The “Neighbors United for Fullerton,” who are also known as “NUFF” have invited a gaggle of Orange County political bloggers to participate in a moderated forum regarding what blogs are. The forum will be moderated by Matthew Jarvis, a political science professor from Cal State Fullerton.
The forum is set for Monday, March 22, at 6:45 pm, at the Fullerton Public Library, located at 353 West Commonwealth, in Fullerton.
The panel includes:
- Tony Bushala, Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog
- Art Pedroza, Orange Juice blog and the New Santa Ana blog
- Matt Cunningham, who some refer to as “Jerbal,” Red County blog (formerly known as the OC Blog)
- Dan Chmielewski, the Liberal OC blog
- and Martin Wisckol, of the O.C. Register’s Total Buzz blog
This should be interesting. Wisckol shills for Cunningham and Chmielewski. He advertises their blogs for free on Total Buzz. And yet it is to no avail as the Orange Juice blog trumps the lot of them regularly.
It is widely known that these bloggers have no love for each other. In fact Chmielewski filed a ridiculous lawsuit against Pedroza earlier this year. And Cunningham refers to the Orange Juice as the “Orange Joke,” even though his blog was referred to last year on the popular John and Ken radio show as “Kool Aid for Republican hacks and consultants.”
Pedroza has actually spoken at two California League of Cities conferences regarding the subject of blogging. He started the first political blog in Orange County, the Orange Juice. Currently Pedroza’s blogs are ranked #1 and #2 in the state of California by the BNN political blog ranking. BNN ranks the Liberal OC at #10 and Red County’s Orange County blog at #17. Total Buzz is not ranked at all.
Bushala is the most influential blogger on the panel, in the City of Fullerton. His blog helped to defeat carpetbagger Linda Ackerman earlier this year, when she challenged Chris Norby for the 72nd Assembly District. He also chased career politician Tom Daly out of the race for the 4th Supervisorial District, with a series of hard-hitting posts regarding Daly’s wasting of taxpayer money, as the O.C. Clerk-Recorder.
Will this forum turn into a fracas? Cunningham and Chmielewski are known for being thin-skinned and ill-tempered. Hopefully NUFF will keep them under control. Then again, bring your video camera just in case they have to be hauled off in handcuffs…
Art, LOL. It could turn into a real melee.
Who is going to be the ring announcer?
Tony,
More importantly, who will be administering first aid? LOL! I just hope we don’t drive those poor thin-skinned fellows to tears…
Tony. Marty’s hard copy in yesterday’s Local Section listed this event as Monday without stating which date. Unable to reach Martin I contacted his boss who recognized the error. Hopefully he took my suggestion and posted a note at the Fullerton Library apologizing for their error so that you are not accused of a failure to appear.
While everyone is kissin up next Monday who will be the first to blog about it?
Will O.J. be streaming this live on your site?
I’ll bet you all the tea in China that Jubal will not show.
*So, lets get this
right….isn’t this event with a prelim? We need to see the early fight card warm-ups! “Sugar Shane” Pedroza against “Manny Paqman” Cunningham! This has got to be great! Finally, a weigh in and a pre-fight mix it up! Can someone sell this to “Pay for View”?
“Sugar Shane” Pedroza against “Manny Paqman” Cunningham…let’s put this on “Pay for View”!
Ron and Anna,
I don’t know about that analogy! Pacquiao is the “Mexican killer.”
Jerbal is just another Mexican-hating Repuglican, but no one is afraid of him.
Let’s see if Matt even shows up. There is no money in it for him, so I doubt it…
Ron and Anna,
Please don’t ever compare “Jerbal” to Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao is a man who backs it up and “Jerbal” is anything but.
Matt Cunningham outed sex-abuse victims.
OK then how about Muhammed Pedroza vs. Joe Frazier Cunningham? Or,
Rocky Pedroza vs Jerry Quarry Cunningham?
Hey….we just want to see this.
It will be epic!
