On The Road, Leg 1: La Mirada to Las Vegas

Internet Catharsis, Part 3
by Steve Finkelstein

In the previous installment of this article I wrote about the “cheaters” I helped purge from a trivia website. After this minor irritation was dispensed with, I had to contend with another unexpected annoyance at the site: a player who went under the screen name USA4GWBUSH decided to log under a second SN: JOHNKERRYSUX. Not only that, but he used that that handle to cheat as well! I wasn’t bothered by his "BUSH" SN, but I thought his "KERRY" SN was tasteless and inappropriate partisanship. I decided to put a posting on the message board regarding this. (When posting, I used the nickname “Stoker”; I use this handle because I’m pushing a script with a Bram Stoker story in it.) The following are a series of postings that took place over the course of a week; I’ve edited them down so it doesn't take a week to read them!

(7/6/04) Subject: Stupid Partisan Names--I see John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate today, so that the idiot who’s posting as JOHNKERRYSUX should change his name to JOHNKERRYWINS; to heap further indignity, this player is ALSO a cheater; I wonder if USA4GWBUSH is ALSO a cheater; would stand to reason since GW BUSH stole Florida in the 2000 election.

(7/7/04)--Stroker...er, Stoker. Yeah, 2 lawyers named John on the ticket. That fact alone should make it a lock for Bush/Cheney.

(7/7/04)--Stroker----VERY clever! I expected that kind of sophomoric humor from a Bush supporter-----guess that idiotic “attack” humor comes from one expecting their candidate to lose----what always amuses me is how these right-wingers ALWAYS start things up----introducing heavy-handed partisanship to a trivia site that is SUPPOSED to be non-partisan. Tell ya what----I’ll stop humiliating you if you change your trivia "handle." We can call a truce if you do that----

(7/7/04)--Here is something you Michael Moron loving fool may understand----Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will NEVER hurt me. The name stays. RUFF!

(7/7/04)--Your name and idiotic partisanship show YOU to be the fool; but of course, the biggest fool of all is G. W. Bush, and here’s why: he’s an illegitimately "selected" president and a coke-snorting, National Guard-deserting right-winger with the IQ of a snail who lied us into an unnecessary war that has cost $200 billion and the lives of 850 brave American soldiers. But what the hey, all in good fun! Are you going to celebrate also when your native son John Kerry wins in Nov.? (Note: "USA" lives in Boston.)

(7/8/04)--Please refer to the following UN Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq: 715, etc., etc. How long do you give the Ba’athist regime before you finally say ENOUGH? How many more of these declawed, pussy-footing around resolutions can you take after 9/11? When we and the rest of the world try resolution after resolution ad noseum (sic) to bring this man to open his country to full inspections to no avail, the UN begins to look as inept as the League of Nations was----that body did a great job of preventing Japan and Germany from embarking on the road that brought the world to its most destructive conflict. C’mon Stroker....get real willya or please....buy a big tube of Prep-H, lather yourself up in it and then shrivel up and stop irritating the rest of the human race.

(7/8/04)--My! Preperation H! GWBUSH seems to have an anal fixation about me; is he a self-loathing latent gay? Is he a member of the GOP Log Cabin society? Pity, because the Republican "big tent" has no room for gays, as displayed by its virulent anti-gay policies. As for 9/11, USAGW is quite the moron (just like the president he’s supporting), because massive evidence has shown that Iraq had NO CONNECTION to 9/11, nor do they have ANY weapons of mass destruction. Cowards like USA4GWBUSH are BIG TALKERS; they avoid combat service (just like cowardly Bush and Cheney) and they don’t seem to mind that almost 850 brave, patriotic soldiers have died in this war; a war justified by idiotic ideology, oil, Halliburton war profiteering and the fact that George Jr. is pissed that Hussein put a hit out on his daddy. You know, I have nothing against principled conservatives civilly backing Bush; hey this is the USA after all. What I don’t like are brainless rabble-rousing demagogues spewing their hatred.

(7/8/04)--Stoker, does the name of a village called Halabja mean anything to you? How much do you think it takes to conceal weapons of mass destruction? You could hide the most lethal of them in the space of a single strain of DNA...not in huge vats. A clever and small bio program could develop some bugs that devastate the world’s population more than a superpower nuclear exchange. Do you really think that there would be any hesitation on the part of a brainwashed wahabbi jihadist (al Zarqawi, the Iraqi-connected Al-Qaeda Lt. comes to mind) to unleash such a weapon? If these types have shown their true colors with the types of attacks that they have carried out in the past, then don’t put it past them to use something like that. Stoker, in this post as well as my last I’ve just used facts while you’ve done no such thing. Instead you retreat behind your anonymity to spout off like an insolent child. BTW, I’m very comfortable in my heterosexual lifestyle and have no anal fixation...you brought that up. If John Kerry wins, I will not be bitter...I will remain the LOYAL opposition...something it seems that a good deal of the left can’t grasp.

(7/09/04)--USA, you seem to want a more civil discourse, yet you revert to childish insults; can’t figure out which way you want to communicate. In regards to the war, many sources say there are NO WMD in Iraq (weapons inspector David Kay, 9/11 commission, ad infinitum); the only ones who argued for it were the VP and paranoid schizo "neocons" such as Perle and Wolfowitz who are really waging this war on a ideological basis. As to your evidence re Iraq, there are FAR more WMDs in America (toxic chemicals, ricin, anthrax) that could be used by Al-Qaeda or domestic terrorists against this country. Hussein WAS a murdering SOB, but there is no evidence Iraq posed imminent threat to us; an argument for a POTENTIAL threat doesn’t cut it. There is FAR more danger from the crazed regimes of N.Korea and Iran with their nuclear capabilities than Iraq. They were both part of the "Axis of Evil" too; why didn’t Bush go after them? Additional FACTS: bi-partisan Senate subcommittee just issued a blistering report today saying the CIA was DEAD WRONG about Al-Qaeda connection to Iraq (despite contrary claims by the VP); these are the FACTS, USA. On other subject, if you’re trying to paint me as far-left pinko, you're dead wrong. I am a left-of-center independent who voted for McCain in 2000 presidential primary. What fueled my initial anger was your JOHNKERRYSUX SN, which I feel went over the line. You certainly have a right to your USA handle, but it's NOT a good idea to engage in partisan politics here. The country is bitterly divided enough and folks come in here to have fun and play trivia, not to engage in that kind of crap. I’m a “political junkie” and enjoy engaging in civil discourse. If you wanna do that without the insults, fine by me.

(7/12/04)--Stoker: I agree that the level of partisan politics are very disheartening...I have obviously been guilty of it in this forum. A site such as this should be left free from the sort of bickering that both of us have engaged in, I’ve not used that SN that you mentioned (JOHNKERRYSUX) for about a week or so and will not use it again, since I recognized nearly immediately that using it as a “cheating” sn, or at all for that matter, was just plain childish. There are other venues besides this that are better places to engage in a civil discussion of world views. Best of luck to you...am leaving this site to what it was meant to be...trivial and fun.

That was the last posting on this subject. I admired USA’s class in admitting he was wrong in using the trivia site as political venue. It’d be nice, with three months left until the election, if the rest of the country would adopt a similar conciliatory tone. I seriously doubt it, though. Anyway, enough of this nerdy internet stuff; next time I'll do a movie review or something.

See ya soon.

Steve Finkelstein can be reached at steve@babblog.com.