This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.
Please Note: If ya click on an Amazon ad, thus opening a portal to Amazon, and buy anything, Lord Jeffrey will toss a few pence in my direction and you won't have to feel guilty about enjoying my work — well, hopefully — for free. Win/Win.
"I believe in censorship, I made a fortune out of it." -Mae West
Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),
Unless you've signed up to receive my column via email, you will notice my Amazon adverts have disappeared. After much wailing and teeth-gnashing, I tried, for the second time, to generate a tiny bit of revenue for my efforts by running said ads.
(FYI, I don't sell the addresses of my email subscribers nor do I send 'em anything other than my column. In fact, I subscribe to a service that mails my columns out for me and I don't bother looking to see who has signed up.)
I can't even remember what evil deed Lord Jeffrey did the first time he peed me off and I bailed on him. The trickle of revenue I gave up was hardly a heroic gesture on my part but it made me feel virtuous as hell for a minute or two.
[Virtuous as hell doesn't make any sense, you know that right? Hell, by definition, is not a virtuous place.]
Obviously, Dana. It makes no more sense than happy as hell. On the other hand, one could make a case for happy as fu...
Nevermind, neo-neoconservatives reserve that word for private conversations with other neo-neoconservatives and/or certain friends and family members who aren't offended by its use, and then only selectively, to preserve its power. Certainly not in a missive published on the World Wide Web.
[That reminds me, you've yet to spell out the tenets of neo-neoconservatism.]
Stay tuned. Now, where was I ...?
Recklessly risking the wrath of Lord Jeffrey and his minions.
Nah...
Getting old, being a virtual rounding error in the cultural commentariat, and suffering from a chronic case of Nodough renders me relatively safe from being rounded up by a posse of Wokies and being prosecuted/persecuted by the Intersectional Inquisition.
I decided to try again, despite misgivings. After all, I have both friends and family members that work/worked for His Lordship both directly and indirectly.
But then he did it again.
Lord Jeffrey, Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (the Goog), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) were getting loaded at their favorite bar, the Collusion Lounge, to celebrate the Depublican gangs recent recapturing of their favorite turf, the Swamp.
"Hey, any of you guys ever heard of a flyspeck of a company called Parler that's a combination of Twitter and Facebook for Deplorables?" asked Jack?"
"Of course, Jack, we all have, our armies of Algorithmites all carefully monitor the Data Mountains, just like yours," replied Mark, "So what? As you say, a flyspeck."
"Yeah, but a bunch of Deplorables have signed up since we've become more open about censoring anti-Wokies."
"Tell ya what," said Lord Jeffrey, I'll turn off their servers if you guys attack 'em from the software side, deal?"
"Deal," they replied one by one, and then they (carefully) clinked their custom-made Waterford crystal mugs of craft beer together.
"Hey, anybody wanna do a line?" asked CENSORED.
My first impulse was to immediately pull the ads but since I'm now officially a conservative...
[A neo-neoconservative, whatever that is...]
I decided to defer to reasoned caution and control my emotions till some time had passed and I had accumulated more data.
But then he did it again.
Recently, I came across an article written by Elena Debre in Slate titled Amazon Will Pay $61.7 Million for Stealing Flex Drivers’ Tips.
Me very own darlin' dawder (reread with an Irish accent) was, until recently, a Flex driver so of course, this got my attention. Fortunately, Amazon got caught prior to her tenure and had stopped stealing from the help, excuse me, independent contractors, before she came along.
Long story short, Amazon's Flex pays people to deliver packages and food in their own vehicles (which makes them independent contractors) and they pay said contractors fairly for the work in question.
BIG BUT.
Customer tips were supposed to be income over and above what Amazon paid the drivers but they got caught with their hand in the tip jar and recently agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for almost $62 million bucks.
The FTC will divvy up the money among the drivers that got ripped off because Amazon, as part of the settlement, has admitted to nothing or reimbursed the drivers.
[C'mon man! That wasn't Lord Jeffry, that was likely a corporate weenie (or three) on the make. He probably didn't even know about it till...]
And yet, I can find no mention of the sort of abject apology demanded by the Wokies when they come across (or dredge up from the past) a secular sin, real or imagined.
Still, I hesitated. Now that the cat has clawed its way out of the sack maybe an apology/acknowledgment was pending.
Nope.
And then, last Tuesday morning, the first day of a glorious and much-needed thaw here in the Ohio Mountains, I found this.
According to an article on Newsweek's website, Amazon has banned a book it's been selling for three years, When Harry Became Sally, by conservative scholar Ryan Anderson, a book that was an Amazon bestseller before it was released.
Mr. Anderson didn't know this until a would-be reader contacted him to tell him that Amazon stopped selling the book — without bothering to mention this to him and last I heard still won't say why. The Newsweek article, by Katherine Fung, includes the following incendiary quote from the book.
"We need to respect the dignity of people who identify as transgender but without encouraging children to undergo experimental transition treatments, and without trampling on the needs and interests of others." My emphisi.
I hope this column doesn't crater Amazon's stock price but a columnist's gotta do what a columnist's gotta do.
Dana, why are you laughing?
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
Have an OK day
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Cranky don't tweet.
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