Ron and Anna,
Again you besmearch the names of great fighters like “Smokin Joe” and “Irish Jerry” by associating them with a “Nancy boy” like Jerbal. He lacks the stones of a real man and is akin to a yelping little chihuahua.
“Pacquiao is the “Mexican killer.””
Yeah, he’s a Mexican killer, black killer, Asian killer… you name it. That man can FIGHT!! Pretty good for a little Asian guy, lol.
Lam,
Pacquiao is the best fighter I have ever seen. He is simply amazing.
A woman I know says these guys are all good friends and the “bad blood” between them is all a show to boast blog ratings. Is that true?
See you there!
Tony and Art are safely seated at one table with Dan and Jubal at the other, and Marty Wisckol in between them. And the moderator periodically discouraging personal attacks.
Just now –
Art: Pretty much the ONLY thing Dan and I agree on is Sitemeter.
Dan: I don’t agree with you on Sitemeter.
[corrected from last night]
By the way, commenter #15 is completely wrong. That is the story we tell our children before we put them to bed.
Milling about, whispering rudely: me, Aaruni, Bill Spaulding, Tom Gordon, Claudio.
Sitting politely: Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk, Jane Rands, Matt Leslie, Sean Mill, Larry Gilbert.
I’m sure there’s lots of other folks I’ve read or heard of but don’t recognize.
Shawn Nelson just walked in.
Fireworks toward the end:
Art told the story of Meg County, which Matt responded to with his story of what really happened with Sgt. York and Poizner, you’ve all heard that if you care.
Dan accused Tony and Art both of changing and censoring his comments, which is why he doesn’t come over any more.
There was more, I’ll come back and add them to this comment as I remember.
But Tony’s final statement was interrupted by Claudio in the audience yelling, “Why do you let your writers call my kids anchor babies?” This really puzzled Tony, who asked “Who is this guy?” I’m pretty sure Tony’s blog has never said anything about Claudio’s family! Sometimes anonymous commenters on THIS blog did, and yours truly always deleted them when I saw them or Claudio called me and asked me to.
After the talk, two bloggers nearly came to blows and had to be dragged off by other bloggers, but I’ll let someone else tell that story.
Martin Wisckol of the Register’s Total Buzz made the strangest comments though, in retrospect.
In 2008, when Debbie Cook was running against his friend Dana Rohrabacher, I wrote a post excoriating him for his total blackout of any mention of Debbie. For the entire 9 months of the campaign Wisckol never mentioned Debbie’s name once, while constantly doing puff pieces on Dana and passing along his press releases… even to the point of doing an article about liberal activist Tim Carpenter – who came to the OC to campaign for Debbie – without mentioning her name – and with a little blurb at the end saying “Congressman Dana Rohrabacher had no comment.”
http://orangejuiceblog.com/2008/10/she-whose-name-shall-not-be-uttered-calling-out-total-buzz-wisckol/
I was reminded of this tonight when Wisckol said “There are just more Republicans than Democrats in Orange County, so of course we write more about Republicans.” (Make that ONLY?)
He also justified writing about trivial subjects by the fact that they get a lot of comments: “If you’d all just stop reading them, we’d stop writing them!” (I know, that almost sounds like the way Art brags on the hits he gets, but Art actually writes what he believes in, even if he may be off target.) Wisckol in these and other comments seemed to embrace the passive, amoral view that so many of today’s journalists take, especially ones on TV – they really don’t think they affect events but are mere helpless transcribers. And so they go on affecting events unconsciously according to their prejudices.
Wisckol also memorably said “I have no moral authority!” when the panel was asked if they were worried about their moral authority being compromised in various ways. At first that sounded refreshingly irreverent. But in retrospect it’s sadly true. All the four others on the panel, love them or loathe them, at least strive to have, or to convince themselves they have, the moral authority to write what they do and influence events as they do. But moral authority? Wisckol has none and proud of it.
“After the talk, two bloggers nearly came to blows and had to be dragged off by other bloggers, but I’ll let someone else tell that story.”
You mean Matt was on his knees in front of Dan?