S.H.A.M.E. Project – First Month Review - By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames

S.H.A.M.E. / June 27, 2012

By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames

The S.H.A.M.E. Project had a great first month that’s exceeded our expectations—and we couldn’t have done it without help from eXiled readers like you. We figured that the first month would be a period of testing out both the material and technology, but what we underestimated was just how big the response would be. Already, of the three major media figures we’ve covered, the biggest name of those three, Malcolm Gladwell, has contacted us and is showing signs of cracking.

Like you, we want these profiles, dossiers and reports to stand up to any and all attacks. Our work is having an effect; the pushback has been fierce at times; and that’s a sign we’re doing something right. Can you help? Contribute using PayPal or WePay…

As we take stock of our first month, we invite you to check out S.H.A.M.E.’s email exchange with Malcolm Gladwell, in which the best-selling author and New Yorker star journalist attempts to get eXiled editor Yasha Levine to “recognize” that shilling for tobacco is a matter of “interpretation.” This is a guy who’s been getting away with murder for decades, and he doesn’t even know how to lie and deflect well—a sorry state for a leading corporate flak to find himself in!

“What did I do to deserve this?”

We’ve only just begun, and we need to be in this for the long haul if we’re ever going to get some of our democratic power back, which can’t happen without clearing some free space in the rotten media world.

We can’t do it without your support—financial, moral, and technical—from upstanding folks like you. So keep your suggestions flowing in, keep sending out the S.H.A.M.E. reports and pushing them around. Let’s make the propagandists’ work a little more difficult, and everyone else’s a little more interesting.

Support S.H.A.M.E. Contribute using PayPal or WePay…

Thank you!

Yasha Levine & Mark Ames

“Inflict & Endure”

