Things are getting a little bit Dickensian for some wingnut bloggers.
Roy Edroso at Alicublog writes the sad story of the crash and burn of a wingnut blogger post-election: after having placed his faith (and his family’s future security) in the simple business formula of repeating rightwing talking points online like a parrot in return for ‘donations’ from readers, blogger Kim DuToit is surprised that his plan failed. But how could such a moneymaking scheme ever possibly have failed?
So strong was this blogger’s belief that blogging would rescue him from a life of wage-slave misery and potentially degrading manual toil (isn’t that what the bleks are for?), South African import DuToit spent seven fruitless years pursuing his dream of national punditry, during which time all it gave him was gout:
I hadn’t thought about Kim du Toit — celebrated author of “The Pussification of the American Male” and other two-fisted screeds on self-reliance — for quite some time when pure, blind luck led me to this fascinating essay by his wife, explaining why Mr. du Toit will soon cease blogging, despite an alleged flood of reader protests: “The truth is folks, we can’t afford it.”
Astonishingly, blogging has not been the bonanza the du Toits might have wished for, and as Mr. du Toit is unable to “contribute to our financial requirements” with a more traditional job because of his gout, times have grown hard. Mrs. du Toit cashed in her IRA last year, but that money was all spent on a “last hurrah around the world with our kids,” lap-band surgery for their daughter, household repairs, and servers for Mr. du Toit’s blogging.
“We’ve staid-off bankruptcy, but just barely,” says Mrs. du Toit. “The truth is, we spoke to an attorney about bankruptcy, but we’d be forced into a two year commitment of repayment, not debt forgiveness, and the kid’s college would be the expense we’d have to stop under that scenario.”
Let me get this straight.
After deliberately getting themselves into humongous debt and deliberately wasting what few assets they had on a] personal pleasure and b] a business that had yet to show any return (other than the aforementioned gout), these people now want the whole lot written off and show no intent to repay anything at all? There’s conservative self-reliance and pioneer moral fibre for you.
“So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt.”
Dickens, Great Expectations
A commenter to the post likens the DuToits to Dickens’ Veneerings; I think Dickens would have recognised them as more general but no less self-interested types. They’re Pecksniffian sanctimonious hypocrites (“Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there”) whilst and at one and the same time they’re Mr Micawbers, with their an unshakeable faith in a providential turning up of something: but most of all what they are is Pip from Great Expectations, with his secret grandiosity and feelings of entitlement but without the charm.
We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
Great Expectations
I wonder how many more smalltime wingnut bloggers are getting a visist from the skeleton truth about now? Dare I mention Pyjamas Media?
I might feel a bit sorry for the deluded idiots. Yes, even the DuToits: they thought the Republican reich would last forever, they thought that if they could just be strident enough, loyal enough and vicious enough that the rightwing media gravy train would slow down specially for them, just in time to catch their free ride to fame, fortune and future Fox punditry.
I might feel sorry for them, but I don’t. That’s because this yummy schadenfreude is so delicious. Please sir, can I have some more?
Alex
November 10, 2008 at 7:22 pmThere was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
The case is indeed very common; it amounts to the entry requirement for everyone the left respects culturally. Up to that point, schadenfreude is out of place.
Ah, but it’s that repellent fucko du Toit. Ha ha ha. There is an important point here, though – it’s one of our most important moral principles that we all need the protection of society because IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. It doesn’t do to mock poverty.
Mocking Kim du Toit for any other reason, however…
bjacques
November 11, 2008 at 6:06 amExcellent post!
Needing the protection of society was exactly the concept that Du Toit mocked. He expected wingnut welfare to obviate that protection, for right-thinking people of course. A lot of fellow rightwing bloggers are in this fix because they hoped to get rich off their subscribers by stoking their fears and prejudices.
