ROCK HACKSHAW: I have had many a fight with Gatey, and I will be dissappointed if we didn't have many more over the coming years. Gatemouth is unique, and he is also provocative, but all in all to me, his writings, insights, commentary and historical knowledge of New York's politics is worth the ocassional ideosyncratic outburst from him. So he pulls his lil temper tantrums sometimes: don't we all do/lol? I almost stopped contributing once or twice/lol. Remember?
ROCK HACKHAW (more recently): Let's say I was wrong………….Even if I were to be proven wrong in my belief that you are JP, well let me say that you were the one to start all this shit 5 years ago. And you continued to maintain the environment for your own sick reasons; no matter how many times I pleaded with you to end this sick shit. You will write column after column ridiculing me and saying all sorts of crap. You will use all sorts of pseudonyms and stuff. I never did this to you: why did you do this to me? What the fuck have I ever done to you Gate? I am not competing with you; never did. I always gave you your props: always. You were the one to go up and deny even my ivy-league education from jump street. You question every fact about me as if I were some liar. You doubt my credentials and such: why? What's that about? And why is it so important to you? They didn't select you for the ivies? You are a major disappointment Gate. MAJOR. Your reasons for writing here and mine are vastly different. Vastly. Please don't respond. Just let all this die a natural death. But you and I are through bro.
I had put the finishing touches on this column this morning, and then decided not to post it. Though I hadn’t completely dealt with every issue raised in my recent scuffles with Rock Hackshaw, enough was seemingly enough.
But tonight, he forced me to reconsider. In fact, since he continues to print libelous falsehoods about me, in a column where one is not allowed to respond, I feel I have no choice but to continue this stupidity.
But that doesn’t mean you should feel any obligation to read it.
I apologize that I have been continually filling the pages of Room 8 with meta-oriented wank, but stuff on the web is often like nuclear waste in that it is not only toxic, but has an infinite half-life. As such, I am throwing this crap down for the record, rather than for anyone’s reading pleasure.
To review, last week I foolishly tried to defend a blogger named JP against whom Rock Hackshaw had made unfair and unwarranted accusations of racism, because JP had the temerity to criticize the substance and quality of Rock’s prose in terms which were inarguably impolite.
In response, Rock accused me of being JP, of leading a five year long vendetta against him, and of being a racist myself.
JP’s response to the charges made against him is linked above, and I’ve published a rebuttal
to the racism charge, as well as an essay proving that I am not JP.
Rock clearly does not care about the truth of any of this, since he said today, “I don’t know if Gatemouth and JP are the same person,” categorically refusing to even acknowledge the voluminous evidence I provided that this is not so.
Refuting Rock’s other lies was easy; proving I’ve not conducted a five year long vendetta against Rock is more difficult, because we’ve had our scrapes. However, Rock’s preposterous assertion today that I have “written countless columns whereby” he is the subject, is simply incredible. And I will disprove it by dealing frankly with our career together on the blogs.
Most of what follows has been published here before in barely modified form, so unless one really enjoys re-reading about the travails of NYC bloggers, one is probably well advised to quit now.
For those still reading, I think what follows does not describe a one-sided vendetta, but rather, a series of discrete incidents, most insignificant, and only one of them of any real length, all of which were spread over five years of time.
If it is a feud, it is in the tradition not of the Hackshaws and McCoys, but rather in the realm of Hope and Crosby, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, and WC Fields and Charlie McCarthy.
I’d not started out well with Rock on the web. He introduced himself to the New York blogocracy in fall 05 with an incredibly pompous post on a thread on the Politicker, the New York Observer’s Ben Smith edited political blog, which, at the time was like Rick’s in Casablanca, the place where everybody goes.
Rock’s post listed all his credentials and invited folks to email him. It also invited and received much derision and laughter, including my own.
Most of the catcalls came from folks who thought “Rock Hackshaw” was the silliest nom de blogue they’d ever heard. I assured them it was real, and told the tale about how several pieces of specifications of objections to the petitions for a slate of candidates, including Rock and another perennial loser named Wellington Sharpe, had once disappeared from the Brooklyn Board of Elections during a ballot access challenge, and how later, part of the petition itself later nearly disappeared from the Board while being carried in the backpack of one of the slate’s hired hands.
For some reason, after I posted all this, Rock went ballistic.
We were off to a great start.
