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I was invited to Blue America to talk about how I came to politics and what I’ve done since arriving. In particular, this afternoon I’m going to talk about how I circumvented the establishment and forced myself into the political conversations that are usually closed to the "little people". You know, those of us that pay taxes, suffer under elite misrule and think that little things like declarations of war should be something less than a foregone conclusion. Especially since it’s our kids doing the dying…

Before I get too far along, let me (re)introduce myself.

Describe myself? Well, I don’t know if I can. Shortish and oldish and brownish and mossy… Whoops… Well, that’s a giveaway, isn’t it? I’ve got two kids. And a wife. I’m kind of eccentric (well, I would be if I was rich anyway), a little bit creative and completely intolerant of dishonest right-wing shit specks.

So… How did all of this start? The short answer is local talk radio. One Saturday afternoon, I was cleaning my house and looking for a Yankee broadcast. I couldn’t find it, but I did hear a guy talking about the pros and cons of another Iraq war. He sounded credible (I found out later that he had the only progressive show in the market at the time), but a bunch of ill-informed war-mongers kept calling in. I, on a lark, decided to present a counter-view. I told what I knew of the first Gulf War and how it was trumped up.

A coupla days later, the stereo was tuned to the same station when I turned it on. This time a really compelling and reasonable voice came out of my speakers. I listened for a few minutes, but in short order, I realized that this guy was like a Siren – his tone was seductive, but his content was poison. They went to break and I learned that I was listening to some guy named Bill O’Reilly. I tried calling, but didn’t get through.

Soon, I had a full-blown closet habit. I was calling talk radio throughout the day. In my market, I had several local hosts (all right wing except one), the corrupt Mayor of my city, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Over time, through a process of trial and error, I figured out the best time to call, how to get past the screeners and even learned to speak a pidgin-version of rightwingnuttia. Before long, I was blowing up radio shows fairly regularly.

At about the same time, I discovered Howard Dean and the blogosphere. Tentatively at first, I began posting summaries of my calls at DailyKos. After all, I knew that calling talk radio – hell… listening to talk radio – isn’t something well-balanced people do on a regular basis. It’s geekdom to the extreme. But, whatever… I was waging a propaganda battle and I thought that with 50 million people hearing my calls every week, it might behoove me to get some help.

It turned out that the talk radio diaries were wildly successful. One after another popped to the rec list.

Then I got an email… An employee at Media Matters realized that a significant percentage of the audio they were culling every day involved calls made by yours truly. The Media Matters guy reached down, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, pulled me to Washington DC and held a fundraiser for me. CallingAllWingnuts was born.

There were a few blogospheric explosions that had their epicenter at CAW (some are linked above), but I had no idea that those rumblings would soon become footnotes to this activist’s career.

I guess what happened is that I realized that if I could confront corrupt liars on the radio, I could just as well do the same in person.

Before long I found myself helping to defeat George Allen, John McCain and Virgil Goode. In each case, I took my activism offline and to the source of my objections, to mangle a phrase.

In George Allen’s case, I asked him about his past racism when the media wouldn’t. Then I asked him about allegations of spousal abuse. That got me thrown to the ground by his campaign staff, which, in turn, showed up on all of the news channels.

The John McCain adventure followed the same basic tactic, but was far less successful. Since he made a pious showing at Rick Warren’s faith forum – he claimed his worst moral failure was his behavior in his first marriage – and since I knew that his current marriage is a sham… Well, I decided to ask him about it. He went all deer in the headlights and refused to answer me, but no fireworks popped; in the end I was able to write up a DailyKos and HuffingtonPost story, but it largely blew over.

Virgil Goode was more successful. Since I’m a known quantity in my hometown after the George Allen contretemps, I had the ability to call a press conference that actually drew the local media. At the conference, I disclosed information regarding Goode’s involvement in producing a gay-themed art-house movie. That didn’t sit well with his base; in the end, he lost the election by less than ½ of 1% of the votes cast.

In between all of these efforts came scores and scores of others. Some were exceedingly successful, some were utter failures and most fell somewhere in between. But the lessons I’ve learned can be distilled from the aforementioned three cases.

1) Follow through. Every time I confront any bad guy in person, my knee quivers, my breath quickens and I have to remember something I read in Life’s Little Book of Rules: it doesn’t matter how scared you are, act brave. In the end, nobody will know the difference. Seriously, that silly rule and the idea that I’d hate myself if I missed an opportunity to shape history because I was timid have gotten me through several situations in which my natural inclination would have been to pull a Monty Python and "Run away! Run away!"

2) Persevere. The Allen thing worked. The McCain thing – and at least 20 efforts leading up to McCain – were almost total failures. But activism is a game of opportunity, numbers and commitment. If you play long enough, you are certain to hit one out of the park, even if it’s not intentional (I had no idea that Allen’s thugs would attack me). You simply cannot get discouraged by misses.

3) Enjoy what you are doing; there isn’t likely to be much reward otherwise, at least not at first. Of course, if notoriety, derision and membership in the "untouchable" caste are goals you aspire to, a career in activism will yield these fruits almost immediately. Seriously, there is a sickness in the Democratic Party; we marginalize our activists. Whether we speak of titans like Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, or even, in some cases, Al Gore… or whether we speak of in the trenches folk like Lane Hudson, Mike Rogers or myself… the plain truth is that while Republicans reward their Lucianne Goldbergs, Roger Stones and Rush Limbaughs with lifetime sinecures, establishment Democrats are more likely to regard you as an unserious half-clown. Activism is not the path to take if you want to eat lotsa cocktail weenies with Chuck Schumer.

I’ll be around for an hour or so to chat and answer any questions y’all may have…