, you reference a purely subjective "rule of law" from those in charge. So beit. I have only one rule of discourse - no cursing and the gay term "tea bagger" is not allowed.. . . nor do I allow "douche bagger" as a reference to Lefties.

    Now, to your question. Actually, my first search for news (as a political blogger) comes from Drudge and Memeorandum with more references from the latter. I listen to Fox only for the debate. You should know that most of my source material is major media stuff such as ABC News, Bloomberg, Rasmussen and Gallup, Investor's Daily and the like. I read all of the conservative editorial opinion on American Thinker, CATO, American Spectator, RealClearPolitics and the like. And I give the freaks at MSNBC a fair hearing but continue to be amazed at Maddow's inexperience and Oblermann seething hatred. I actually like John King on CNN.

    On my blog, I issued a challenge to debate the issues. Could be good for both blogs. Anyone up to that challenge?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kevin Kelley's opinion concerning my scholastic mastery has this comment: try me. Seriously, we might agree. Or spend some time on my religious blog, Barth and the Boyz.

    ReplyDelete

Please share your thoughts and experiences in relation to this post. Remember to be respectful in your posting. Comments that that are deemed inappropriate will be deleted.