SECTION THREE           

sm

COLUMN FIFTY-FOUR, DECEMBER 1, 2000
(Copyright © 2000 Al Aronowitz)

EMAIL FAILURE!

[All I wanted to do was to send out notices on my mailing list announcing new BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST columns and telling what was in them.  Netscape prevented me from doing so.  As a result, I formed the BLACKJ LIST on eGroups as a way to reach the people on my mailing list.  I had already sent out a mailing telling people how to get off my list before I transferred the list to eGroups, so I thought it was pretty clean of those who didn't want to stay on it.  I certainly don't want to offend people by cluttering their electronic mailboxes with uninvited email they don't want.  Well the BLACKJ LIST imediately turned into a disaster.] 

I’ve terminated the BLACKJ LIST, leaving it in the hands of the malicious hackers who hijacked it and started filling the email boxes of its recipients with unwanted dupes of dupes, pissing off almost everyone on the list.

The original purpose of the list was to notify recipients of each new column of THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST and to describe the contents of same, something NETSCAPE prevented me from doing on my own mailing list for reasons never explained to me.  Which is why I established the BLACKJ LIST on eGroups. I  now have duly notified eGroups of the termination of the BLACKJ LIST.

Although, the BLACKJ LIST had as its original and specific purpose the dissemination of news of THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST, I let myself be persuaded that the list should be interactive, something which quickly became the reason for the demise of the list.  Nobody wanted to receive that flood of email.

Consequently, I’m preparing another, smaller, more exclusive list on eGroups which I will call the ALIST.  It will disseminate messages about BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST columns only and will contain the eaddresses of those I am personally acquainted with; of those I currently correspond with and of those who emailed me, sometimes in the distant past.  The list may also contain the eaddresses of some who simply spammed me.

It will be quite easy for anyone on the list to unsubscribe, so please don’t get huffy if you find yourself getting email from me that you don’t remember asking for.  I think it’s only fair that if you once sent me an email, I should be able to send you one back.

In the meantime, I'll let you read an attempt at an exchange of correspondence resulting from the BLACKJ LIST'S one day of existence, printed below.  ##

* * *

DON'T BOTHER WRITING!
WIRED MAGAZINE AND STEVE SILBERMAN ARE OUT TO LUNCH

Subject: Returned mail: User unknown
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 13:15:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@u3.farm.idt.net>
To: <blackj@bigmagic.com>  

The original message was received at Thu, 5 Oct 2000
13:15:06 -0400 (EDT)
from ppp-9.ts-1-bay.cra.idt.net [169.132.58.57 

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal
errors ----- <digamon@wired.com>

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----

Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 10:58:28 -0700 |
To: al aronowitz <blackj@bigmagic.com>
From: Wired Rants <rants@wired.com>
Subject: Re: ATTENTION STEVE SILBERMAN  

huh?  this ain't steve - and i don't have time to read all of this, but i see just below here that you have steve's current and correct address (i.e. digaman@wired.com)

i don't know what you're possibly talking about otherwise.

>STEVE:  It was pretty slick of you to snipe at me from under the cover
>of a false return email address.

>Subject: THE BLACKJ LIST
>Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 15:00:41 -0400
>From: al aronowitz <blackj@bigmagic.com>
>Organization: THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
>To: "stevesilberman@wired.com" <stevesilberman@wired.com>,
>      "ssilberman@wired.com" <ssilberman@wired.com>
>
>STEVE:  It already seems like ages ago that I got this email, allegedly
>from you:
>
>Subject: Read It And Weep
>Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 11:07:57 -0700
>From: Steve Silberman <digaman@wired.com>
>To: blackj@bigmagic.com
>
>Al:
>
>         I can't believe that you would be so e-clueless as to sign
>journalists up for an "opt-out" email list that doesn't even allow
>you to opt out, as I have tried to do twice already.  Then,
>furthermore, you insult the people on the list for getting pissed off.
>         I've read your stuff before, and have enjoyed some of it.
>Please give me the opportunity to consider reading anything of yours
>in the future by taking me OFF THIS LIST RIGHT AWAY.  I don't want to
>see the phrase "black-J" in my email again unless it's verification
>of unsubscription.  As a journalist yourself, I can't believe you
>don't understand why this is ticking people off.  We're old enough to
>figure out for ourselves what groups we want to be on.
>
>                                         Steve Silberman
>--
>
>**************************************
>steve silberman
>contributing editor
>Wired magazine
>http://www.wired.com/wired
>**************************************
TO WHICH I REPLIED:  

STEVE:  How nice to hear from you, altho I don't remember ever hearing from you before.