Although Rock didn’t know it then, we’d actually started a bit earlier, when I was one of the lawyers for the folks challenging Rock’s slate (my side also benefited from the technical assistance of that great reformer and ballot access champion, Gary Tilzer, AKA Oneshirt, AKA Fat Ugly Smelly Toothless Bastard).
We met each other one more time, two years later, when Rock outlined his theory of why the court would permit his candidates, who’d file for a party position which did not exist, remain on the ballot as candidates for the Democratic State Committee.
As per usual, he was wrong.
Things had gotten more peaceable as time went on, but one Sunday, during a thread on the endorsement of Carl Andrews for Congress by Dov Hikind, someone(s) had been riding Rock’s ass all afternoon. The thread had turned into a “Rock Festival” and I (joined by at least one other poster I suspect held elected office) had gently ribbed Rock about it:
“I thought when WNEW-FM went off the air that AOR was dead in this City; but I was wrong; the Politicker is the one place in New York where you get all Rock all the time. The Politicker: "The Place Where Rock Lives”.
Later, I actually wrote to partially agree with one thing Rock said (my recall is that he had opined that white racism had created the context for the Charles Barrons of the world to exist), and the person riding Rock started riding me, saying that Rock was answerable for supporting racists (meaning, I presume, Barron).
I answered this was true, but that Rock, and his anonymous web adversary, were also answerable for turning an interesting thread into an exercise in self abuse, with all hands on dick. My actual language was somewhat harsh (I think the term “Rocks in his head” came up), but since Ben subsequently deleted it, and all of what followed, it is also lost to history. Several other folks then joined in, and Rock did a meltdown, saying he was quitting the blog and never coming back.
I was pretty sorry it happened. I don’t really think political blogging should be about the posters (although I regret to say that this assertion is abnegated by the exercise in self indulgence you are reading now).
When Rock confined himself to the business at hand (rather than boasting about his curriculum vitae—and Rock, if you can‘t tell that my line about the Columbia School of Broadcasting not being part of the Ivy League was a joke, then you are in need of an operation to remove the stick from your ass; the question of whether Columbia’s “College of General Studies” qualifies as Ivy League is beyond my pay grade.), he gave the largely whiteboy blogging community an insight into a different strain of thought we probably benefited from hearing.
It's not that Rock is so great; despite what the cult which has grown up around him believes, he ain’t Woodstein (But who is? Not even Ben Smith), he's just seemingly the only political blogger or reporter in the City who talks to any Caribbeans. It's not he's so good; it’s that the mainstream press, and the white blogosphere, are so deficient in reporting on minority communities (a point I'm sure Rock would has no problem with).
In fact, if they seem at a loss in East Flatbush, one should only see them stumbling around Flushing. And Rock's almost silly obsession with the horse race aspect of politics trivializes him at the cost of making folks take him less seriously. Although, to be fair, the mainstream press shares his enthusiasm for the horse race stuff.
And we won’t even get into the sporadic outbreaks of madness.
While, like a stopped clock, Rock was right only twice a day, he, now and again, gave me a well deserved wake-up call. I was sad when he took that hiatus from posting (that time, and all the others as well), although, I assume that, like me, he never really stopped.
I’d like to think that Rock thought my abuse stemmed from a misanthropic personality, rather than from racial bias; and at that time I was relieved to learn that he did not put the blame for what had occurred entirely on my shoulders (which I think he indicated with his parting words to me at the time ("et tu Brute").
Seemingly, he has recently revised his opinion on such matters.
Shortly, thereafter, Ben talked Rock back into posting under his own name, and joining me, EnWhySeaWonk and a few others into becoming one of the original crew of bloggers on his new venture, “Room 8,” which launched in late March 2006.
Before the launch, Ben Smith asked that, in regards to Rock, I ask myself "what would Jesus do?" and "turn the other cheek". I informed him that Jesus was really not part of my narrative (was he even Jewish? He did carpentry, had been inside a stable and had a Last Supper rather than the Early Bird Special) and told him that the thought of turning the other cheek brought to mind Daphne Merkin or Rachel Kramer Bussel.
Nonetheless, I kept the truce more or less, despite provocation. For instance, it took a little over a week of the blog’s existence before Rock published a piece called “Hey Gatemouth: Your "Buddy " Chuck Barron Called This Morning.”
However, despite Rock’s incessant and annoying demands that I debate the topic of same-sex marriage with him (probably because he thought I was gay–something admittedly my fault, since as part of his lame effort to disguise his identity, at the time Gatemouth claimed to be bi-sexual–also half-black and from Texas.), or make election predictions (with Rock offering odds like a racetrack tout) we kept on a relatively even keel.
