by Jerome du Bois
Rick Barrs, the editor of Phoenix New Times, sent us a two-line email response to our Amy Silverman / Phoenix Inferiority piece. Amy Silverman herself is presumably hiding behind his skirts. Big gazoona Michael Lacey, too, for that matter. And it was an email he sent us, not a public comment on the blog, which would have been more forthcoming. At any rate, we haven't heard from Ms. Silverman or the king of the pygmies yet, nor do we expect to. Barrs's note itself was a total surprise.
This is what Rick Barrs wrote:
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 11:57:38 -0700
From: "Rick Barrs"
To:
Subject: Re: your cover story
thanks for the publicity, jerome. but does anybody -- save your embarrassed mom, perhaps -- read your little blog?
Ricky boy, you will learn what I can do with those two short lines, especially considering the piece you are responding to. (Actually, my first mental response was, "Rick, do you remember how Sonny Bono died?")
Before I go further, though, I should warn you to keep your filthy mouth away from any references to my mother, or any member of my family. We already know you're a boor with no class, no bottom, no standards, who thinks nothing of trashing the neighbors who suffer his presence in their midst (and he thanks me for the publicity). But this is between you and me.
Your first weakness, and admission of our significance, was sending an email in the first place. You just couldn't ignore us, could you? Why not, I wonder? It's that tar baby thang.
Then you answer your own question: you read our blog, man, and so does Amy Silverman, and Michael Lacey, and Michelle Laudig, and Joe Watson, and Benjamin Leatherman, and probably many others down there in your tiresome hive.
It's a good question, though.
Who reads our blog? I have only vague notions. Lots of our enemies in the downtown Phoenix art/culture crew, to be sure. So we have Artlink sycophants and submariners checking in. Maybe a dozen consistent, semi-anonymous boosters on the margins. And some who admire worthwhile ideas expressed in excellent sentences. We have regular readers from former Russian Federations, it seems, and those from Taiwan as well.
Neither Catherine nor I are gregarious, to say the least. We trust very few people. We have good reason for this mistrust. I won't bother to detail why. Take it or leave it. We don't strike up conversations, get schmoozy, or even want any kind of Kumbaya. We two are happy together.
We point to the truth --to truths-- to the best our ability, to defend the Western Way, and encourage others to do likewise. On their own.
Read the sidebar: When I hear the word community, I reach for my car keys. We mean it. In that light, then:
I had been brooding the last few days about our blog's place in the larger scheme of things, in Phoenix, in Arizona, and in the blogosphere. I was juggling the images of the leper and the tar baby. I think they both fit: our adversaries in this town can hardly afford to mentions us without intentionally misspelling our names, or the name of the blog, to outwit internet spiders. In the last two years, we have received exactly two mentions in the dead-tree press, neither one the NT. And yet, when we focus our critical attention on certain people, for good reasons, we seem to shoot to the top of search engine pages.
Rick here thinks that circulation matters. Maybe it does, for money. But for information, for focus, for answers . . . If a person Googles "Roosevelt Row," for example, our coverage is the top citation, with NT just below us. Now, I'm not sure how Google works, but that page sure looks like we trumped one of the two major newspapers in this town. Google "Phoenix Artist Storefront Pilot Program," our newest interest. Bing! Greg Esser? Cindy Dach? "Phil Jones Phoenix Arts?" We're on the first page. Kimber Lanning and Wayne Rainey, too. Same with John Spiak, Marilyn Zeitlin, Kathleen Vanesian, Ted Decker, Heather Lineberry, and Neal Lester. Also Dennita Sewell of the Phoenix Art Museum, and Christine Schild of the Scottsdale Unified School District.
If a person Googles the artists Beverly McIver and Mark Rubin-Toles, we're the top hit, even though we've only mentioned both of them occasionally in the last two years. Beatrice Moore, probably the most-written-about-as-underrated so-called artist in the last ten years in downtown Phoenix --bing! our stuff about her is right in your face --we two, who have been on the online writing scene only two years plus a few days. Glen Lineberry, Lisa Greve, Ed Rubacha (Greve's hubby), and Bentley Projects must truly regret screwing us over, because we're the top hit for them, too. People who want to know what they're about will inevitably come across our series on them. The evil that people do lingers after them, idnit?
"Tar baby sits and don't do nuffin."
From the beginning, as I continue to repeat, this blog is about two things: witnessing, and changing what is ignorable by whom. Now, Rick, I don't know how or where you seek your daily information, but I think you're behind lots of curves.
Our goal is not huge circulation, to blanket the world for the sake of the biggest wedge of advertising revenue:our purpose is to get the right eyes to the right words. That is all. To be unignorable. We write for thinkers and searchers. Search engines help because smart people use them and we use the right words to draw them. So sorry, but we're not interested in the five hundred thousand unreflective Valley souls who just want another jolt of stupid juice from your perpetually peurile rag. You serve, preserve and deserve only devolution, Ricky boy, as you knuckle-drag your way back into the cave.
We witness the best we can to the daily hellstorm around us, in these days of rebarbarization. When Theo van Gogh was murdered on Re-Election Day by a Muslim fanatic, it drove a knife into my heart, and I set it down at the time, for the time, for all time, and with updates --for witness. For now and later.
What were you doing in the days up to Election Day, Rick? Flogging "Democracy in America," for one thing, the anti-Bush art exhibition. (Google that, why don't you? You'll see our work is ahead of you there, too. Awww.)
What a mighty wind that was, eh? Thanks for helping with the Re-Election, by the way; you, the big gazoona, and your whole dingaling cohort. By the way, since you brought up my mother, is your mother proud of your work? I bet she bores the daylights out of the neighbors proudly proclaiming your achievements, reading aloud from "The Inferno" column, for example.
It's a little blog, Mr. Rick Barrs, but we have big, strong voices, and The Tears of Things is way ahead of you and your irrelevant, outdated, and shameful rag on so many cultural fronts. Oh, I know it's not your newspaper, and no loyalty enters here; it's just another gig for you. Denver next, or maybe Miami, or maybe management. Still . . . if you people had any huevos down there, Colorado City would have been shut down by now. Real newspapers used to influence policy. You clowns just write it all down, wave your hands in righteous indignation, and then hit the Merc Bar for yogatinis.
You're so afraid of us you can't even mention us, but we can poke at your puerility all the livelong day. So how powerful are you, really? Not you, nor the big gazoona, nor Amy Silverman, nor any of those so-called art writers sucking up to you down on Jefferson Street can afford to truly engage us in any kind of dialogue. But we do, of course, triple-dog-dare you to do just that. It may not be too late for you to grow a pair, Rick Barrs.
In the meantime, the leper's bell rings loudly in this city, and the tar baby keeps adding to his collection.
Posted by Jerome at May 18, 2005 01:50 AM | TrackBack