Oak Park and River Forest High School will spend $53,794 to redo its yearbook because 18 students made the "OK" hand sign.

Newsweek reports.

“I want to be clear that we are not making any presumptions about students’ intent in using the gesture,” [Superintendent Joylynn] Pruitt-Adams wrote. “Regardless of intent, however, there is a real and negative impact. Many students, not only our students of color, experience this gesture as a symbol of white supremacy. Potentially subjecting our students to this trauma is simply not acceptable.

“We are concerned that the gesture will become more closely associated with White supremacy in the future. Publishing the photos in question could not only harm students today but could subject students to potentially a lifetime of questions or penalty from colleges, employers, etc.”

As reported by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the OK hand gesture being linked to white supremacy started as a trolling campaign by users on the controversial message board 4Chan. The “Operation O-KKK” campaign was launched to trick people into thinking the gesture—frequently used by President Donald Trump during his public speaking—was meant to promote white supremacy as the fingers spell out WP (white power).

"The 'OK' symbol hoax was so widespread in the spring and summer of 2017 that a number of people on the far right began deliberately to use the gesture—typically making the sign while posing for photographs uploaded to social media—in order to continue the trolling and spread it further,” noted the ADL....

Pruitt-Adams sounds completely lucid. The effect on the observer matters — OK may be experienced as a white power statement — and the students doing the gesturing — even if they just meant "okay" — could find their reputations damaged in the future. And yet the "OK" sign and the great American word "OK" ("okay") are a damned important part of our speech. And if we reject it now, then, going forward, all those past images of simple positivity will become confusing and subject to misinterpretation. And it seems this big, artificial move — changing an important part of our expression — is all about destroying Donald Trump. But nothing destroys Donald Trump! All efforts at destroying him destroy something else! Stop being do damned destructive... OK?

"The mostly male, mostly white, mostly straight world of technology and digital-culture journalism is in the midst of a cultural realignment about how it views the sort of 'ironic' political incorrectness..."

"... (and outright Nazism) prevalent in online spaces like 4chan and its orbit. What was once permissible among hacktivists and their observers and hangers-on — hobnobbing with white supremacists, even if you disagreed — no longer is in an America where white supremacists are particularly emboldened, and when that movement has literally been stoked on 4chan. A decade ago, it was much easier to shrug off explicit invocations of Nazism and white supremacy online. For a certain type of reporter hanging out in transgressive parts of the internet, putting up with these shenanigans was par for the course. But that attitude — that it’s just trolling, that it’s ironic, that you don’t know the context — has provided cover for hundreds of acts of genuine hate and violence over the last two years. The idea that because a person leans left in their politics, they can comfortably associate with white supremacists and not be guilty by association is outdated for a lot of people, and the Times apparently heard from enough of them."

From "The Saga of Quinn Norton’s 7-Hour Times Career, Explained" by Brian Feldman in New York Magazine.

"More than a dozen handmade stickers reading 'It’s okay to be white' surfaced around Harvard Square Wednesday..."

"... prompting Cambridge officials to remove them and a Harvard Law School Dean to denounce the signs as 'provocations intended to divide us,'" Harvard Crimson reports.

The stickers appeared to be part of a campaign started on the forum website 4chan, which called upon followers to put up posters with the message in their area on Halloween night. The author of the original post on the site wrote that they hoped the “credibility of far left campuses and media gets nuked” as a result of the incident, adding that they could help achieve a “massive victory for the right in the culture war.”

What "incident"? I guess it's "the incident" of whatever reaction the stickers provoke (rather than the putting up of the stickers). Just don't react and there's no incident. But there's an anodyne reaction: The Law School Dean of Students asserts that the stickers will not divide us and we believe in diversity. So that's very close to no reaction. This is really a nonstory as long as we don't talk about it, but Harvard Crimson wrote it up, and I got sent here from Instapundit and TaxProf Blog, so now I'm feeling as though this is bloggable, especially since I got into the rathole of the comments at the Crimson.