Truth is, we were pretty much the heart and soul of Room 8; and eventually Rock paid me the ultimate comments: "You are one only morsel of esoteric info away from taking my title: 'the black prince of the blogs'; and I will willingly concede."
Things heated up after the 2006 primary. Rock had been involved in a feud with a blogger known as EnWhySeaWonk, a master of whimsy and sarcasm, and coincidentally, a gay male.
Their latest bitch fight, over an accurate and nonetheless gratuitous reference by Rock to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn as a lesbian, had gotten ugly and at one point, I’d intervened, telling them that while a little towel snapping in the Room 8 Locker Room was to be expected (and if one couldn't take it, they could always join the Chorus instead), if this sort of street brawling continued, I'd have to see to it that Coach benched the both of ‘em.
About a month later, Wonk and I were the subject of a long rant by Mr. Hackshaw. The subject matter for Rock’s screed was is based upon a paragraph I wrote which contains less than 100 words:
“On September 26, 2006, I became the first prominent partisan NY Democratic blogger to declare he could not vote for Alan Hevesi’s re-election. This was two days before Rock Hackshaw, who given his September 18 endorsement of Jeanine Pirro, is obviously somewhat less driven than I am by rigid standards of ideology (and given that he still supports Pirro, is also seemingly somewhat less driven by rigid standards of morality, at least on subjects other than same-sex marriage)[OK Wonk, you owe me dinner]”
The words in contention seemed to me a good way to open a column (otherwise not about Rock) with a couple of jokes I thought would be appreciated by “Room 8" regulars. The very fact that I mentioned “morality” should have been clue enough for anyone that the comment was made with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Of course, the jokes were largely gratuitous, and meta-referential, something I’ve often objected to, but they were intended for quick laughs, and I did not dwell upon them. They were intended merely as some more harmless towel-snapping. The last thing I wanted was to start another Wonk v. Rock type pissing match.
Concerning the feud, I’d been far harder on Wonk than on Rock, because I thought Wonk has been far more petty. But I understood where Wonk was coming from, and said:
“Quinn's sexuality was not relevant to the post. You brought it up, without (I believe) bad intent, but why, pray tell, bring it up at all? Sometimes it's relevant to mention that you are black, or Caribean, sometimes it's just gratuitous. I know you meant no wrong, and perhaps Wonk overreacted, but he was not without his point. But, from there it's escalated into the realm of the ridiculous, and neither of you is without blame. BOTH OF YOU, STOP IT NOW! “
Rock had a somewhat different view of the proceedings, which he published in a column entitled “Of Spitzer, Faso, Hevesi, Pirro, Gay Marriage, Gatemouth, Wonk and Cheap Shots” (at that Point Rock‘s second article about me, despite his denial of ever having done such a thing). Amongst other things Rock said:
“The big mouthed Gate himself, was willing to stand there looking at a gaping wound (bleeding profusely in fact), willing to only apply a band-aid to it…What a joke! But then Gatemouth is usually an apologist for those in power anyway. We have seen this over and over and again right here on Room Eight….
…. For a while I honestly thought that it was a race thing, and that I was (to them) too opinionated and audacious for a black man. I have wondered why he and some of his sycophants keep taking these pot shots at me; and now I know….
…That is so childish. But so is Gate; childish and petty when he should be more mature and circumspect.
I have really tried to be civil, gracious and friendly towards Gatemouth. Truly. I respect his writing abilities- even though at times he is somewhat confusing, long-winded ( but then so am I at times / I am sure), inane, redundant and pompous. I admire his knowledge of NYC’s political history-even though he sometimes gets his facts wrong (like we all do at times/ I am sure); and I definitely agree with some of his positions on some issues. But that’s neither here nor there; the fact remains that his cheap shots are just that: cheap. And Gatemouth is a cheap shot artist.”
