Sunday, June 18, 2017

Two Minutes of Hate, Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Back in the late '70s my friend Dina decided she wanted to become famous for being famous, in a DIY punk sort of way. So she took on the name Dina Famous and we put up xeroxed 8 1/2 x 11 handbills advertising "Dina Famous" all over Berkeley. It was all tongue in cheek, of course, and she didn't actually become famous (though she is friends with tons of famous or semi-famous people in the music industry....but that's a whole other story), but we did have fun with it.

This was, for the record, several years before the movie Smithereens, in which a painfully talentless young woman tries to become famous in a DIY punk sort of way by posting xeroxed images of herself all over Manhattan.

And it was nearly 40 years before some semi-obscure right-wing blogger jumped on the stage of that Julius Caesar production all the right-wing shills are faux-outraged about.

Of course this Laura Loomer person got herself arrested, and of course she's milking it for all it's worth. Is there a donation link on that page, you ask? Silly question:
And here's the punchline: Laura Loomer (like James O'Keefe, and who knows how many others) is the beneficiary of a right-wing media ecosystem with an endless appetite for entertainment that reinforces their cherished narratives. It's a system in which any right-wing Dina Famous can achieve the momentary success they believe they deserve.

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