Thursday, May 26, 2016

Peter Thiel's creepy apologist: Dilbert creator Scott Adams

Peter Thiel, the greed-is-good cofounder of PayPal and financial Godfather of Facebook, on whose board he sits, was just outed as funding Hulk Hogan's suit against Gawker, which outed Thiel as gay in 2007 to a much wider circle than those he had already informed.
     Print and Internet media are not amused. As the story blew up today, headlines and tweets like the following, abounded:
  • Get ready for a serious chilling effect if billionaire funders begin bankrolling cases against media companies
  • "Thiel’s tactics in going after Gawker are very, very frightening for anybody who believes in freedom of speech"
  • The First Amendment exists precisely to stop people like Peter Thiel 
  • Secretly taking out a website because it was mean to you is "philanthropy."  
  • Thiel is a Trump supporter. He seems to be doing exactly what Trump has said he wishes he could do more w/ the media
  • Wow. Peter Thiel didn’t look for lawsuits to fund, he funded lawyers to look for Gawker victims to file lawsuits.
     So at the end of the day it is gay: 1, gay: zip. (Nick Denton, Gawker's publisher, is also gay.)
     At least, reprehensible as it may have been, Thiel's revenge was within the law. Which brings us to Dilbert Creator Scott Adams' blog post about the Thiel revelation:



     Adams' sinister innuendo doesn't specify legal or illegal means, which is one of the intimidating advantages of making vague threats, isn't it?
     Adams, who frequently lauds Donald Trump though he said in 2015 he wouldn't "endorse" anyone this election, had more to say about making the world a better place by doing whatever he could to "destroy" publications (Salon, Huffpo and Gawker) that he thinks wronged him.
     Here's Keith Olberman ridiculing Thiel's tax evasion scheme, "seasteading," a few years ago.


1 comment:

  1. Gawker has been a rabid dog regarding certain people for reasons I haven't discerned. Let's admit, Gawker is a gossip rag more than it is anything else. There has been little restraint, fairness, or objectivity in gawker.

    And now someone with resources is out to damage them and succeeding. I'm not sad about it myself.

    ReplyDelete

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