You accuse me of being e-clueless, to which I must plead guilty.  I'm just learning by feeling my way along as I have been since September 1995.  I've just recently learned how to put together my own pages via Microsoft FRONTPAGE.  I'm sorry I'm not as e-sophisticated as some of you younger, hipper guys, but then I was out of my mind for a long time---living thru my own *Auschwitz* as it were---the result of being fired for no good reason from the NY Post (despite the great popularity of my POP SCENE column).  Yeah, I went a little crazy like somebody being sentenced to 25 years for a crime he did not commit.  Why did the notoriously corrupt executive editor of the New York Post fire me?  Because he was jealous of the popularity of my column, me, an asshole, a schmuck, a nerd who thought he meant $1.50 when he said he was going to  bet a buck fifty on a horse, me, a schmendrick, a Gimpel the Fool, who didn't even know that the editor who hired me on the Post was having a romance with my wife.  It bruised the executive editor's ego that the world should pay any attention to me, just as it would bruise the egos of any of NY's big time editors for whom I long ago got jobs, even taught one how to write (he told his brothers at the time) and even joined one in bed with our wives.

Yeah, I'm kinda dumb about the Internet, too, not like you whiz kids at WIRED (which BTW has never bothered to pay any attention to me until just now, when I've heard from you).  I started the BLACKJ list so I could send out announcements on a mailing list I so tediously collected, mostly from persons who long ago forgot that they sent me email---announcements that each new BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST column was ready to be read, telling of its contents.  I used to send out these announcements on my own mailing  list, 10 or 25 at a time, until NETSCAPE banned me from sending 10 at a time, the result I believe of some NRA nut who complained I had deluged him with spam after he had received a SINGLE email from me.  See http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column51.html.

I've only had about 82,000 hits so far, so why SHOULD  Wired or its journalists or those of any other hip e-publication pay attention to a 72-year-old neverhasbeen like me who has only a cult following?  I don't even know how to get a hit counter on my index page.  I don't even know how to make all my graphics stick on the web.  So I'm grateful for you to rush in to teach me the rules.  I admit that until now, i've been making up my own rules.

As for your previous lack of success in "opting out," I must say I've never until now even heard about you.  I've never seen any attempt by you to "opt out."  As for insults, I always try to be civil.  That has not always been the case when I get desultory email from people who lose their tempers because they get an uninvited email.  People who think that they own cyberspace because they were in it before me.  People who think that fact entitles them to act superior.

And so I apologize if I've pissed you off with my presence on the web and I'm grateful and very pleased that you've enjoyed at least SOME of my writing.  I'd appreciate it if you could send me some urls to click on so i might enjoy some of YOUR writing.  And I'll be pleased to remove you from the BLACKJ list when I can get around to it.  You'll have to forgive any delay.  You see, I've got my hands full.  Best, Al

--

Al Aronowitz
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/black 

BUT OF COURSE ANY MAIL ADDRESSED TO Steve Silberman <digaman@wired.com> DON'T GO NOWWHERE.  So I thought I'd try these eaddresses 

Turns out I got enemies out there who apparently hijacked my BLACKJ list and keep sending out dupes.  Like I say, I just wanted to announce each new BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST column and describe its contents. Once a month.  But I think i explained how netscape took away some of my emailing privileges.  i don't know how to get in touch with Netscape. But I find Microsoft's Explorer the far superior browser.  Just compare.  Try http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column51.html on Netscape and then on Explorer.  Happens a lot with Netscape.  It don't do what you, who makes up the web page, instructs it to do.

Anyway, all i wanted to do was notify potential readers of each new issue each month after a nine-month hiatus as a result of previous negative energy explained in Column 51.  Netscape wouldn't let me send out the announcements so I went to eGroups.  Formed the BLACKJ list after tediously copying my address book (because i'm so computer unsophisticated that i didn't know any other way except one by one.)

Then couple of internet friends suggested i make it interactive.  i'm already on the SOA (Sons of Afrika) list and I sometimes scan the numerous posts before i put them in a folder wholesale.  I'm interested to know how and why black people think what they do, so I try to stay in touch.  Hardly listen to music any more.  I'm a gambling man.  I'm gambling on my website.  I know it's going to break through.  For as long as people read Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and for as long as people listen to Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones and a lot of other rock superstars, people are going to read me.  I was there, right on the inside like a fly on the wall when it all happened.  I'm surprised that visionaries like allen and like Bob didn't or don't have the vision to see that Im NOT unimportant.

Yeah, I got an ego.  There was a time when I got too arrogant for my own good.  Anyway, I'm not sending out any more messages on the BLACKJ list.  I leave it in the hands of whoever hijacked it.  I'm gonna make a smaller, more exclusive list of people who've sent me email and they are numerous.  Many of those who got pissed off to find themselves on the BLACKJ list may have forgotten that they spammed me long ago.

Thanks for your time,

Al

--

Al Aronowitz
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj  

Rants & Raves
Wired Magazine  ##

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The Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
blackj@bigmagic.com
  

THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