Welcome To Iconoclasms: How My Page Works
policy statements, substance, and style
Welcome to Iconoclasms, everyone.
I’m just getting started here. I’m an inveterate comment writer, but it hasn’t been easy for me to face a blank page. I work much faster with a prompt.
I’ve decided to finesse that problem by occasionally importing selections from my archived record of comments here and elsewhere, which is extensive. That still leaves leaves me with the problem of writing a proper introduction in order to put them into the form of a stand-alone format instead of a comment reply. But I should be able to turn up enough comments that are adaptable to the essay form that I can use them as a framework to make a statement that speaks for itself on a given topic.
As for reader comments on my own entries, at present I’m forbidding them!
I’m not doing this in order to avoid challenges to my posts from readers. To the contrary- I relish the prospect of debate! Just- not yet. I’m a little too into that sort of thing. I need a few months to get my own posts out there first. Once I get into comment exchanges with readers, I’m liable to find myself getting carried away. I can’t afford to be distracted from the task of putting up a core selection of posts on my favored topics of controversy.
And, yes, at some point I might put some of this material on a subscription basis. At present I don’t even feel I have enough up to ask for donations on Patreon, but if all goes as planned, my output will be fairly prolific over the next 3-4 months. I’ve got some editing and shaping up to do, but I’m not lacking for raw material. I have so much that reviewing it will be some doing, in fact. A task that I expect willl often be tedious, but hopefully occasionally entertaining. At best, I’m seeking inspiration from reading through my back pages. I’d like to learn that I no longer have to write every post with the redundant precision of a legal contract, the way I’ve found necessary in online political disputes to the point that it’s become a habit. But I know from long experience that some people are just out to make their opponents wrong over the slightest gaffe, malaprop, or typo. (They’ll skip over twenty valid couterpoints of mine to find one phrase that’s unclear enough for them to twist to suit their side of the argument. And then its gotcha, gotcha, gotcha…)
Anyhow, that’s that’s the way it is. It’s all free, as yet. But if you want to clap back at me, you have to hunt me up in Substack comments- I’m most frequently found on Matt Taibbi’s Racket, Stan Goff’s page Molting, and FreddieDeBoer’s site. Although hopefully I can manage a disciplined semi-hiatus from firing off my broadsides in the comment pages…I’ve noticed that they often have a way of exceeding the text of the original stories I comment on, which has gotten to seem a bit weird, even to me. Don’t be surprised to find some of them showing up in slightly altered and augmented form here in Iconoclasts. Like I said, that’s how I intend to roll.
Also, I’m not great with first drafts. Typos and syntax clarity are a practically intractable problem for me, so it’s my habit to peruse my posts and correct them after posting a first draft. More importantly, I often resort to additions as well as corrections. I’m striving to keep that to a minimum, to obviate a requirement for re-reading. But, this is how I am. As a rule of thumb, readers should give my posts at least one week before viewing them as entirely finished. I’ll try to make note of later revisions. But I can’t promise complete fidelity to that plan. It probably pays to periodically revisit my posts, to find out what else I might have added.
I will promise to make explicit note of any retracted claims, content rescission, or deletion of reference support that I’ve later found to lack credibility. I’ll keep the original version of my own words intact and then note additions and corrections in the update edit. I’ll do my best to avoid any need to make such corrections, but I may find it necessary in some special cases. It hasn’t yet posed a problem, but in the wide world of journalism, it’s been known to happen.