Abram Sauer Online

As a weekend editor, Gawker’s Foster Kamer seems to churn out what the audience comes looking for. But when he turns on the indignation, I cannot think of anyone worse on such a large-scale platform. Case in point, his giant fuck-you to the Rage Against the Machine/X-Factor #1 pissing contest in the U.K. (”Rage Against the Machine Bests Simon Cowell’s Pop Music Robots In Sony Pissing Contest“)

Kamer’s ultimate point seems to be that Rage is without grounds to be self-righteous because they share a label (Sony) with X Factor:

“But the problem with so many well-intended efforts is that they’re half way to hell. Who gets the money from this? Sony! Sony gets RATM’s money and money from the records the kid Cowell’s repping. So what’s the point? Revolution, shmevolution. If Rage Against the Machine really cared, they’d just make a new record already and release it independently. Now they’re just old and stumbled into a pissing contest with an 18 year-old pop star that led to them checking to see if their globalization-protesting dicks still work.”

Rage’s Tom Morello has said the band will be donating the royalties to Shelter and Youth Music.

Is Foster’s memory so poor that he cannot remember his own charity project of just a few weeks ago? “The Gawker Sarah Palin Slam Book: Bid on This Literary Treasure for Charity.” That involved a bunch of authors and writers signing a copy of Sarah Palin’s memoir and then auctioning it for charity. One signatory was Colum McCann, of whom Foster wrote:

“2009 NBA Fiction Prize winner Collum McCann… wrote: “‘For we must love this poor earth, for we have not seen another…’ Go Obama!” Awesome.”

Foster might be interested to know then that both Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue share an imprint: HarperCollins Canada. “The problem with so many well-intended efforts is that they’re half way to hell.” Indeed.

So does something like this just not compute to Kamer? Or does he not care? Or is his outrage just pitifully manufactured? I don’t know.

Earlier: Gawker’s Palin Problem: Burning Books is Ok Sometimes

UPDATE: Foster responds in a comment, reproduced after the jump:

Oh, Abe. Happy Holidays! Here, I’ll give you everything you wanted this year after the numerous emails you’ve sent in harassment of me: a comment on your blog.

Rage was trying to protest the creation and globalizing of pop music’s hit-making system, in addition to subverting what used to be the suspense of the Christmas #1 single, which for the last four years, has been whatever’s on X-Factor. Unfortunately, Sony’s the biggest part of that system by means of distribution, and they can donate as many royalties as they want, but those royalties are a cut of whatever Sony takes. They’re feeding the machine they’re raging against.

I made it pretty clear that - aside from the fact that it’s been proven bullshit - if people are reading books anywhere, no matter what they are, I suppose that’s better than them not reading books. HarperCollins needs Going Rogue to produce Colum McCann. I’d rather having Colum McCann and Sarah Palin in the world than no Colum McCann and whatever else HarperCollins has. And we donated all the money from the book auction to STC, not just some, or a cut. And I know: this is your moment to chime in about the money the site got from impressions or whatever; I don’t control that. I did everything in my power, and I don’t think I’m making anything worse. You’ll find any way to argue differently, as servicing my needs for a personal troll has become your ultimatum for 2010. To that end: godspeed. There are worse ones I could have, I guess.

Perfect sense, no? I’ll let that cement-hard reasoning stand for itself.

As for the troll part: I would gladly put these comments on the Gawker articles themselves, if my comment privileges had not been turned off.

And Foster, “personal troll?” Don’t flatter yourself. If you bothered, you would find I’ve harassed far more Gawker media writers than yourself.