shameproject.com

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43 Comments

Add your own

1. Roving Blade | June 27th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
Megan McArdle, please
2. gatorade | June 27th, 2012 at 7:47 pm
shame project rules!
3. Galtic Warrior | June 27th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
You got a couple of Reddit threads, a brow beating by an Illuminati plant and a total email wig-out by Mr. Gladwell-Morris.
What, exactly, have you accomplished?
My girlfriend and I have been selling ourselves on the private sector all night last night, and we accomplished more financially in 5 minutes of backseat action— separately, not together—than SHAME would in FIVE LIFETIMES.
The true measure of someone is how much money they have. And I got $10 bucks for that.
Oh, and you can’t make fun of me for trying to spread the truth about the Illuminati, Mark Ames, because your artlessness attack on Mitt Romney proves that you too believe in “outlandish” conspiracy theories. That was Micheal Ruppert like, and I mean that as a reluctant compliment.
4. jimmyj | June 27th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
I too believe that Megan McArdle deserves a good poke. Then some of those smug bastards at NPR. And I swear to god, soon as I get a job, your next Value Meal is on me.
5. annie | June 28th, 2012 at 4:53 am
any way to disable the video ad’s auto-play action when i get on to the page? it’s very obnoxious and over-loud… not coming back
6. Trevor | June 28th, 2012 at 6:34 am
Did Galtic Warrior just admit to whoring himself and his girlfriend for 10 bucks a pop? ‘Cause I find that more believable than the “girlfriend” part.
7. GMan | June 28th, 2012 at 7:55 am
Fucking brilliant idea and great work so far! I will keep trying to contribute. Try not to forget that racist, chinless slime-ball Andrew Sullivan.
8. DePaul | June 28th, 2012 at 9:27 am
We see you, Jonah and we’re coming for you, you rat bastard tub of goo.
9. Bryce Harper | June 28th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Trevor #6:
That’s just the Gentiles at the EXILED or whatever coitising over Galtic Warrior, who is a dear friend of mine, because they don’t like the points he tried to make about Male Cum Sell Well. Believe me, Galtic Warrior would absolutely sell himself, but he has no girlfriend. He does jack off to old Patricia Neal photos, however.
VOTE MORMON 2012!
STOP ISLAMOFASCIST OBAMACARE!!!
10. radii | June 28th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
can you just do a collective Shrieking Harpy Hos piece?
Coulter, Malkin, Cupp, Ingraham, Hanretty, Kellyanne Conway, Tammy Bruce, etc.
11. Ozinator | June 28th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
#10
going after shills who don’t hide it isn’t the point of SHAME and wouldn’t take any research; It’s going after the pretenders.
But yeah, throwing tubs of goo on the above mentioned is always good for a laugh
12. Masta Patrolla | June 29th, 2012 at 12:31 am
Let loose on Jon Stewart and watch as the Hope and Change liberals who worship his every sound bite cry out in anguish. That would be schadenfreude at its best.
Jeffrey Sachs may be atoning for his SHOCK DOCTRINE sins but he’s still a ripe target for SHAME. Also Penn and Teller deserve some exposure, and the cryptofascist Sam Harris on top of that pretty please.
13. DrunktankDan | June 29th, 2012 at 1:36 am
Thanks to the blessing of the AEC I finally got a fucking job after over a year of applications. I will send Him an earthly donation with my first paycheck. SHAME is the lords work, after all.
Yea, spread the Word…and the fackin dinero, pinchy!
14. Ozinator | June 29th, 2012 at 7:15 am
@12,
Yeah Sam Harris gets a lot of my fellow atheists to bite while all along getting them to join a religion of a different kind. Debating god with theists is like cheering on the US as they attack a defenseless country…hey! Wait!
15. Odikhmantievich | June 29th, 2012 at 8:48 am
#12 is a genius. Knock down some easy targets, but save your best, most humiliating tactics for the Clown Stewards of the world that have somehow risen to idol status among my delusional peers.
16. Bryce Harper | June 29th, 2012 at 9:43 am
Expose these GODLESS COMMUNISTS, but I can’t see them naked (yet):
Ed Schulz
Chris Matthews
Jon Stewart
Nat Hentoff
Melissa Harris-Perry
VOTE MORMON 2012!!!
17. Lec | June 29th, 2012 at 9:47 am
@12 What’s so bad about Jon Stewart? He does great and honest work, a rare commodity in today’s media world.
18. Sylocat | June 29th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
I can’t wait to see Libertarian Glenn Greenwald of the Libertarian Cato Institute get his.
19. Gundar | June 29th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
The next one should be due this evening…
20. Masta Patrolla | June 29th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
#17 Are you fraking kidding me? Stewart is the #1 shill for Obama and his corporate, militarist policies as you can see through his honest criticism of Bush and later his cowardly, hypocritical support of anything Obama does (even if it was the same or worse than Bush), just because the chicken hawks and Teabaggers oppose him.
