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Oh wow.
OK, don't be jealous, but one Mr. Peter Getty, it seems, responded to SFist's little ol' post about their new business venture: web-logging for SFGate. Behold:
The decision to disable comments on our first post was terrible, and I was unaware of it until it went up. Someone at sfgate recommended it to Billy, who was entirely new to blogging, and he consented without consulting me. It remains the one and only thing I regret about our blog thus far. Comments will appear on all our future posts, and I welcome them. I haven't yet had time to read all the disparagement we've received thus far, but nothing I've yet encountered has given me any reason to question our motives, the legitimacy of our views or our purpose in sharing them. The Gawker piece, in its completely unwarranted hostility, false presumptions, blatant self-contradictions, and errors of basic spelling and vocabulary, has provided us with an excellent subject for our next post. Your piece comes across as an example of the misguided preconceptions and intellectual laziness (which is not the same thing as stupidity) that I always expected our blog would run into at first. We all say things we regret, and I believe your invocation of a widespread wish for our death will become one of yours. [Eeps! He backhands with a death threat! That, or a vicious booing at the opera like that of Glenn Close at the end of 'Dangerous Liasons'! -- SFist] It'll take us a few more posts to persuade people, but the scorn we've received thus far will, I hope and believe, diminish.
Well. How very patronizing. And defensive.
Anyway, we will fess up to wishing we hadn't told readers that they would want a Getty head on a platter after reading "What the Pool Boy Didn't See." Ignore our clearly hyperbolic headline, dear readers. Without the Gettys and their provincial fame, San Francisco would be Portland 2.0. And we wouldn't have Vanessa. Also, the world would be worse off without a cat lover. So, you know, there's that.
But intellectual laziness? Peter, intellectual laziness would be having an AOL account in 2009. Welcome to the game, guys.
Update: SFAppeal has more on the story, with an explanation of the commenting reversal brouhaha and other "Brights" who shun commentary. Catherine Bigelow at 7x7 chimes in too.
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Gosh Pete, that mighta been ambiguous so let's clarify. We think the world will be a better place when you're dead and in hell. It's nothing personal, and no one will come after you. It's just class warfare and resentment scars we get from having to worry and/or compete for our long-term survival. Try to relate?
How 'bout them Giants, Peter. Hot dogs on me!
I am totally happy with someone who has oodles of inherited wealth not working because it leaves the playing field clear for those who do.
If they can't or won't go out and create jobs for others, it is much better than taking a job from someone who really needed it. The worst thing is when they use their advantages to beat someone who worked there way through San Jose State ourt of a job they do not need and will become bored with in the future.
If he's this butt-hurt over the what SFist and Gawker wrote, I can only imagine his outrage when he gets a load of SFGate commenters.
I can't wait.
boy, a thin-skinned rich guy taking up blogging. the only thing worse i can think of is to blog about him.
...or commenting on it!
my commenting has more to do with this site than the self-promotion efforts of the gettys. that is to say: you brought it here.
Peter, do you now see the wisdom of the advice to never appear in the papers except when born, married, and dead?
wait, the getty's still use aol? wild...
"They have mail!"
Christ. Who cares?
They invaded our blogspace. We wouldn't have paid them no nevermind but they decided to foist their "woe is us" themselves on us.
I, for one, have no problem with wealth, but lazy bums suck. Can't have it both ways. If you're rich and you create jobs,/add value, great. If you want to live a life of leisure, okay, but don't come looking for our approval/blessings (which is what this is really about).
Wait, wait, are these two tools the sons of that hideous petrol woman with all the hair and the guy who like had three illegitimate black babies with the Jamaican airline stewardess or the brother of that guy who got his ear cut off and the other one? The hot actor Getty with the hairlip? I can't keep track of any of these silly Getty people. At least the Trainas don't breed out of control.
I rather enjoy that the ability to comment is being treated like a god-given right.
Well, when the ability to blog is treated as such, why shouldn't the commenters have free reign.
There was a regular feature in the English magazine, the Spectator, where an insipid rich guy wrote a regular column. But they had a counterpoint (each issue) written by a poor guy going through the motions of his life. The concept may sound a little obscene but that juxtaposition was illuminating in a strange way. Maybe because it put the rich guy's commentary in real context by providing the contrasting backdrop of human reality and hardship.