When Gatemouth and Wonk attack my endorsement of Jeanine Pirro, it’s not because they disagree that Cuomo is less qualified than Pirro for the job. In fact, they don’t even dispute that Pirro is overwhelmingly more qualified (and experienced) for the job…They are just angry at Pirro’s stance on gay-marriage (she is against it). And therein lies the crux of the matter. On these blogs in NYC, if you don’t support gay-marriage you are deemed politically incorrect; and as such you run into problems. It’s not about discourse; it’s about intimidation and constant harassment…
…For Gatemouth (and probably to a lesser extent “EnWhySeeWonk”), blogging is simply an intellectual exercise. To them it’s mental masturbation aiming to achieve some kind of cerebral orgasm …
…Then he writes this article and after taking his cheap shots at me, he tells Wonk that he (Wonk) owes him a dinner. So friggin childish. I tried to steer Gate (and anyone interested) to the threads which would have exposed Wonk’s lies and intellectual dishonesty, but to no avail. There’s a gay-clique on these blogs that doesn’t brook any kind of disagreement on issues they consider “gay”. They are totalitarian in their projections.”
I thought I had made my peace with Rock, and certainly didn’t desire to continue feuding. Half of me wanted to apologize, though I wasn’t sure what for, and half wanted to say “fuck you if you can’t take a joke”. Given my institutional stake in maintaining the quality of discourse at “Room 8”, contrition won out, and I wrote:
“I’m sorry big fellow, I really don’t want to silence you, though I wish you (and Wonk) would stop writing columns like this one and get back to doing what you do best.”
Wonk responded in his own endearing way, photo-shopping a picture of he and Hackshaw as “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots” engaged in a boxing match.
Yet despite my efforts to be conciliatory, both before and after this stupid incident, Rock still insists that “I enlisted gays to come here and further terrorize me, plus make political threats.”
Yes, because without my nefarious influence, gay political junkies would never feel motivated to challenge those who oppose their fundamental rights. Yes, I admit it–I am the Pied Piper of New York City homosexuals.
Around Christmas 2006, I was at the beginning of an involuntary nine month hiatus from the web, with a long Christmas vacation and an overwhelming desire to write something funny, when I came up with the pseudonym, “Stoned Crackwhore” and wrote a parody of Rock’s periodic “Grapevines” columns called the “Coca Vine.” Here is a sample of the sophisticated with which lay within:
Let us reflect, during this season of our Lord, upon the awesome and mighty power of Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose strenuous efforts contributed mightily to Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory. Especially notable was Hillary’s stunning victory over John Spencer in Hikind’s own 48th AD, where Clinton got 5878 votes out of the 11,755 cast, for a daunting 50.00% of the total vote and an insurmountable margin over John Spencer of 167 votes. LOL!
Another Orthodox Jewish political powerhouse is Harry Schiffman, a former Mark Green aide most famous for joining Manhattan’s Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats to support Green for Mayor at the behest of Allen Roskoff, political operative and diva extraordinaire. Harry’s always willing to bend over backwards for a friend. LOL! Maybe Harry thought Allen said “Lebanese”—No, that would have been even worse…Harry now works for Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, a hospital most notable for having zero Jewish patients. But does anyone have the patience for Harry? LOL!
Harry is currently waving his lulav in the direction of Yvette Clarke’s recently vacated seat on the City Council, hoping to pull a David Yassky. Memo to Harry: Yassky lost. LOL!”
I actually thought I’d portrayed Stoney as a pretty sharp guy whose playing the fool was a pretty transparent ruse. Some thought otherwise.
The prank spurred an enormous amount of contention as to who was responsible, and though at one point Rock attacked a member of the New York City Council as a possible suspect, it seemed clear that he knew it was me.
However, shortly afterwards, we met each other at a “victory” party for Wellington Sharpe, Rock’s former slate-mate who I’d helped to knock off the ballot seven years earlier. Wellington was now a City Council candidate we had both supported. Rock had never been around when I’d come down to volunteer, lest he be asked to do some actual work. Eager to reacquaint myself, I decided to yell out "where's Hackshaw?"
Rock responded, and I introduced myself by my day-job name, and said, “remember me?“ He apathetically responded that he wasn’t sure, so I told him I'd was the guy who had knocked Wellington off the ballot in 2000, but had failed to get him as well; he shook my hand coldly, and I said, "I bet Azi Paybarah wishes he were here to snap this picture". He asked "why?", and I said, "because I'm Gatemouth," and he gave me a big huggie.
As I noted here, by late 2007, Rock was involved in canonizing Barack Obama and demonizing Senator Clinton and her husband who he referred to collectively as “Billary“, in the manner of a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
It soon became apparent that Rock saw the Obama campaign as the Second Coming, and himself as John the Baptist, and despite an occasional prescient insight and a good sense of the mechanics of the process, as the months went on, it appeared as if Rock had truly gone off the deep end.
