Horton hears a what?

Typical Les. He went and missed the point. He never came close to finding the point. In fact, he managed to somehow derive his very own point out of thin air. Or maybe it was the 'internet cloud'. Anyway...

"

A literary career down the toilet?

I had to laugh when a friend sent me a link to a blogsite featuring the rantings of a character calling himself The Dude, who appears to be unhappy with everything in Bahrain - including the GDN and myself.

Featured on the site is a survey titled 'How Crap is Les Horton', in which the blogger's followers were invited to vote on my performance as a columnist.

These range from 'Monumentally' (crap), through 'Incredulously', 'Stupendously' and 'Like, totally', to 'Only partially'.

Fifty-four per cent hit 'Monumentally', which would be cause for concern had the anonymous blogger not been honest enough to post that this amounted to four out of a total of just seven votes, after which the poll was closed.

I am not sure whether that means that only seven people thought my column even worthy of insult, or if they were the only people tapping into the site.

But my gratitude goes out to the sole voter who clicked "Only partially", which suggests that all is not completely lost as far as my career goes.

Anyone who puts themselves on the public stage should expect to have to dodge the odd rotten tomato and I take no offence at all from any criticism that may come my way.

In fact, I am rather fond of my personal 'stalker' who entertains my colleagues and I with the most imaginative insults, though has never had the courage to put his name to his emails.

Likewise, The Dude hides behind a pseudonym as he dismisses my work as "the ramblings of an unspectacular mind scrawled onto paper by a lacklustre hand" - and that's just the polite bit.

When I first saw the site, I was tempted to pick up the gauntlet and invite readers to answer the question which headlines his now defunct poll - but this could prove to be a double-edged sword.

Should thousands of you write in my defence, there may be a strong chance of a pay rise, even in these times of corporate belt-tightening.

But should the votes go the other way, I could just as easily find myself out of a job, or at least silenced and would have to, as The Dude put it, pack away my crayons

"

Where to begin? First of all, that Les could dedicate an entire column to something as trivial and self-serving as a poll about himself is precisely why I have a problem with his column and the GDN. Play it like you're a good sport and bask in the glow of your 'fame' while you drown in support from far and wide. Don't get a snorkel just yet Les. 

Yes, that the poll closed automatically after however long the poll was open for is an oversight on my part,  but it was just there for novelty value anyway. The only opinion that matters is my own. That's what opinion is all about. Opinion should, like an onion, be firm and rather strong. Layered? Why not. A useful ingredient in just about any cooking? Sure, I guess. Seven votes. Disappointing perhaps, but also, considering this blog is planted in the far reaches of the interweb, not bad either. Considering ol' Les boy got himself one entire letter of support, I could say I win. But I wont. Because we all know that I have already won. Twelve thousand copies a day according to the last time I perused a rate card. One response. Talk about conversion rates. What he's done there is:

a) Demonstrate how ineffective the GDN is an advertising medium, and/or

b) Demonstrate how few people give a damn about Les's trivial 'musings', and/or

c) Reinforce my convictions about the pointlessness of print media, and

d) Remind us all of how little actual news the GDN bothers to waste its ink on. 

Les's focus seems to be on this poll. Not a whisper or a mention of the fact that I went and accused one of his colleagues of the P word. As an editor, deputy or otherwise, shouldn't he give a bit of a hint of a damn? I reckon he did, anonymously, though it is sheer speculation on my part. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't journalism - Mr. Horton's chosen or happened upon profession - about things like news and integrity? I'll pause so he can dust off that thesaurus...

Moving on. Yeah, I hide behind a pseudonym. Because I am a coward? Yeah, sure, I'll take that. Excuse me for not blatantly attempting to get myself thrown behind bars for assaulting the myth of press freedom in our Kingdom. I'm not overly political, but I am opinionated and not utterly imbecilic. Would I leave the press and the fabled GDN to speak for me should I end up being drawn and quartered? Hell no, because I am not retarded, or at least I don't think I am. 

I seek no recognition (mostly due to laziness as opposed to modesty), something Les would be hard pressed to understand. I just want to complain, and that's what I've been doing. Furthermore, the pseudonym exists because the primary function of this blog was that of a social experiment - an attempt to see how information disseminates in our society when people actively seek out information. This blog began because of Internet censorship, and I was curious to know how long it'd be before someone I knew figured out who was spewing pointlessness in random directions for no apparent reason. Not that long apparently. About two weeks as I recall. This blog has never, not once, been promoted in person by myself. Not to family, not to friends. I have told nobody of it's existence in an attempt to keep my experiment pure. Idiotic? Perhaps. But I care not. I now know that should people seek opinion, like minded or not, they can find it despite the best attempts of our Ministries to thwart free speech while Les and his colleagues blow fascist trumpets in attempts to drown out the noise of dissent. 

What next? His use of the term 'stalker' is far from accurate. Les, like he said, is in the public eye. I, as a member of the public, occasionally happen upon his musings while delicately handling germ-ridden media whilst waiting for something inane like overpriced coffee. I have long believed that the space utilised for his column could be put to better use. When I read in bewilderment his ignorance regarding 'cloud computing' I turned thoughts into words, and so began this banal saga of microscopic proportions. That he admitted openly to being ignorant on the subject matter does not forgive the genuine level of ineptitude on display in that particular slice of dumb, and I decided to share my opinion with whoever the hell decided to stumble this way. How, in any sense of the word, does that make me a stalker? Sure, if I wanted to I could find out where Les live thanks to the privacy-raping awesomeness of the World Wide Web, but why would I want to do that? Les does not fascinate me. I am not attracted to him. What other requisites are there for bandying about a term like stalker? Weird. Perhaps it's a fantasy or something.... but I digress... 

Lets get back to Les's words... "never had the courage to put his name to his emails". Damn. That I need to point out to a 'journalist' that there is a fundamental and obnoxiously obvious difference between emails and blog posts is, at this stage, unsurprising and vaguely depressing, like just about everything we've come to expect from Les and the GDN. Just because it's on a computer doesn't make it an email. A painting is not the same as a photograph, even if they both exist on paper. Trivial, yes, but revealing nonetheless. Surely someone purporting to be a journalist should be somewhat closer to understanding that big 'ol internet, seeing as how it's bringing about the demise of their beloved print media and its corresponding advertising income, i.e. the bread that buys his bread. When people said the Internet was the future, that was in the past Les. The internet is now. Like it or loathe it, it was not a fad. Take a class or something. 

I'm bored now. But just so you know, using words like 'gauntlet' and 'double-edged' sword do not make you scary or intimidating. They do however make Les read like an imperialist crusader with an obvious ego surplus. I'd suggest burying hatchets and whatnot, but this is way too much fun. One last question... has anyone ever accused Les's career of being 'literary'? 

Until next time,

Goodnight and good luck <---- google it. Teach yourself a thing or two about 'journalism'.