Maybe the City should just tax all smug ironic mockery by the word. Some authors would move to Nevada or Texas, but there would still be enough around they could drop the booze and payroll taxes, hire a dozen police chiefs, and free parking for everyone.
That's covered in the price of your Ritual espresso.
Pfft, you're still going to Ritual? That's so 2004.
I'm embarrassed to say that I gave the Getty boys the benefit of the doubt and presumed that their sorry attempt at blogging was intended to be ironic. Peter's little missive shot out from his circa 1987 AOL account, however, entirely rebuts my ill-conceived presumption.
It's only a matter of a few weeks before the boys walk away in a huff, stammering that the populace of San Francisco is just to intellectually lazy to understand their sophisticated point of view.
yeah, and it's too bad they don't have the resources to start their own blogging platform.
Yeah, a blogger or livejournal account is SO expensive.
The class system is all spelled out here, play your parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY
If he thought the comments posted here were bad, wait til he gets a load of the out of state, liberal baiting buffoons on the SFGate comments.
Get your popcorn ready and pull up a chair, this ought to be highly entertaining.
Can someone fill me in? Exactly why am I supposed to hate these Getty's? i mean besides they are rich?
I have read their blog on SFGate, and several comments on this site as well as a few others, but am admittedly fairly clueless as to who they actually are or why they are so loathed.
Help?
I'll fill you in: There is NO reason to hate them (or, for that matter, any other fellow human being.) Being philanthropists, they're probably decent people in one way or another. But jealous? Fuck yes, like antsy beggar children trying to get their pocket watches and tuppence.
Also, they are the heir to an oil fortune, a very famous one at that, and get loads of face time in local glossies. And one of their relatives is on "Brothers & Sisters," a show I enjoy very much.
Which one? I love Brothers & Sisters.
Mr. Keeling,
Have you lost your damn mind??
More than 48% of the Romani/Sinti people of Europe were killed during the nazi era. Your usage of an outdated, untrue & hurtful stereotype (labelling Romani/Sinti children thieves) does no service to your writing, & is grossly racist. You must think before you post; such sentiments help breed racism.
it's not because they're rich, it's because that's all they're known for. no hate, just "whyyyyy?"
but you can ask yourself why they were given this platform in the first place. could it be that they have the affinity and sense for blogging that would make them a good addition? the evidence suggests otherwise.
and fine, crank up the manu chao and tell me that all humans are equal and they'd be just as good as anybody else, and mean is bad and just because they're rich doesn't mean they don't have something to say.
It's not much of a platform really. Does ANYONE actually read City Brights? I would hide it from the sfgate.com page if I could.
Forget City Brights, does anyone read SF Gate? Of course there's the weekly brilliance that Beth Spotswood writes. But other than that, I rely on the fine folks at sfist to direct me to anything on SF Gate that's worthy of my time.
SFGate ranks 39th among news sites (according to Alexa's most recent rankings), putting it ahead of the NY Post, Chicago Tribune and AJC sites, but behind Drudge, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the pan-city Examiner site.
SFist, unfortunately, is still outpaced by a Jovian margin by SFGate. Hey, maybe they can lure Spotswood over here to boost page views! She can have a weekly column about where they make the best Shirley Temples.
Wait, what's this post about? Oh right, rich heirs who blog. Fuck those guys.
Blog posts like this have me thinking "sfist - that's so 2007".
Off to streetsblog... home of witticism like...
"How about also giving Mayor Newsom a Translink card so that we could see if he actually ever does ride Muni?"
In response to "Plan Would Track SFPD Officers on Muni Using Translink Cards"
Intellectual Laziness can be a good thing. For instance I prefer not to lie, it's to much work.
You have to think of the lie
You have to tell the lie
You have to remember who you told the lie to
You have to remember the lie
You have to figure out who they might tell the lie to
You have to deal with all the BS when it's eventually found out.
Way to much work,
Laziness, intellectual or otherwise can be a virtue.
Peter also graciously -- and looooongly -- responded to our post at SFBG:
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/06/omg_this_is_horrifying.html#comment-231528
I think he has a new line of work! But he needs to go through "pithy" training.