However, the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, the A-List winguts, let alone Pajamas Media, failed to deliver for the wingnut vote. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Obama didn’t suck up to Rupert Murdoch or Richard Melon Scaife, so he owes them nothing. (With FCC hearings coming up soon, expect Fox’s tone to soften from hectoring to wheedling and concern-trollery.) The “respectable” talk shows and newspapers, by keeping better-dressed charlatans like Bill Kristol and David Brooks on the payroll, are losing their progessive audience to blogs but not gaining many conservative ones (who don’t follow them anyway).
So you have a rightwing mediasphere that couldn’t lead the right into the Promised Land of the Permanent Republican Majority and whom the left or even the center have no reason to fear any longer. The money’s gonna dry up one day. Subscribers are losing their jobs and rightwing sugardaddies won’t live forever.
I’ve seen this before, in the 1980s, with TV evangelists. As the pool of check-writing suckers shrank, the preachers turned on each other. Rev. Jimmy Swaggart busted Jim Bakker for getting blowjobs (or maybe giving them, I forget which). Bakker’s buddy the Rev. Richard Dortch, busted Swaggart for soliciting teenaged prostitutes. Around this time, Rev. Oral Roberts claimed God would kill him unless he could raise 8 million bucks in a few weeks. In 1984, before all this happened, Rev. Jerry Falwell was a political player and Pat Robertson could entertain a run for President. By 1988, the TV preachers were spent as a national political force.
Pundits of the right don’t have much in the way of scandal, but it never looks good to get richer while your subscribers get poorer.
I am so enjoying this. And speaking of Dickens… In the South park edition of Great Expectations, as read by An English Person (Malcom McDowell!), Miss Havisham is a robot who lives off the tears of the broken-hearted. I gotta say that nothing flavors a good steak like salt from the hot, angry tears of wingnuts.
Palau
November 13, 2008 at 6:19 amBjaques: exactly – for almost every on the skids rightblogger (bar the Mom’s basement variety) there’s a spouse and kids suffering, if you can call having a regular burger instead of a super cheese bacon deluxe with extra added fat ‘suffering’ , exactly.
But that’s harsh of me. I’m trying not to enjoy this; it’s mighty unfair that kids get most of the negative fallout from their parents’ toxic political views and it’s particularly unfair when those parents are loony libertarians. It’s all very well saying everyone should be responsible entirely for themselves and make their own decisions but when you have children you do what’s best for them, not you.
On the other hand think of the learning experience of a New Depression generation who’ve experienced the results of the practical application of Randian philosophy first-hand. It could be the making of them.
Alex
November 14, 2008 at 9:46 amI’ve seen this before, in the 1980s, with TV evangelists. As the pool of check-writing suckers shrank, the preachers turned on each other.
Now that’s interesting..
Mooser
November 21, 2008 at 4:13 pmYou guys have a lot to answer for! I was so struck, so verklempt, so famischt by the du Toit’s situation, I immediately e-mailed her with an offer of fiduciary succor. She completely misconstrued my manly and generous sentiments, and now I see why. It’s cause of your snark, your elitist contempt for their effort to sieve gold from the stony soil of right-wing drek. Apparently, since my e-mail arrived at the same time, she thinks it is all my fault!
You might want to go to her site and see her up-date on why none of this is their responsibility, in fact, their broke-ness is all the fault of us “libeling” and “fishing for financial information” or some damn thing or other. She calls me out by name and e-mail address, got my e-mail shut down, and threatened me with the FBI!
I must admit, being called out as the worst person on the web by Mrs. du Toit is an honorific I will never live up to, or down, as the case may be.
Mooser
November 22, 2008 at 3:17 pmOnce again, I am wrong. My e-mail seems to have popped back up again.
However, being called “the most despicable person on the web” (I may be paraphrasing) by Mrs. du Toit will keep me dining out for years. And if I see her husband’s truck around my house, I’m moving out for good. I’m not armed like him, with guns And if my gout acts up, I’ll just have some plover’s eggs and champagne sent to my rooms.
Funny thing tho. When she excoriated me as “despicable” and published my e-mail, I was expecting a flood of outraged mail, or at least one or two people telling me how wrong I was. I was wrong about that, too. Who knew such an eleaborate site would have such a small readership? Not me.