WHAT DIDN'T_SUCK ABOUT 2012 (Part III of IV)

This the third of a four-part year-end post about 2012.  What didn't suck about The Earth, Commercials, and Business/Brands can be found here. What didn't suck about Radio and Television can be found here.

5. INTERNET: 

• Breitbart.com On January 18th, 2012, I assisted Andrew Breitbart on Twitter as he cyber-pummeled a progressive bloggerette who denied that 1) Multiple sexual assaults occurred at Occupy camps around the world, and that 2) Victims were discouraged from calling law enforcement. It was a great moment in my online life when I refreshed and saw the notice "@AndrewBreitbart is now following you."  

So it felt like a punch in the gut when I saw the news the morning of March 1st saying he had suddenly died.  I was hoping it was either a disgusting prank by A(nonymous)-holes, or perhaps that Breitbart conspired with intrepid investigative journalist James O'Keefe to fake his death in the hope it would expose the cruelty of his detractors.  Sadly, his death was real, and even sadder, it did expose that cruelty. 

Here's Breitbart in his shining moment, conducting an impromptu press conference after Anthony Weiner resigned in disgrace.  It was a righteous victory lap around the MSM figures who questioned the veracity of Weinergate solely because the story was broken on Breitbart's web.

When the shock of his death had passed, I said that Breitbart had from of exhaustion after kicking so much butt.

The Breitbart sites were in the process of being re-designed when his heart failed, and the new Breitbart.com -- connecting all of the "Big" sites seamlessly -- turned out great.  I'm not going to lie and say that the website is as good as it would have been with him, and I'm kinda creeped out when it seems fellow fans want to make him a Che Guevara-esque figure, but I'm delighted his movement didn't die with the man himself.

• L.N. Smithee's REACTOR reaches a milestone as an new digit was added to my most viewed thread in the past two years (the only two years in which I've had a reliable site meter).  It is -- inexplicably --  this one, exposing the fact one of David Letterman's mistresses on the staff of Late Show got a LOT of air time despite the fact that she just isn't funny. Not even a little.

• My YouTube video of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis at Dodger Stadium (watching the eventual World Champion San Francisco Giants defeat the home team) was linked by the New York Daily News and to date has over 94,000 views, much more than all my previously posted videos combined.

 

 
• Patterico's Pontifications, the blog presided over by Los Angeles County Assistant D.A. Patrick "Patterico" Frey.  For over a decade, when he hasn't been working on putting Southland gangsters behind bars, Frey has kept tabs on how facts are often mangled into an unrecognizable mess by the Los Angeles Times. In recent months, however, he's been the target of vindictive far-left partisans who are guarding the reputations of two indefensible characters. The first: Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.  The second: Convicted perjurer, convicted domestic terrorist, false accuser of former Vice President Quayle, and all-around scum-of-the-earth Brett Kimberlin. Kimberlin is a sociopathic serial litigant going back to his days behind bars for setting bombs in the Indianapolis area, and cannot abide his past coming back to haunt him.  Even though he doesn't have a law degree, he is one of the most odious practitioners of "lawfare," using the courts to terrorize people who do no more than retell prima facie fact about his past.  Kimberlin has even more personally targeted for destruction the operator of ... 

• Allergic To Bull, the blog by Manassas, VA attorney Aaron Walker, aka "Aaron Worthing." Walker explained in excruciating detail (because it's absolutely necessary to tell the whole story) how Kimberlin and his minions harassed Walker's bosses until he was fired, tried to make him a target of bloodthirsty jihadists by filing a legal brief for the express purpose of putting his home address into public record, and sought to ensure his disbarment by framing him for assault by lying about a hostile encounter in a courthouse (Kimberlin failed to notice video surveillance cameras that would eventually disprove his allegation that Walker punched him). All of this persecution of Walker was retribution for giving some free legal advice to another blogger that Kimberlin eventually harassed into silence. Unfortunately, some judges have no patience for what they mistakenly believe are frivolous squabbles on the Internet. At least two didn't even bother doing their due diligence in reading the briefs, which on Kimberlin's side are purposefully voluminous and arcane to the point of incomprehension.  As long as left-wing haters with disposable income (such as Barbra Streisand) continue to feed Kimberlin's non-profit activist organizations millions in cash, he'll keep this crap act going.

