Blue Collar Muse

One thing I love about my job is that I get to travel. Over the last couple of months I’ve been in Plains States and Mountain States. One of the prettiest and friendliest places I’ve visited is Denver, CO. Not only are the people great but the Downtown 16th Street Walking Mall and LoDo are fantastic, the capitol is beautiful and the mountains are, of course, exquisite!

Even Denver International Airport (DIA) is cool with its stylized snowcapped mountain peaks and all. One of the best features of DIA, however, is free WiFi at the airport! So far, DIA is the largest airport I’ve found providing that service and all one need do is watch a commercial or two and endure a permanent banner ad. I’ll gladly pony up that price for the ability to work and surf while waiting on my flight. Plus, after the ordeal of TSA screening, it seems somehow proper I should get a reward for being a good boy. But am I really all that good? Opinions seem to vary.

You see, earlier this week, on my way to Montana (also an incredibly beautiful state), I had occasion to again pass through DIA and, as I was packing my laptop, spent some time on the web. While checking email and catching up on some reading, I decided to see what the folks at The Next Right were talking about and that’s when it happened. Evidently I’m not the good boy I thought. Seems I’ve been associating with undesirables, malcontents and rabble-rousers - you know - bloggers! And when I entered http://thenextright.com in the address bar, I got the following message:

Notification

Bad Reputation

Your request to URL “http://thenextright.com/” has been blocked by TrustedSource. The Web reputation score of this URL is 127, which is not allowed by your administrator at this time.
generated 25/Jun/2008:21:17:01 -0600

The Next Right is banned in Denver? Who knew??? I’ll bet Media Matters in Colorado is turning handsprings! I know Ruffini, Dayton and Henke can get a bit testy at times. I know TNR diarists, including myself, surrender to the temptation to engage in a bit of snark on occasion. But “Bad Reputation”? In the first place, TNR hasn’t been around long enough yet to acquire a reputation bad enough to warrant being banned by any source, “Trusted” or otherwise! In the second place, just exactly who is “TrustedSource” and what is their reputation? Who exactly is it that trusts them to tell me who I should trust? Banning TNR isn’t inspiring a lot of trust and confidence in me. Is there a place I can go to ban them?

But the ban set me to wondering. Why was TNR banned. Am I missing something? I thought I was on the inside track with these guys. I joined TNR early and post often. Have I not met Jon Henke personally? Did I not grieve at the treatment Soren received from the powers that be? Do I not abase myself before Ruffini in all things techie? Have I been excluded from a special page at TNR that that all the really cool bloggers get access to? Perhaps they’re selling calendars featuring pictures of the TNR trio brandishing their keyboards in a menacing fashion above the caption “Armed and Dangerous”! Airports do seem to be more security conscious these days! Maybe the guys aren’t wearing shirts in their calendar pics, although Soren as “Mr. June” in a pic like that might actually be enough to warrant a ban (no disrespect intended to the tastes of any current or future Mrs. Soren) .

Of one thing, however, I am absolutely certain. The actual content of the site had nothing, whatsoever, to do with the ban. This is America and no one would think to ban TNR, or any other site, for being a place where folks exercise their 1st Amendment right to free speech. There’s no way being a tolerant repository of a wide variety of ideas, thought and strategy would get a site banned. It’s comforting to know some things are still legal and acceptable, even on the Internet. But that still sheds no light on the reason for the ban.

And what’s with the score of 127? Didn’t government schools teach us high scores were a good thing? For most of us TNR diarists, 127 will likely be the best score we ever get on any test and should be something to be proud of. I’m thinking of having a t-shirt made up saying, “Jon, Patrick, Soren and I scored 127 at DIA!” or maybe “I went to Denver and all I got was banned and this lousy t-shirt!”

In any event, both a few neighbors back home and the parents of a couple of ladies I wooed in my misspent youth have been vindicated. They noted, correctly it would seem, I would likely not amount to much as a direct result of hanging around with the wrong crowd. “A pity!” they told me, “So much potential being wasted!” Who knew that after 35 years spent trying to prove them wrong, I’d be tripped up by hanging around with respectable Washington insiders. I suppose I should have known. I wonder if I’ll get time off for good blogging behavior?

Blue Collar Muse

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