There's this, from Haardvark:

Brilliant -- the very same folks who may claim the stickers to be offensive (by interpreting them to mean "it's NOT okay to be anything else") are forced to reconcile their outrage with their "Black Lives Matter" =/= "No other lives matter" position.

And then there's this kind of thing, by Thrifty:

Whoop-de-doo. Obviously there's a sense in which it's "okay to be white"—every person has a right to exist and be respected, including people categorized as "white". Less obviously (at least to white people like me), there's a sense in which the familiar cultural artifact called "whiteness" can be harmful, by making it easier to limit this right to exist and be respected to some people but not others, and, although it's a stretch, "being white" could be interpreted as "deliberately perpetrating or perpetuating this harmful system," which is not "okay". 4chan knows the first sense is obvious while the second is only widely recognized in academia, and is hoping to perpetrate a transparent fallacy of equivocation by getting us to point out the second and sound like we're attacking the first. Like most of this part of the internet's efforts to push memes, this one is thankfully hamstrung by its own idiocy and will die out soon.

Which made Lukas Oman say:

You use a lot of words but you say essentially nothing. First, define "whiteness" for those of us who opted to take STEM courses and are naive to the concept.

Thrifty steps up, but not in a strong enough way to make me want to bulk up this post with a quote, and it makes (((kingschitz))) say "Your word salad is a target rich opportunity" and "you’ve transformed all discussion into racial shaming." And Lukas Oman comes back to say a few things, including:

The concepts of whiteness, white fragility, racial microaggression, and even "equality", as it is defined now, are complicated constructs with more twists and turns and holes than the surface of a nanoporous ingot. And dude, you don't even go here.

Is it strange that we have heard nothing about whether the Las Vegas shooter was a Republican or a Democrat?

I'm cynical enough to assume that when news reports don't say whether someone who's done something wrong is a Republican or a Democrat that he is a Democrat. In this case I know Paddock's brother said he had "no political affiliation." Then again, the brother seemed out of the loop (and not clearly credible).

There's also this, at Heavy, saying that "Paddock was not a registered voter, as either a Democrat or a Republican, in Clark County or elsewhere in Nevada, where his permanent residence was located. He was also not a registered voter in Florida, despite some social media claims he was a registered Democrat there."

ADDED: From "False News of the Vegas Attack Spread on Google, Facebook" (NYT):

[A] story by the pro-Trump political website "The Gateway Pundit" named a different person as the shooter, citing a Facebook page to claim the individual was "a far left loon" and "a Democrat who liked (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow." Posters on the anonymous, anarchic 4chan.org forum likewise trumpeted supposed findings that the same individual was both the shooter and a "social democrat."...

Google said in a statement that it highlighted 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" message board, where the incorrect posts appeared, for several hours before its search algorithm replaced it with more relevant results... Facebook said its security team removed Gateway Pundit results and other similar posts from its social network, some within minutes....

Both companies are under fire from lawmakers for promoting false stories in the lead-up to last year's election, and have been invited to testify at a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the race.

AND: From "Terrorizing if Not Clearly Terrorist: What to Call the Las Vegas Attack?" (NYT):

Was it a plot by “deep-state Democrats” (Alex Jones of the conspiracy site Infowars) or perhaps divine punishment for the “profound disrespect” shown to Mr. Trump and the national anthem (the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson)? Was it something to do with country music, given the concert crowd Mr. Paddock targeted?...

"After months of trying to move the political needle in favor of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, American far-right activists..."

"... threw their weight behind a hacking attack against her rival, Emmanuel Macron, hoping to cast doubt on an election that is pivotal to France and the wider world," according to the NYT.

Who are these weighty American righties and what are they doing with the hacking attack? The NYT says "American far-right groups" are "promoting the breach online." The NYT has articles about the hacking, but I guess these articles don't count as "promoting" it, so what are the "groups" doing other than repeating the news that Macron got hacked?

“It’s the anti-globalists trying to go global,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow of the digital forensics research lab at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, who has studied the far right’s recent efforts against Mr. Macron and others in France. “There’s a feeling of trying to export the revolution.”

So they got Nimmo who's at a think tank, and he reports "a feeling."

