The Osborne Identities
The author in uniform circa 1998: US Army
Freedom of the press belongs to he who owns the press. A keyboard is my press, and this is my news; it is fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.
Osborne Ink began out of frustration with a social network. At one time, I was getting 100,000 hits a week to a MySpace account with more than a thousand “friends.” Rupert Murdoch didn’t need the help and I was tired of dealing with add requests from Infowars readers. Now I’m in a blog network with some really excellent writers and creatives.
I have been pounding out opinion pieces since I was a teenager. They have been printed in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and various daily papers since I was fifteen. I also write strange little fiction stories that are usually inspired by this blog. All of it is informed by years of study, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and the nine years I spent in uniform serving the country.
Of course, the latter point is significant because I was injured in the line of duty. Every month, the Veterans Administration deposits a chunk of change in my bank account as thank-you for a lumbar spine that will never be the same. It’s not a rich life, as I can no longer work in most traditional occupations. This blog is entirely reader-supported; I’ve been blogging since before they called it “blogging,” but I have yet to see my first check from George Soros.
My areas of study include right-wing authoritarianism and agit-prop. I have chronicled the way right-wing nontroversies arise in the online wingnutosphere, get picked up by right-wing “noise” organizations like Fox News, and eventually wind up featured by “liberal” media using the frames and narratives prepared on the right. In too many cases, these stupid talking points have their origins in the paranoid, John Bircher insanity of yesteryear.
“Liberal” media regularly features right-wing spokesmen without providing viewers a real source-check. “Liberal” media is so scared of perceptions created on the right that anchors routinely let the most ridiculous, easily-debunked talking points fly by them without challenge. Despite all it has done to destroy the country, the right has managed to build a stovepipe right through the media establishment to perpetuate its ideological assault on reform.
I also track global governance issues, Arab media, the affects of technology on society, and matters close to home. The net is cast wide.
KEVIN GOSZTOLA
Kevin Gosztola is a trusted author for OpEdNews.com. He publishes to United Progressives, The Seminal, Open Salon and recently launched a personal blog called Moving Train.
He is a 2009 Young People For Fellow and a documentary filmmaker who will graduate with a Film/Video B.A. degree from Columbia College in Chicago in the Spring 2010.
He co-organized a major arts & media summit called “Art, Access & Action,” which explored the intersection of politics, art and media and was supported by Free Press. He covered the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
He has covered the controversy around Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame’s graduation, Operation Rescue’s “Keep It Closed Campaign” against Dr. Carhart, the “Showdown in Chicago,” the Tea Party rally in Chicago, actions against the Arizona immigration law & several past antiwar rallies in Chicago and the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit. He is also a member of the Media Democracy Day Think Tank in Chicago.
CAPTAIN COOLAID
Captain Coolaid showed iconoclastic tendencies from a tender age. Traumatized after watching Guyana Tragedy, the 1980 TV miniseries about Jim Jones, he became fascinated with cults, brainwashing, and conspiracy theory. Most of his peer-group was still learning to say the names of colors.
His fascination grew to near-mania; by the time he was thirteen, Captain Coolaid had already begun reading dense psychiatric texts in search of answers. He was warped again by role-playing in high school — not just Dungeons & Dragons, but Steve Jackson’s Paranoia.
He lives in the south, a bright blue (and somewhat paranoid) dot in a very red state. Having recognized the Reagan years as a kind of national brainwashing, he was so horrified and disheartened by the Bush II experience that he chooses to blog pseudonymously.
He has no life.
MARC MITCHELL
Coming