Okay that just takes the cake. And by cake I mean that stuff Marie Antoinette suggested we peasants try.
Tell me he did not say this:
"Know what happens when you courageous, spiritually evolved heroes actually meets us? About 75% immediately start fawning. It's disgusting."
Klassy!
Ah, my old friend "defensive." It's so easy to trot out against any remotely civil statement. It suggests that someone has conceded defeat, and to deny that you're being defensive appears defensive. I try to avoid it myself, because it's--wait for it--intellectually lazy. Perhaps you're referring to my explanation of why our first post didn't allow commments. Although that doesn't really seem to be what you meant to express, I'll allow it. Don't want to appear "defensive," after all. Then again, my tone was (and in this you are correct) patronizing. Of course, their definitions make it impossible for a statement to be simultaneously defensive and patronizing, so I could have used it to accuse you of cognitive dissonance or some such thing, but I play fair. Hard, but fair. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but I suggest that in the future you phrase your criticisms more carefully. The patronizing tone you spotted was quite deliberate, and you helpfully put my cruelest twist of the knife in blocks letters. I'm sorry, but you exposed your queen by employing such hyperbole, and I wanted to make the apology I have enough respect for you to know you'd make as painful as possible. I have absolutely no clue what the comments you inserted after it meant, but I'm assuming you mean to suggest the sentence reflected poorly on me, and I interpret that as a further indication of the painfulness of your apology.
How keeping the same email address I've had since 1992 is intellectually lazy, I competely fail to see. Your intellectual laziness (okay; that phrase is now officially overused by me, and there will be a two month moratorium on it starting now) took the form of piling on what you took to be an easy target and falling prey to conformism. A whole lot of people took it for grantecd that they could show us up. If accepting us is too much to ask, we will make you respect us. Yes, I said it.j
If I might address a few of the comments...
DJ: Of course I recognized it as hyperbole. I think there have been four or five calls for our death that I've come across in blogs and comments, I take none of them seriously. What I spotted was an opportunity to fire back at someone who had fired at me. And you want me to relate now? Gee; since our attempt merely to explain ourselves were met with calls for revolution two days ago, I'd call that progress.
Lisa: "Butt-hurt," huh? That your own creation? If you guys were hurting me, if I were realy so pampered and lazy, if I were so thin-skinned, I wouldn't come back to demonstrate how easy it is to expose your cowardice and hypocrisy. I'm ITCHING for those comments.
Katy: You in the papers much? Because if I am, I'm competely unaware of it. I don't care one way or another.
Slee: Your blogspace, huh? We get to blog too. Sorry. If you interpreted our post as self-pitying, it could only have been through a deliberate misreading. And who told you we don't create jobs? We could have written bios about what wonderful people we are, but somehow I don't think people would have liked that, either.
Oola: So they deliberately chose something "insipid" written by a rich person? Wow; that sounds fair.
WS: It's the worldwide web, in case you forgot. We move to another city, we're still able to expose your stupidity. All you have to do is put it there on the web. Incidentally; we both argue for higher taxes on the wealthy, and although I can't speak for Billy on the matter, I believe the estate tax should be 100%.
Be: I'll give you a lot more to be embarrassed about. And does anyone here actually understand what the word "ironic" means?
Loose: You're supposed to hate us because the more attention we're paid (around here and in LA, anyway) the cooler and braver you must somehow be to do so. You don't let the herd determine your thinking; good for you.
Brock: I don't know that I'd call myself a "philanthropist," but I salute you too for daring not to hate us.
Manys: At least you don't pretend to have insights into our minds. I'm sorry you don't like the blog so far, but sheesh; it's one post old...
Marke: Pithy is great if you don't really have anything to say, but I've got a lot to respond to all of a sudden, and although I strongly believe in economy of language, I try not to oversimplify subjects.
Oh; and Lisa (again): Sorry. You fail to appreciate the superficiality of your desperate longing to feel superior to us. In case it never occurred to you, people have enjoyed saying mean things about us long before the blog appeared, and now and then we actually meet them. Suddenly they're explaining how we've misunderstood what they meant by "the Gettys should be killed," they're telling us where to find them if we're ever in the neighborhood, they find us such wonderful people, etc. For the conformists, loathing can turn into fawning in an instant. Bet you didn't even know that, did you?
lulz.
lulz? Okay; I give up. What's it mean?