[W]ithin hours after the hacked documents were made public, the hashtag #MacronLeaks began trending worldwide, aided by online far-right activists in the United States who have been trying to sway the French vote in favor of Ms. Le Pen.

I still don't understand how this is anything more than passing on the news story that there was a hack. The NYT and all the major media are doing that too.

Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks....

So one person showed where to find the documents. 

While there is no evidence that the recent hack against Mr. Macron’s campaign was organized by this loosely connected group of extremist campaigners...

What loosely connected group? Does that refer to something earlier in the article? The sentence continues

... the American activists...

Who?

... have been regularly gathering on sites like 4Chan and Discord, which was previously used to coordinate support for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

The name of websites where people communicate seems to stand in for details identifying the "activist" "groups" the article is talking about.

One popular tactic, according to experts, has been so-called Twitter raids, or efforts to hijack trending hashtag and topics on the social media site and inject far-right and anti-Macron propaganda.

That sounds nefarious — raids! inject! — but what does that say other than that social media exists and works in a certain way?

A week before the second round of the French election, for instance, online activists, many from the United States and other English-speaking countries, flooded Twitter with coordinated anti-Macron memes — online satirical photos with often-biting captions — carrying hashtags like #elysee2017 that were linked to the campaign. That included portraying him as a 21st-century equivalent of Marie Antoinette, the out-of-touch last queen of France, and other memes linked him to false allegations of an extramarital affair.

They used satire!  Wait... was it... The Piranha Brothers?!



ADDED: The "loosely connected group" just doesn't even seem to be a group at all. I can't see how it's anything more than the way social media operates to facilitate reading and writing. It's just free speech. I read this as the NYT agonizing over how MSM isn't filtering everything these days, and yet here it is, demonstrating how badly it filters. I'm giving this post my "fake news" tag. That just means the subject of "fake news" is an issue, not that I'm saying the NYT published a fake news article.

Do you think this NYT article should be called fake news?

Yes. Because it is fake news.

Yes. Because it's fake enough that the NYT deserves to be taunted with the aggravating pejorative.

No. Because it follows the norms of ethical journalism.

No. Because "fake news" is too strong a term. Criticize the article, but don't name-call.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

"The Snappening."

"A giant database of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos has been released by hackers who have been collecting the files for years...."

... Snapchat confirmed the images came from third-party sites, while denying that Snapchat's servers were breached by hackers:

We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security...

4chan users say the collection of photos has a large amount of child pornography, including many videos sent between teenagers who believed the files would be immediately deleted after viewing. Half of Snapchat's users are teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17.

"We uphold the ideal of free speech on reddit as much as possible not because we are legally bound to, but because..."

"... we believe that you - the user - has the right to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, and that it is your responsibility to do so. When you know something is right, you should choose to do it. But as much as possible, we will not force you to do it. You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere - not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong. Virtuous behavior is only virtuous if it is not arrived at by compulsion. This is a central idea of the community we are trying to create."

So writes Reddit CEO Yishan Wong in a blog post titled "Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul," a propos of the naked-celebrity-photos-leak incident. Via the NYT, "Reddit and 4chan Begin to Button Up."

The application of free-speech principles outside of the context of government restrictions has been a long-term interest of mine on this blog. Here's that long email debate I had with Bob Wright on the subject, which followed on a voluble Bloggingheads debate we had, which I highlight in a post called "When did the left turn against free speech?" Watch Bob start yelling at me — "Ann, come on, you're a constitutional law authority..." — 20 seconds into this clip:

If you're one of "Those Very Few in the Direct Intersection of Dylan Obsessives and Internet Meme Aficionados"...

... then betamax3000 has written a "Desolation Row" parody that you will be able to appreciate.

But he wonders if he took too much time, given the limited traffic at that intersection, and yet he didn't take the time to link to every meme, and I'm not going to do that either. Here's Wikipedia's "List of Internet Phenomena" if you need a reference. Everything's already listed at Wikipedia, maybe even before it really is a phenomenon — and there must be Wikipedia editors monitoring the list to prevent wannabe phenomena from leveraging their phenomenality by inserting themselves on that list — and that's one more reason why, as we were talking about yesterday, "Competitiveness about 'I know the Internet better than you do,' is really out of date."