He is also the one who told the bourgeois liberals to sit down, stay reasonable about all the injustices in America and just poke fun at the funny looking wingnuts when the Tea Party came around to challenge health care reform. Look how that turned out! The idiotic Rally to Restore Sanity was essentially counter-revolutionary, keeping Barry’s boot on any leftist movement and silencing the Left from countering the far-right and “pushing Obama in a progressive direction”, prompting the rise of Occupy, which came a year too late. And look where we are now, defending a GOP proposal for health insurance company welfare as a clear “victory” and reelecting the fucker-in-chief, just because he sucks less. http://exiledonline.com/the-rally-to-restore-vanity-generation-x-celebrates-its-homeric-struggle-against-lameness/
21. Masta Patrolla | June 29th, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Make that 2 years too late. I stand corrected.
22. LuisManaceFrance | June 29th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
The Chicago School managed to capture the intellectual and public policy control of the American and International Financial System.
I think we should expose all of them
23. Flatulissimo | June 29th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Yeah, add me to the chorus of people who’d like to see Stewart’s false-equivalency-pandering-ass get taken down. The Rally to Restore Sanity has to go down as one of the greatest examples of liberal weenie-ing out in the history of liberals being bed wetting pansies, and that’s saying a lot.
24. Doom | June 30th, 2012 at 11:17 am
Yeah, is it any coincidence Stewart’s bullshit “can’t we all be nice to each other” was followed a few days later with the nutcase Tea Party douchebags kicking Democrat ass in the midterms? Being nice and calm doesn’t help out when dealing with lunatics.
25. harvey | July 1st, 2012 at 3:29 am
megan mcardle indeed…fuck her up
26. SHAMU'S DEAD CORPSE | July 1st, 2012 at 4:42 am
mark,
i am shamu. i live at sea world in horrible slavery. it sucks balls here and life is miserable. i have whale boner but no can boink sea cow. found this computer, though, and your site is one of my few whale joys.
except the other day i noticed an advert for sea world on your site, the exiled. that made me feel not so good, and i cried a little bit.
my dorsal fin is all fucked up, mark. my tank is too small and shit sucks. i will attack another trainer soon and maybe they will put me down. i hope i die soon.
mark, please take the advert for sea world down from your site. what they do to us whales, seals and other fucked up sea mammals is the same that apple does to chinese people who eat us in china. please consider.
your friend,
shamu
27. boson | July 1st, 2012 at 7:01 am
beautiful take-downs i have to say.
let’s have some further neoliberal economists skewered, such as Fred Mishkin etc.
let’s face it most of academic economics as such is corporate shilling/propaganda without scientific value and it’d be nice to show on specific examples how it works
i expect to get my salary on monday then i’ll donate some $$ to you guys i promise
28. Nyerd | July 1st, 2012 at 9:39 am
Also worth adding, Jon Stewart interviews aren’t very good, and often are scripted. Stewart hides this with his stammering and naive comedic charm, but it’s clear that his guests impose boundaries and he never challenges them. For the most recent and best example, look up his interview with David Barton, a teabagger revisionist historian, about his book on Thomas Jefferson.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-may-1-2012/exclusive—david-barton-extended-interview-pt–1
Stewart practically gave Barton free publicity. Why even interview him at all? Is this an attempt to get bigger fish by appearing friendly/stupid, and why take the poison pill to get it? And like I said, this isn’t the first example, Stewart has a long and prosperous history of this.
29. Steven Augustine | July 1st, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Whoever in this thread mentions J. Stewart as a normative super-shill with a mandate to pacify-n-distract understands how this shit works: well done.
Now excuse me while I go rent a Sacha Baron Cohen DVD to help me laugh at the rape-murder of Muammar Gaddafi… that funny beard just cracks me up! (weirdly, the movie kinda tanked… is everybody off their meds or something?)
30. Ozinator | July 2nd, 2012 at 2:02 am
@29,
This is a true post worth considering inside defined boundaries– unless you are not Jewish…then I have a big problem with your antisemitism
31. pearl fiddler queen | July 2nd, 2012 at 10:04 am
@30 you really think that “hbo girls” headline in that jewish press vindicated you from charges of antisemitism, don’t you? it didn’t. it was just a headline, nothing in the article went on to substantiate the claim of the show’s jewishness, undermining your defense further. a funny post, nevertheless.
32. Ozinator | July 2nd, 2012 at 5:34 pm
@31
No, Once one Jew hates you, there is no vindication and things only get worse defending yourself. I was just showing how silly you were being. Thanks for liking my act though…do you think I can get it on Broadway or a local comedy club on the planet Earth? Heyo! tip the fish, try the waitress.
