I'm OK. You Seem Like Kind of a Jerk.

Who knew that my shot across the bow of the Weekly more than a week ago would turn into this thing? This vendetta? This blood-letting and ritual sacrifice? This final act of Hamlet?

Being the most minor of minor celebrities (I mean, let's face it, I make Rick Steves look like Mick Jagger) I am always a little amazed at the kind of emotions I can dredge up in those whom I've never met.

Over the past week, perfect strangers over at The Weekly have commented freely on the state of my mental health. I've been compared to a rabid chimp, deemed an establishment liberal, and called an amazing asshole. People who have obviously never seen my car, teeth, or shoes have assumed I must somehow be in this for the money, and living in luxury off the backs of the poor (why anyone would think my job pays well is really beyond me). Since attacking Real Change turned out to ill-advised, the next best thing, apparently, is to attack me.

It's interesting that in my twenty or so years of poor people's organizing and alternative journalism, I've never been seriously attacked from the right. They seem to respect the idea of helping people work. I generally get this stuff from the left, the far left, and the pseudo-left.

I don't think any of it, really, has much to do with me. I wind up being a screen on which people project what they want to see: saint, poverty pimp, egotist, nut job, whatever.

It's fine. The way I see it, if everyone likes you, you're probably not doing much of anything that's really interesting.