Now, that's a quote from Instapundit, based on his observation: "Nobody 'knows the Internet' well enough to count anymore. Maybe a decade ago, but even then there was more than anyone could digest." But it's also paradoxically true that everybody already knows everything, or is so close to seeing what any given thing is — by consulting the endlessly updated "List of Internet Phenomena" and whatnot. (Do you know "whatnot" as an Althouse blog phenomenon? Are Althouse blog phenomena foremost in your mind?).

It's not worth being competitive about an activity that is so easy. Easy and impossible — those are the worst enterprises.

There should be a Wikipedia article "List of Easy and Impossible Enterprises." War, life itself, knowing God.... and whatnot.

So betamax showed up on that knowing-the-internet thread to say: "The Internet is Best Understood as the Longest Bob Dylan Song Ever." And I said:

I wonder if Bob goes on the internet.

And if he does, where does he go?

Does he keep a Google Alert on his name, like I do?

If he ever ends up here, does he find me (us) creepy?

Does he find everyone creepy?

He must go on the internet. How could he not?

He's out there traveling around, in hotels. What do you do in a hotel? Either you turn on the TV, you read a book, or you go on the internet. (I guess it's possible that you interact with in-the-flesh humans, but I don't think a 73-year-old man does that too much.)

More to the point, would Bob find betamax3000 creepy? Here's Bob's "Desolation Row." Purporting to quote an entity called "Naked Bob Dylan Robot," betamax writes:

They’re selling postcards of the meme
They’re painting the LOLcats brown
All your base is belong to us
Dysfunctional Family Circus is in town
Here comes the Sad Keanu
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the Aww Yea Guy
The other Faps to Michelle Jenneke's Warm Up Dance
Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?
They need Cool Story, Bro
As Althouse and Meade look on their iMac tonight
From Internet Meme Row

Cinderella, she has the Duck Face
“Your Argument is Invalid,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Keep Calm and Carry On style
And in comes Scumbag Steve, he’s moaning
“Can I Borrow Everything?”
And Good Guy Greg says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend
But You can take my Keys”
And the only sound that’s left
After the Honey Badgers go
Is Harp Darp Herp Derp Hurr Durr Durr
From Internet Meme Row

Now Imma Let You Finish
Bed Intruder is beginning to hide
The Hipster Mermaid
Has even taken Dating Site Murderer inside
All except for Epic Beard Man
And the hunchback of 4chan
Everybody is Om Nom Nom Nom
Or collecting Spam
And Leeroy Jenkins, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going out with Anti-Joke Chicken
From Internet Meme Row

Now Overly Attached Girlfriend, she’s ’neath the window
with a Kitten in a Bowl
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is RickRolled
To her, death is quite romantic
She waits on Ceiling Cat
Batman Slapping Robin
I Want My Hat Back
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Perfectly Timed Photos
She spends her time with White People Dancing
From Internet Meme Row

Einstein, disguised as Friendzone Johhny
with the Droste Effect
Passed this way with Pancake Bunny
and his friend, Almost Politically Correct Redneck
Unimpressed Astronaut
He Welcomes Our New Insect Overlords
Then went off with Prancing Cera
And going Full Retard
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For 'Make Me a Sandwich, Star Wars Kid'
From Internet Meme Row

Dr. Filth, he Releases the Kraken
Shit Just Got Real
I Love Bell Peppers
The Whole Chuck Norris Deal
Now Chuck's nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the Bikini Bridge
Nicolas Cage wants Cake
and says Nuke the Fridge
They all play on pennywhistles
You can hear Super Mario
If you lean your Trollface out far enough
From Internet Meme Row

Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten
Put That Cookie Down
The Phantom of the Opera
Does a Barrell Roll with the Virgin Clown
They’re spoonfeeding George Takei
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with Shit That Siri Says
After poisoning him with Angry Birds
And the Phantom’s shouting to Emo girls
“Don't Tase Me Bro!"
George Takei is just being punished for going
From Internet Meme Row