Rock undertook a series of columns which were based on the following theories. 1) I am the greatest pundit in the world, and don‘t get the recognition I deserve because I am black, 2) anyone who disagrees with me is a racist, (3) Billary is the devil incarnate and (4) she must get out of the race now. In all of this, Rock’s fiercest critic was Wonk, and their feud re-arose with new fury.
At the time, I was on another furlough, this one self imposed and brought about by the fury of a member of the State Legislature who had let me know through intermediaries he was going to try and get me fired from my job. I didn’t know whether he was capable of getting it done, but I knew he was capable of the attempt, so I decided to lay low.
I was, however, still posting comments, but only pseudonymously or anonymously. As such, virtually all my comments (excepting one locally oriented piece discussing problems counting the vote in the New York primary) about the Presidential race made before my selection by the DNC, along with Rock, as NYS’s designated blogger for the 2008 Democratic Convention, were on Rock’s threads and those related to them.
Unfortunately, given on whose blog these comments were posted, they shed light not merely upon my political views, but also upon my troubled relationship with my convention partner, who probably was not unaware of the authorship of those comments. which, in retrospect, seem now to have at least some resemblance to a pretty methodical campaign of heckling.
In my defense, I can say only one thing.
It was fun.
Further, it was not my original intent.
But, as documented here, Rock’s pieces soon led to Room 8 threads which were truly over the top, mostly because of Rock.
Eventually things reached a boiling point and Stoned Crackwhore decided to make a return appearance, but this time not as the clowning trickster, but instead as an homicidal maniac–this accomplished mostly by the means of stringing together quotations by Rock from the comments threads on his own pieces.
Other Stoney pieces, using different modus operandi, followed, and the comments on threads continued as well. During the continuing imbroglio, Rock was caught red-handed (perhaps not the best choice of words) sock-puppeting. He still denies it (saying lamely that he gave his students his Room 8 passwords–never explaining what possible plausible rationale he would have for doing so)–but he lies like the rug on Andy Stein’s head.
If I’d been posting as Gatemouth at the time, I’d doubtless have made most of the same observations, and gotten the same responses.
However, I’d be the first to admit that if I’d then been posting as Gatemouth, my technique might have been somewhat softer, and more in line with the tasteful and subtle manner of handling my critics which has been emblematic of my work as a blogger.
Nonetheless, nothing I posted during that time was beyond the bounds of decency (as opposed to the bound of good taste), and I think I can say the same about everything JP and Wonk posted (at least under their own names). Some anonymous posters did cross the line, but I do not see how my germane (if somewhat contentious) comments should be held to account for them.
The entire period ran about three months; Rock clearly knew it was me, and we nonetheless were able to make plans for Denver together, where we initially planned to share a room (things worked out somewhat better, at no additional cost). During that time and afterwards, Rock never showed a sign of being angry at me for any of it, and has never previously implied that anything I did was racially motivated.
Further, in the ensuing time, I have lent Rock money (yes, because I am so "envious" of him), supported his race for City Council (to which my family contributed monetarily) in my column, and publicly supported him when he faced dismissal from his employment.
Between the incidents outlined above, Rock and I joked, cajoled, agreed, disagreed, complimented, disputed, argued, meandered and chewed the fat, mostly in public.
Obviously, Rock and I have a dysfunctional friendship, but I do not think what is outlined above constitutes a vendetta.
Rock does not seem to understand that not every critique is a reflection of someone else’s bigotry. Rock states:
“It is so tragic the length that my detractors will go to find fault with my columns. For what? Why? What’s the real motivation?”
How about to correct misleading, ,false and sometimes libelous misinformation. Like the time he falsely said Councilwoman Leticia James was under investigation, when she wasn’t.
Rock says:
I have requested so many times that these folks stop reading my columns, so that they won’t have to comment, and in this way, the firefights won’t start. You see, they usually start off with vicious personal attacks and not with informative critique.
That would be tempting, but would often be the equivalent of leaving a malignant tumor untreated. Sometimes, in fact, one must respond to Rock when he does things like publish on the web the address where the children of a judge sitting in Criminal Court resided. Only unrelenting and repeated criticism in the angriest terms persuaded Rock to remove that address.
And Rock, I promise you, I have never “suborned others” to my “cause,” or “enlisted others to join in this harassment.” Hell, I’ve never even given my students my Room 8 password. And I’ve never published anything on Huff Post–in case you haven’t noticed Rock, all Room 8 columns are republished there automatically.
Now, unless this generates another inappropriate response, my blog can return to talking about the real world.