Am I the only one who hears the lumbering steps of the Beast From Buffalo moving in to snatch another quality project from turnaround hell?

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First: I don't see what on earth is "ironic" about the fact that my latest attack on Nick's probably illegal Independent Contractor scheme was picked up by the VV and that I was the last Gawker writer to do an item on the VV. Is some connection being suggested? I do these things a couple times a month and never expect it to get picked up as a news story.

I do it because Nick is unfair. First, I never expected to be anything but an Indy here because I only worked two days a week--though I worked freaking hard. But treating full-timers to that is wrong. Wrong. No matter what Nick's lawyers tell him. And if Nick's lawyers are as woeful at their jobs as the dude he had figuring out what writers were owed each month when I worked there, it is no wonder that he thinks he's on stable legal ground.

But, as Nick pointed out in the Voice comments, I have certainly been railing against his practices since at least December. To Nick, that makes it old news. To me, it means there's a big problem that you can fix with a little money but you refuse to just because you can refuse to.

But here's another idea, Nick. How about you become the good guy? You always asked me to portray Rupert Murdoch as "the roguish pirate" who should be admired on some level, but I worked for him, I met him and his associates: He is an utterly soulless, hopeless, joyless, dessicated corpse. His own children despise him and plot over who'll get what upon his death.

Is that what you want? Your huge empty, lifeless apartment, your bundles and bundles of money, and smugly cheating the people who make your little empire exist because your bad lawyers say you can?

In the first place, you're wrong. Let me not get into it in public, but you are wrong on the law. If anyone takes you to the IRS--and all it takes is one anonymous report--you'll be fried. You think I'm kidding. See if I am.

In the second place, why not just be the good guy? The writers constitute the smallest part of the people you employ. Your tech people get full-time employee status, insurance, and the basic guarantees that any full-time worker in this state and this country is legally afforded. Why not your writers? Because you want to fire them at will? Because you save a few thousand a year on top of the incredible profits that you share with no one?

And when it all goes pear-shaped on you, because you have broken the law, despite what your moron lawyer tells you, what then? Oblivion?

Spend the money. It's nothing to you. STOP BEING A DICK! STOP BEING A DICK!

That is all. Listen for once. You're not Rupert. And God damn you if you want to be. You'll die friendless and paranoid and leaking into your Depends, just like that old slime is doing right now.

Best, Ian

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"scryingtheball says:

It's okay. Defamer is dead, Gawker is rapidly decaying, revealing its celebrity-stalking, obscene, unearned wealth-flaunting preoccupations to be a preserved-in-amber Bush era relic.

Gawker media won't make it to the end of the summer, and the people who work there should unite and quit. Or be powerless and whiney, and ride it out like the kneeling bitches they are.

I also predict, very soon, a tsunami of righteous and vibrating hatred for the 'let them eat cake' crowd of trust fund artistes, tastemakers and cultural vampires who have polluted American urban culture since 911 demolition.

The coin is turning, TRUST."

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I'm just trying to figure you out, other than the fact that you're 24.

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