Now at midnight Grandma Finds the Internet
And Old Spice's Terry Crews
They Come out and Summon Penguins
That know more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across Hot Dog Legs
And then the Krispy Kreme
It's brought down from the Almighty Loaf
Leave Britney Alone
It's 'Yeah Science Bitch'
From Internet Meme Row

Praise be to Bold Move Cotton
The Titanic was Pawnd
And everybody’s Printing Out the Internet
And shouting out 'Khan!'
And Keyboard Cat and Karma Whore
are Forever Alone
While calypso singers laugh and ask
Where Me Keys, Where Me Phone?
Neil deGrasse Tyson Reaction
So Zetta Slow
And nobody has to think too much
From Internet Meme Row

Yes, I saw your Youtube yesterday
About Honey Boo Boo
One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor
They Don't Think It Be Like It Is But It Do
All these Memes that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their Harlem Shake
And give them all another name
Right now its all First World Problems
I Know That Feel Bro
Time for Yet Another Facepalm
From Internet Meme Row

That was when it was 9 below zero and 3:07 in the middle of the night. At  3:25 AM, he declared "I Think I Just Won the Dylan Internet," which — does this sound I-know-the-internet competitive? — is another internet meme. You won the internet.

You know there's no winning like losing, and that losing is not winning at all.

Union thuggery against Althouse and Meade: "We will hang up wanted posters of you everywhere you like to go."

"We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will harrass the ever loving shit out of you all the time. Campus is OCCUPIED. State street is OCCUPIED. The Square is OCCUPIED. Vilas, Schenk's Corners, Atwood, Willy Street – Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. Did you really think it was all about the Capitol? Fuck the Capitol, we are the CITY... We have the numbers and we don't back down from anyone. We all know each other. We all know each other. We know each other from Service Industry Night at the Orpheum, because we're regulars at the same coffee shops, restaurants and bars, we know each other from the co-ops, we know each other because we've had a million jobs each (and we all worked at CapTel at least once), because we live in every shitty townie house in ever-changing groups of 2 – 7 people, because we are young and horny and screw each other incessantly, because we're all on facebook, and because we aren't anti-social, life-denying, world-sterilizing pieces of human garbage like the two of you. WE WILL FUCK YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of shit, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the assholes on your side in real fucking life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath."

UPDATE: The document, which had been posted at scribd, was deleted soon after I posted, but not before I copied it. Here, then, is the full text:

Because of their extensive, lifelong, union freeloading (Althouse, the breadwinner of their pathetic, sexual-frustration driven “family” is an AAUP freeloader, a public sector secondary education freeloader, a University of Michigan freeloader, a University of Colorado freeloader and, most disgustingly to us, a University of Wisconsin Freeloader), their movement freeloading (they have greatly enhanced their reputation and social currency both within her nauseating Tory brotherhood they represent and across the  Op:countertroll Vs Althouse and Meade 3/18/11 11:41 AM currency both within her nauseating Tory brotherhood they represent and across the http://www.scribd.com/doc/50869881/Op-countertroll-Vs-Althouse-and-Meade Page 2 of 7 internet by wandering around Madison lying about all they see) their repeated lies and general commitment to irresponsible citizen-journalism (how dare they sneak around an ongoing citizen protest movement taking pictures of trash minutes before our volunteers clean it), their false claims to have infiltrated the movement despite the fact that as a decentralized, participatory and democratic movement #wiunion cannot be “infiltrated” and indeed welcomes the attention of hostile outside observers, their attempts to incite Tea Party Falangists to act on their sadistic and violent impulses against fourth grade teachers and their students, and their desecration of the statue of Hans Christian Heg Ann Althouse and Meade are hereby put on notice.

NOTICE – YOUR CITY OF MADISON PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN REVOKED.

MADISON IS A #WIUNION CITY AND WE ARE MADISON.

