Steven,
I haven't discussed with you the progress of the Los Angeles Free Press site because there has been nothing but the opposite of progress. You seriously don't want to hear what I have to say. In my last letter to you, I gave you a chance to do the right thing, something with integrity, by isolating my work from yours. You turned it down so there's really nothing to discuss. There's no middle ground. I totally disagree with absolutely everything you've done and find the site atrocious, embarrassing, and personally insulting. I've cancelled my subscription and cannot comment on most of what you've done because I cannot look at it. It's too distressing to see how you're mangling my hard work, taking a coherent whole with an underlying theme in subtext and destroying the segues by changing the order and inventing a different theme that wasn't there, isolating articles that were only used because of the segue to what was above or below, while explaining it away with bad grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mushy thinking. It's like I prepared a 12 course gourmet French meal for connoisseurs only to see you throw 8 of the courses away and serve the rest covered in catsup. If you find you're achieving some level of success at this, hey, more power to you, but I can't watch. Nobody gives a rat's ass what YOU think of Cindy Sheehan, she has infinitely more credibility than you, and I pity the poor readers who suffer through your sophomoric and laughable explanation of what holds one piece together. Haven't you noticed there are virtually NO comments on anything you've written, on the site or on Facebook, that the numbers aren't growing, that no one's passing along your editorial wisdom, that no one's cutting and pasting YOUR writing other places? Here's a simple test. Submit ANY of your editorials as a letter to the editor of ANY other publication and see if they publish it. You're such an egotistical mess you don't even notice you're a laughingstock.
It seems to me this complete disregard for my and other people's work is precisely why no one trusts you. I certainly don't. You're such a weasel. If I don't get the pleasure of seeing my art displayed the way I intend, which is the only thing all artists want, then I suffer these indignities for one reason only, a paycheck. Pay me for doing exactly what I'm doing and then do what you want with it, but unless you use everything I give you in the exact order I give it, please remove my name from the site. I completely stand by every single item I've chosen, and particularly the order they are presented, even considering your new "rules" concerning culture and society. What on earth DOESN'T fit those two headings? Your focus on "culture" instead of "counterculture" is insulting to everything the Free Press and Art Kunkin stand for and seems to indicate you want more stories about Lindsey Lohan. You don't even know what the word means. I don't have to explain anything. I know what I'm doing. Since you're using it as an excuse not to pay me, YOU'RE the one who has to explain why you didn't use each and every item I posted.
Let's start with Barry Crimmins' excellent article about his problems getting healthcare, which was picked up by James Wolcott, lead columnist and blogger for Vanity Fair, the day after you decided it wasn't worthy of the Los Angeles Free Press. Your decision not to post it was not only a slap in my face but a slap in the face of my friend Barry, who would have loved to have credited the Free Press for helping spread the word, but now his link goes to Vanity Fair alone. I can't wait to find out why an incredibly well-written article about the frustrations of dealing with the bureaucracy of hospitals in America has nothing to do with SOCIETY. I'm serious. Please enlighten me. I really want to know precisely what was going through your mind when you decided none of your readership should read Barry's article because I find this decision, and numerous other decisions, completely incomprehensible and unforgivable.
Refusing to mention the deaths of Harvey Pekar and Tuli Kupferberg, major counter-culture icons ignored by the mainstream media? Unforgivable for a counter-culture newspaper.
I choose editorial cartoons that comment upon adjacent articles. You decided not to use any, for no apparent reason, then changed your mind and posted them all together, separate from the articles they were commenting upon, like serving an entire meal of condiments because you left them off the table in previous meals. Unforgivable and unbelievable. Every decision you make is wrong. PLEASE stop embarrassing yourself. You're REALLY bad at this.
Nobody's bothering to tell you because they don't want to hurt your feelings but I guess we're beyond that. Who's your real friend, the one who lets you make a fool of yourself or the one who tries to stop you? You're throwing good money after bad. You will NEVER succeed at doing anything but tarnishing an important brand name through endless ineptitude. Please believe me. People are laughing at you in stunned disbelief that you have made so many outrageously stupid decisions.
You've missed every boat. There's no incentive to keep going. You talk about a Los Angeles Free Press book imprint but it's all hot air. You're even incapable of constructing an online archive of the old Free Press, like there is of Paul Krassner's The Realist. Where's the iPad Los Angeles Free Press app that pulls up all the archives, just like the one that does Marvel Comics. Incompetence.
Most idiotic is your attitude toward the Daily Freep. I own the names dailyfreep.com, dailyfreep.blogspot.com, facebook.com/dailyfreep, digg.com/users/dailyfreep, twitter.com/dailyfreep, and more. If you gave the word, every new daily posting would fully integrate with Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc, and of course Google search. It can't help but grow starting with nothing more than a link from the Los Angeles Free Press and the user base of the current archives which, I must emphasize, can't be moved. Their entire value rests in the fact they have been, are now, and will forever be at the same permanent address at dailyfreep.blogspot.com. But no, you want the opposite, to close off every Daily Freep link to the public, even though it's the only archive you have. Insane.
I've got this news machine, greased and ready to take off but all you're interested in is cutting and pasting and ruining the integrity of everything while inserting ludicrous pointless unreadable editorials, as though what's interesting is what YOU have to say and not the piece itself. You want the Daily Freep, a news machine with boundless potential? Good. Present it and let it take off on its own, but I've removed your editing privileges and will never let you touch it. You can't be trusted with ANYBODY else's work. You've made it quite clear that, after years of reading me, you still don't understand what I do. Why else would you mangle it so incessantly?
So maybe it's over. You still have to pay me for past work. The incontrovertible unpaid bills are posted below. Don't do it by tomorrow and I'll go to Debbie, whom you say has all your money. I completely agree with her that you're wasting your time with the Free Press, so maybe she'll do the right thing to get rid of me. I'm sure we'll have a fascinating discussion. If she doesn't come through, then it's to the courts where you can explain to a judge why you didn't pay me for my work because health care has nothing to do with society.
MD