• DC Trawler with Jim Treacher, aka snarkmeister extraordinaire Sean Medlock of DailyCaller.com.  He's the man who coined the phrase "Clown nose off, clown nose on"   referring to the way Daily Show host Jon Stewart shields himself from criticism of his own partisanship. Every day, Jim's at the DC pricking the overinflated...well, I'd better not say that.  Treacher made the MSM notice him when he answered David Axelrod's petulant tweet referencing the Romney dog-on-the-roof story by pointing out that in Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama recounted that in his youth in Indonesia, he dined on canines. Full disclosure: Treacher also will have my never-ending gratitude for being the first person (that other people have heard of) to write the words, "...I am now an L.N. Smithee fan." 

• Iowahawk, aka David Burge. The "Oh, yeah?" answer for people who say that conservatives can't be funny. He's a one-man Onion, minus the meanness. Watching his success is very cool for a fellow former full-time Freeper.

• Legal Insurrection, Cornell law professor William Jacobson's increasingly important blog.  It keeps close eye on Washington D.C., on state capitals, and now college campuses, where the indoctrinated get propagandized by Academia Nuts (TM) who lie through their teeth about their dedication to "freedom of speech."  As a black conservative, Jacobson's "Saturday Night Card Game" highlighting leftists' specious allegations of GOP/Tea Party racism is a must-read and redistribute.

• @ChrisLoesch. Husband of Dana Loesch (see RADIO), Chris is one of the first Twitter users to be held in "Twitter Gulag" via a devious organized lefty effort to report his @ChrisLoesch account as "spam."  Conservative tweeps banded together with him to badger Twitter into restoring his presence. Shortly after the second Presidential Debate, I also got tossed in "Twitmo" for seven days for reasons that Twitter refused to explain despite my repeated requests.  Now in addition to his usual activism, Loesch is involved in helping out other outspoken conservatives who follow Twitter's TOS but still get treated like a POS.

• MacIver News Service. The webcasting arm of the Madison, WI-based John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy was invaluable during the massive (and sometimes violent) protests in and around the state Capitol in 2011, when Governor Scott Walker led a drive to limit collective bargaining rights of public employee unions. MNS continued to dig beneath the smooth surface of some of the most committed progressives in America. Below is an example from March 2012, just before the recall election against Walker failed. To train its members in activism techniques, an education union was enlisting a chapter of the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization founded in 1940 by Marxist icon (and Obama favorite) Saul Alinsky.  Most of the videos are much more in-depth than this, but this one is pretty entertaining.

I wish Fox News always had the cojones MacIver News does.

• NewsBeFunny on YouTube, the best collection of news bloopers on the web.  This year's collection includes a female anchor abusing a turkey call, a pedestrian who hocks several loogies in front of a remote setup, and a Washington Nationals fan irate after the home team blew a deciding NLDS game by allowing four runs with two outs in the top of the ninth inning.

• Twitchy.com, Michelle Malkin's new site watching for left-wing hate in social media.  Why is it necessary? Because right-wingers are accused of "hate" on social media even when they aren't being hateful. For example, when African-American Republican Congressman Tim Scott was selected by Indian-American Republican Governor Nikki Haley to replace white South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, the mainstream media scrambled for ways to continue to imply Republicans are racists nonetheless.  MSNBC's Luke Russert, the most disgraceful son of a respected journalist since Matt Taibbi, did so this way:

• Yogchick.blogspot.com, now defunct. I don't know what has become of Yogchick, a liberal lady whom I befriended while I was defending Sarah Palin on the Oprah website in 2009. Hundreds if not thousands of Oprah fans -- most of them being Obama maniacs -- besieged Oprah.com in an effort to bully Winfrey into canceling Palin's October 17 (?) appearance on her show to promote her runaway bestseller Going Rogue, which turned out to be the highest-rated single Oprah episode in over two years.  I argued with her constantly on the site, but she later sent me an email thanking me for rationally defending my position.  She was the one from whom I always expected a comment when nobody else seemed interested enough, and she was very sweet when I revealed my personal losses last New Year's Eve.  Her blog disappeared without a trace early in the year.  I hope she's OK. If you're reading this, Yogchick, email me.