Did you really think this could go on forever? That you could sit on the steps of our house, walk the streets of our city, lie about us to strangers, tell gun-toting rednecks from out of state and the Northwoods how depraved and deserving of punishment we are all while maintaining plausible deniability for any of the consequences that your actions might cause? Did you think you could fuck with HANS and get away with it?

This isn't a one way fight any more. We will take it from the internet right to [DELETED: My actual street address — parenthetical by Ann Althouse]. Do you have any idea where you live? Let us spell it out for you. We understand that you like to eat on the square. You like the Baked Potato at the Old Fashioned, do you? There were five of us in there last Tuesday. You like to eat at Fresco? We're in the Overture eating, serving, cooking, playing, and performing. At least twenty of us have worked for Food Fight. You like to fucking drink at FAIR TRADE do you? At FAIR TRADE? You are citizen-BANNED from Fair Trade. We will Walker you straight out of the place whenever you show up. We are at every coffee shop on State, open to close, all the time. We will hang up wanted posters of you everywhere you like to go. We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will harrass the ever loving shit out of you all the time. Campus is OCCUPIED. State street is OCCUPIED. The Square is OCCUPIED. Vilas, Schenk's Corners, Atwood, Willy Street – Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. Did you really think it was all about the Capitol? Fuck the Capitol, we are the CITY.

We are hard-drinking, weed-smoking, rude, obnoxious, auto-didactic, uppity fucking TOWNIES. We know you hate us. We know you hate us because we ruin your imaginary, Men's Magazine, UW Admission's Pamphlet, Madison Magazine, Isthmus Arts vision of our City. You think that our town should be on perpetual vigil just in case you needalittlepeaceandquiet. YouthinkweshouldgodownquietwhileWalker economically rapes us because you want to lead a fucking tour group? Sorry babe, not gonna happen. And because you couldn't even show a modicum of fairness, integrity, or neutrality and because you had the iron fucking stones to try to pull this here, on OUR campus, in OUR city, in OUR state in OUR country (and that is about the only reason we have any grudging respect for you), now YOU are a target.

And guess what – we aren't SDS. We aren't fucking TAA. We aren't Timmy “olive branch” Cullen, we aren't yogi, granola-eating types you see at Willy Street or whatever. We are NOT radically nonviolent. We comply with the laws of the City because it is our City and we love it, but OH MY GOD do we hope Meade tries to get all tough with us. WE LOVE IT. LOVE IT. Just last night we saw a Jimmy John's worker who we know beat the ever loving shit out of some idiot drunk asshole who wouldn't be civil and polite in his workplace. We have the numbers and we don't back down from anyone. We all know each other. We know each other from Service Industry Night at the Orpheum, because we're regulars at the same coffee shops, restaurants and bars, we know each other from the co-ops, we know each other because we've had a million jobs each (and we all worked at CapTel at least once), because we live in every shitty townie house in ever-changing groups of 2 – 7 people, because we are young and horny and screw each other incessantly, because we're all on facebook, and because we aren't anti-social, life-denying, world-sterilizing pieces of human garbage like the two of you. WE WILL FUCK YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of shit, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the assholes on your side in real fucking life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath.

Pay your dues or action will be taken. The action will be legal, peaceful, and nonviolent (on our end anyway – if you want to do it the other way fine with us. Meade is a tough guy on LGM or whatever but he's a chickenshit IRL. We dare you buddy. Double dog dare you.) but it will also be swift, decisive, direct, personal and effective.

Our demands are as follows. Choose a package. 
Package 1: Pay your damn dues, you Union Freeloading pieces of shit 

You are getting fat on union money. You are getting fat on our tax money. You are getting fat on an undeserved bully pulpit that you got from credibility won from the hard struggles of public sector workers, university professors and unions throughout history, and that increased dramatically in scope due to OUR MOVEMENT. So PAY YOUR DUES. Wedemand:

1) Because you have taken the words from our mouth - A complete recantation of all lies about #wiunion (not lies in leagalese – lies in the commonsense moral Op:countertroll Vs Althouse and Meade 3/18/11 11:41 AM http://www.scribd.com/doc/50869881/Op-countertroll-Vs-Althouse-and-Meade Page 3 of 7 definition of the word. Choose an ethical system that you believe is fair, run it by us, and we will let you know which posts violate it) posted on your personal blog, in all comments sections of all other blogs, on your flickr account and your youtube account, spoken in podcasts or on bloggingheads, or said out loud anywhere in Madison. Take it all back. We don't trust you, so we will draft a statement for you.

