There is consternation everywhere these days. The Gulf Coast is soaked in oil …… Nashville is underwater …… Times Square is in lock-down …… Greece is bankrupt ….. Tiger’s neck hurts …… NCSU fires an AD …… CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU? …… and a Big Time Media Mogul is chasing a cyber ghost thru the Internet ether. Sounds like a BobLee kind of kerfoodle ….. Yep.
John Drescher, Executive Editor of the local sorry, no-count fishwrap – The N&O, is, by all measure, a very decent fellow. If Diogenes had to limit his “honest man” search to Raleigh’s South McDowell Street, John Drescher is as good as Diog is likely to find. Granted, it’s pretty slim pickins where John hangs out.
“Working for the newspaper” once had a ring of credibility to it. Now it rates between “LT’s pimp” and “migrant farm worker” in occupational prestige.
I don’t care for our local “primary print media”. It’s not their overt partisanship as much as it is their overt arrogance and marginal, at best, journalistic integrity. OK, there is also Duke Lacrosse ….. hiding John Edwards’ Mess ….. fronting Mike Easley’s corruption …. inflaming the local school board war and countless other examples of Sham Wow sorriness. ….. Except for Matthew, Andy, Dan and “the Editor” there’s hardly a teaspoonfull worth keeping. But, doggone it ….. I do like Executive Editor John Drescher.
But BobLee ….. how can you dislike “the paper” so much but still like “the Editor”? I don’t know. Before John there was Melanie “Ms Ed” Sill, the self-righteous stooge behind their scandalous Duke Lacrosse coverage. Back then, I disliked “the paper” AND “the editor”. I know enough about large corporate sinkholes to know even a rotten barrel might have one or two good apples.
Really …. you got to like a fancy “Executive Editor” who declares war on a cyber ghost. Puts a feakin’ bounty on the avatar head of a single cyber citizen who’s only “crime” is being deviously clever. OK, said cyber citizen is “a right-winger” and delights in irritating the bejebbers out of Bre’r Drescher’s left-over collection of ink-stained wretches.
Editor vs Agent / John Drescher vs AgentPierce. Does this sound like something that might find itself on BobLee’s doorstep? Where else?
Perhaps you recall a similar incident a few years back involving “FloydTurbo”? Floyd, like AgentPierce, became a pointy-stick in the eye of the local fishwrap. I helped “Floyd” state his case. “FloydTurbo” now lives in Majorca. He is developing a prototype for a hamster wheel that can produce enough kinetic energy to power the QE2 for a month. He sends his regards.
So this enigma calling itself “AgentPierce” (aka “AP”) assumes a Zorro-esque mythical context. “He” (or is it a “she”, maybe just an “it”?) flits in/out of Editor Drescher’s on-line edition. Wielding a cursor and keyboard with rapier-like efficiency he slices and dices both Drescher’s left-over left-wing wretches AND the assorted human flotsam that washes up on Drescher’s reader boards.
Most Internet-oholics have the subtly and style of a flatulant hippo. Staking their claim to omniscience with crude name-calling. Sad anonymous souls, gifted in their own minds with incredible insights, yet exiled by cruel fate to dead-end lives, cheap haircuts and three pair of soiled underwear. Into this rancid effluent appeared the dashing cavalier “AgentPierce”. “AP” – a different breed o’ cat.
Editor Drescher penned an on-line blog last Wednesday suggesting two local school system combatants meet over soup and sandwiches. “Pierce” thought the idea awesome. He opined that Editor Drescher and his arch-enemy “local millionaire activist” – Art Pope – should try it. At 6:45 that evening “the Agent’s” phone rang. It was “the Editor”.
Drescher and Pierce spoke long and loquaciously of “ships and sails and sealing wax ….. and smart-alecky Internet ghosts with quixotic handles”. The Editor offered to buy the Agent lunch if he would publicly reveal his identity.
….Judas got a better offer than THAT!
Expose him and his family to the fruitcakes, nuts and squirrels that frequent the fishwrap’s on-line home ….. for a plate of ‘que at The Pit. Hellfire ….. Judas got a better offer than THAT!
The Editor repeated his challenge on-line ….. the Agent countered. Suggesting he buy his own lunch if The Editor would join him. The Editor could bring all of his sniveling nabobs. One “AgentPierce” across from Editor Drescher with a dozen or more of his little henchmen. Seemed about fair.
Sunday, the Editor “printed” his challenge AGAIN for subscribers to their dead-tree version. The bold headline blared …..
Remindful of “Duke Lacrosse Teammates – Testify Against Your Guilty Brothers”. Or “N&O Endorses Local Superstar John Edwards”. The N&O has had some real doozies.
That’s when I got involved …… Pierce’s e-mail was simple – “I’m told you are skilled in such matters.”
Our union was inevitable. “AgentPierce” is a rascal after my own heart. As the Titanic was going down and the decks awash with the frigid waters of the North Atlantic ….. AgentPierce and BobLee would be organizing one more shuffleboard match on the Lido Deck. The last thing we take seriously is ourselves. A coupla smart-alecky knuckleheads DEE-lighting in coldcocking every beady-eyed pseudo know-it-all we can find.
You know me buddies and babes ….. find the appropriate parallel in cinema or literature. Two popped to mind. Either with a high “hoot quotient”.
(1) Choose a quiet restaurant in Brooklyn. Have a gun taped behind the toilet. It worked for the Corleones.
(2) The Spartacus Gambit …… assemble 100s of like-minds in Nash Square across from Drescher’s lair ….. on signal they each stand up and declare “I AM AGENTPIERCE” …… “I AM AGENTPIERCE”. It would be such a sight for sure.
The issue of anonymous posters has perplexed The Editor and his minions as their business becomes more/more cyber-centric. With LTTE they could manipulate public opinion. But “reader comment boards” are nasty places with few rules. This “Pierce” character deftly skirts those rules to whipsaw the Editor’s minions ….. and the rasher of certified nitwits with their clenched teeth, soiled underwear and cheap haircuts.
The Editor could simply “zap” the Agent. He always has that power. But, darn it, the Agent is a marvelously clever fellow. His martyrdom would elevate this charming cyber “Zorro” to Braveheart level. A perplexing dilemma of the Internet Era.
Meanwhile there’s ….. the Gulf Coast …. Nashville ….. Times Square …. Greece …. ad infinitum ….. as the Editor chases the Agent and ….. a roguish Internet Legend joins the fray.
If this isn’t all described in Revelations or a Nostradamus quatrain ….. it oughta be.