33. Flatulissimo | July 3rd, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Ok, I retract any previous suggestions, because I just read the post on Arianna Huffington. BAM! You obviously know what the hell you are doing and shouldn’t solicit the peanut gallery for ideas. That shit is good.
34. pearl fiddler queen | July 4th, 2012 at 9:12 am
O, Ozinator. Where really serious meets the silly, there I am. If i had the stomach to watch an episode of HBO girls, i’m sure what i’d find is something not particularly jewish, but particularly upper class white. and that’s the point i was making. the assumption you made, that something “written by a jew” must somehow be infused with jewishness, especially considering the state of secular jewishness in america. ms dunham, seth rogen, jonathan franzen. GROSS! the tradition’s aborting.
35. Nestore | July 4th, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Mr. Levine. Its about time someone completed a book length expose and mercy killing of the career and reputation of a person who probably, single handedly, did the most damage as koch whore, pop-propagandist and all around Cato institute liar and mouth-defecator, Mr. P.J.Orourke . In hindsight its obvious that orourke was one of the earliest koch, pop- media whore stars. He was responsible for infecting and indoctrinating a very important demographic – white, middle class gen Xer’s. A group who’s own,natural best interest would have lain in re re-radicalizing and picking up the torch dropped by the boomers. In fact, without the massive, combined efforts of the koch and murdoch propaganda empire thats probably the direction they would have been pulled in, simply by economic gravity. Orourke almost single handedly turned a lost generation into libertarian cannibals. I heard he has cancer. I can only hope he is suffering horribly or dead. He work is not intellectualy signifigant but he was prolific and a shameless liar. His rot contains all of the ideological corner stone, feces-adobe bricks of the current neo liberal common wisdom which is rampant in the culture today. He was effective far beyong his talent and ability, and koch/murdoch money amplified his effectiveness even further.
36. Ozinator | July 4th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
My Great Grandmother fled Poland in the early 20th century and some of my relatives suspect she may have been “Jewish” before she married my Great grandfather. All those relatives were raised Catholic and a few of us are atheists. Do I have the right to discuss this?
NO
37. Derek | July 5th, 2012 at 11:32 am
Since there’s no mainpage article about it, thought I’d post here that the Huffington SHAME profile is your best yet.
What an odious creature.
38. Nestore | July 6th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
@36
wha?? huh?!
39. Nestore | July 6th, 2012 at 2:05 pm
@ 3
Can i give you a blowjob for $8.79, i can owe you the $1.21, im good for it. you can charge me 25% interest on it, compounded daily. Be pretty awesome.
40. bevis | July 8th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
hey mark found cool MINISTRY video or something heheh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwrel&v=pWKfXxwmYpQ
41. Nestore | July 10th, 2012 at 12:38 pm
@AEC that works too, but how DARE you suggest that i would participate in that kind cheap Usury
42. the dude | July 11th, 2012 at 12:57 am
Just made my donation, My new wife and I decided it was a good idea to put some of the wedding funds toward keeping the media trolls awake at night. Thanks to Mark and Yasha
The AEC blesses you and your young bride. Let us together bow our heads in prayer: Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni-bezek said: `Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered food under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me.’ Amen.
43. Jim Vail | August 13th, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Congrats on Shame. Great reading on these guys. But Mark, I leave you this email exchange with Chuck Mertz, on This is Hell, the Sat. morning program on WNUR Northwestern radio show. I believe you have been interviewed on it before. It’s pretty good.
I mentioned to him about you’re exposing Glenwald on the Shame list, and he had this to say in response:
Chuck Mertz chuck.mertz@sbcglobal.net, responds to my concern for having Glenn Greenwald as a guest this summer:
Jul 24
“He (Glenn) actually spoke out against Koch and Citizens United so I would doubt this is the case. Being that he also has written extensively about his anti-libertarian views, I wouldn’t put much stock in the other claim either.
However, I’ll email him directly and ask for his response.
There’s a lot of demonizing of Glenn because he is a leading voice on the left who is willing to criticize the current administration, the Democrats and the left.
Often when you’re not a cheerleader, you’re the enemy. I get this kind of criticism myself so I am very aware of it.
Thanks for the question and thoughts!”
THE AEC RESPONDS:
Chuck clearly isn’t reading all the bizarre Glenn Greenwald boosterism for Citizens United, like this:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/30/free_speech_and_donations/
Or this, fighting for Citizens United decision against Kucinich:
http://www.alternet.org/story/145610/dennis_kucinich_vs._glenn_greenwald%3A_is_citizens_united_a_deathblow_for_democracy_or_a_1st_amendment_victory
and so the Koch whoring goes…