2) Because you have taken the bread from our table – a 5,000 dollar donation (each) in your own names and made public to the Industrial Workers of the World general fund, the Bradley Manning Defense Fund, the Recall Alberta Darling effort, a group of our choosing that advocates for the pro-democracy movements in #libya, #algeria, #iran or in Pizza for the Protesters (we prefer Ian's, the Nickel or Roman Candle, but any friendly place will do – if you attempt to order us shitty pizza or pizza from an unfriendly restaurant we will eat it and consider are demands still unmet).

3) Because you have attempted to take our very safety and indeed our lives, because you have incited violence against us and above all because you have proven yourselves inadequate to the grave and solemn responsibilites of Citizen- Journalism – Your silence. You want to make everyone shut the fuck up? Be the change you seek. We demand ZERO more posts about us, ever. We demand the admin pw for all of your shit to be publicly posted on a movement friendly facebook group or 4chan. We demand to be allowed to vet everything you post before you post it and edit it for any and all lies related to #wiunion, #wewarewi, #union, #usuncut #opesr #wikileaks #solidarity and #allthatisgoodandholyonthisearth. We demand that you Delete Fucking Everything.

4) You will never, ever, ever, ever in your motherfucking life come within 20 feet of the statue of Hans Christian Heg. Althouse, you are a job-hopping carpetbagger from New England. Meade, you are an obnoxious right-to-work Zombie from southern Ohio who only lives here because its apparently the only place in the world you can get laid. Heg is OURS. We are WISCONSIN. You don't fucking touch Hans Christian. Ever. And that goes double for the Lady on the other side.

Package 2: Move the Fuck out of Our City 

Get out, and stay out. Far out. Meade - You ain't no man for this city. We're out on the streets every day, all day. The 77 square is not for y'all. You say we're from out of state? Bullshit. You're from fucking out of state. We'll show you just how fucking Madison we are. Althouse, we will ruin your goddamn career, your comfort, your pocketbook, your sense of safety and wellbeing, and your life.

And don't try to pull up at another one of our cities either. Don't like your AAUP card? Turn it in. If you want to carry water for Koch and the Chamber, they can foot the fucking bill for it. Get a job on the Tea speaking circuit or with AEI or some other garbage think-tank in DC or Claremont or whatevs. We have friends everywhere. All land-grant University towns are occupied. All major cities are occupied. Everywhere with a critical mass of smart, uppity people is Occupied. If you want to advocate for national internetless, right-to-work rural fortress state hell with no transit in or out, you can live in it. If you want to defend Falangist Michigan, move to Pontiac. If you want to make us all work for Olive Garden you can fucking eat there. Why don't YOU go shop at Wal-Mart. Because the shit you wear looks like it comes from places like Jazzman and Bop and we work there too and we aren't having it any more. No more free rides, baby.

If you have not acceded to our demands within a week, it is ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. WE AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE. EVER. WE LIVE HERE 100% OF THE FUCKING TIME. YOU CAN'T BAN MADISON FROM LIVING IN MADISON, BUT WE CAN SURE AS SHIT BAN YOU. WHO ARE YOU GONNA CALL? COPS FOR LABOR? THE CHICKENSHIT TEA ASSWIPES WHO ARE SCARED SHITLESS OF THE TEAMSTERS TRUCKS? THE NATIONAL GUARD? SCOTT WALKER? NO ONE IS GOING TO COME AND CRACK DOWN ON US FOR YOU. THERE IS NO CAVALRY. ITS US VS YOU ON THE STREETS OF THE CITY GOING AS FAR AS IT HAS TO GO UNTIL A) WE WIN OR B) DOOMSDAY.