4. MUSIC: 

• Lindsey Buckingham solo performance at the Fillmore. I finally got to see the Fleetwood Mac guitar wizard live after circumstances conspired to keep me away the last three times he came to San Francisco.  He didn't have a band with him, so he didn't perform "This Is The Time" as I was hoping, but it was fantastic nonetheless.

• Soundhound. This smart phone app allows the listener to simply boot it up, hold it near a speaker, and voila! You discover the information about a song that the radio DJ won't tell you about before you have to get out of your car. Even better is when you hear a song from years before that they stopped playing on the radio that suddenly comes over the PA at Walgreens.  I've learned to endure the fifteen seconds of awkwardness as I hold my phone aloft near the speaker in the ceiling, hoping that the song won't be interrupted by "*Ding dong ding!* Customer service needed in the deodorant department."

• "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, The infectious old-fashioned pop song by the Canadian Idol finalist rocketed to Billboard #1, giving elderly whoopie cushions like moi hope that people still want to make and hear music, and not synthetic bass beats strung together to resemble music  (More on "Gangnam Style" below). 

•  "We Come Running," by Youngblood Hawke.  This song is designed to be a radio hit. I don't get the Shark Week video for the song.  The band members are all look at least six years older than they sound, so I suspect their voices have been pitched up in the studio.  Whatever, dude. I'm a sucker for smooth youth choir harmonies ("Ooo-whoa-oh! Ooo-whoa-uh-oh!"). And when you get right down to it, pop music is all about "the sound, the sound, the sound"! 

• "Home" by Phillip Phillips.  American Idol winner Phillip Phillips proved me wrong -- his sweet "Home" is a legitimate smash, and re-entered Billboard's Top 10 after dropping off the Hot 100 (the first to do that within a calendar year).  Unlike most Idol releases by artists besides Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood, "Home" ought to have a long half-life; it's got that irresistible train rhythm, its lyrics can apply to any person who loves any other person or group of people ("Just know you're not alone / 'cause I'm gonna make this place your home"), and that's followed by a flowing, hummable break that's recognizable in the shortest snippets. People who didn't watch him perform the song after winning American Idol heard it as it was played in NBC's London Olympics coverage, which revved up interest from an entirely new audience.

•  "I'm Henery the Eighth, I am," Harry Champion. While doing research on a totally unrelated topic, I came across the first recorded version of this song, which was a #1 hit in the USA in 1965 for British invasion band Herman's Hermits. Recorded in 1911 on cylinder by British Music Hall star Harry Champion, it's superior to the later version despite the former's ultra-low fidelity sound quality. 

• Korean rapper Psy's execrable "Gangnam Style" stalls at #2, denying the annoying two-faced goof (birth name Park Jae-Sang) the elite distinction of being a chart-topper on the Billboard 100. By now you likely know that eight years ago -- in our blissful ignorance of his existence -- Psy wished death on American soldiers and their family members after an unfortunate tank incident near the De-Militarized Zone resulted in the death of a 10-year-old Korean girl.  My responses included this tweet:

 

@breitbartnews I'm a son of a Korea vet. I'm here because he came home alive, and Psy may be here b/c he fought. #tcot ScrnSht.com/dumfrh
— L.N. Smithee (@LNSmithee) December 12, 2012

Note that I didn't link his video, because you've probably seen it enough to last the rest of your life already.  Instead, here's American Idol reject William Hung, who cashed in mightily on his lovably lame audition. 

According to recent reports, Hung's living now is crunching numbers in Los Angeles government.  That's not a bad job if it's as hard to get fired from a civic duty in L.A. as it is working for the city of San Francisco.  His ersatz musical career certainly must have paid off his Cal-Berkeley tuition.  But after witnessing Psy's suck-cess, I have to wonder if Hung sometimes considers he was just a high school dance class away from international superstardom.

Coming up in the conclusion: What Didn't Suck About Politics, Sports, and My Personal Life in 2012!