It's nothing, really; just a silly internet-y thing. Looking back, a careless remark on my end. Anyway, I wish you well and peace, Peter.
Everyone else, let's ease up on this now.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Lulz
I don't know what's going on here but it sure looks exciting.
Mr. Getty et al.,
Do yourself a huge favour & brush up on some of the more common internet memes in current usage, e.g.: lulz, "the internet;serious business (intarwebz ar serious bizniz[lolcat version]), lolcats, butt hurt, hurrr, wharglbargle etc.
Understanding these will help you to determine the intent, & outlook of a poster that addresses you.
If you don't have a thick skin, order one post-haste -- a necessity when interacting with the great unwashed digital masses. Remember that anonymity breeds sociopathy (in commenting behaviour).
Above all else, stop acting so precious. It is unbecoming in a male, especially one aged more than eight years.
Best of luck in the jungle of the internet, red in tooth and claw (keyboard).
What a fascinating list of things you don't have to care about.
That was all thoughtful and articulate. You might win us over yet.
Also... could you maybe float me fifty bucks til, like, Wednesday?
Holy ravioli
Today Catherine Bigelow over at 7x7 linked to PG's music blog on mog.com. I had a good giggle over the fact that, apparently, he isn't above wishing death on people himself, especially if they don't share his love of cigarettes:
http://mog.com/zarpex/blog/1213459
I invented butthurt!
What do I win?
Lulz: Uh... Do you seriously want me to accept that you're stupid enough to believe that "drop dead" actually means wanting someone to die? If people have been going through everything they could find in my writing in an effort to make it appear as if I'm a liar or a hypocrite, and this is the best they could come up with, I raise my fist in triumph. I actually just raised my fist in triumph, by the way, whereas I'm supremely confident that you did not, in fact, "giggle" when you read that. Perhaps the expression "get lost" means you really wish a person to go missing, too. If anyone by the name of Self-Righteous Nitwit asks for a retraction, I'll extend it. But I actually would be giggling. You're going to have to do a LOT better than that.
Lisa: You win a clean slate. Brock is right; I should ease up.
Lulz: Uh... Do you seriously want me to accept that you're stupid enough to believe for one moment that "drop dead" actually means wanting someone to die? If people have been going through everything they could find in my writing in an effort to make it appear as if I'm a liar or a hypocrite, and this is the best they could come up with, I raise my fist in triumph. I actually just raised my fist in triumph, by the way, whereas I'm supremely confident that you did not, in fact, "giggle" when you read that. Perhaps the expression "get lost" means you really wish a person to go missing, too. If anyone by the name of Self-Righteous Nitwit asks for a retraction, I'll extend it. But I actually would be giggling. You're going to have to do a LOT better than that.
Lisa: You win a clean slate. Brock is right; I should ease up.
Revealing anything about a registered user's email address -- even just the ISP -- doesn't seem like a wise thing. That was discouraging to see, Brock.
Who else already considers this entire story a fascinating study in class division and social media? Peter, Brock, if this things continues to spin further out of control I think it important that someone be around to document it all and release a film that puts that craigslist movie from a few years ago to shame.
Peter, I can be hired for a small yearly sum of 100K to make sure everything important gets included. Brock I assume will be willing to cover writing duties at a pro bono rate provided trips to St. Tropez and Paris are included free of charge.
gentlemen, "carpe dimes!"
Matthew D.
At first I was like huh, then I was all like 'incoming diatribe by bored rich dude' then all the crazies came out and I lol'd then added more butter to my popcorn. I just knew this would get interesting.
Hey Pete, toss me those tix to the luxury box! Just kidding, I would never actually go to a Giants game, let alone eat a hot dog at a Giant's game, that's so low rent.
Fenway franks and Neil Diamond are the only way true socialites roll.
p.s.
It just hit me! Peter looks a lot like Jack Osbourne - Ozzy's son - before he dropped 50lbs and cleaned up a bit.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ylMwl6dK1_g/SYnmb_Wq2VI/AAAAAAAAAJM/mPk6CXW8HtA/s400/jack-osbourne_110603.jpg
well, it's good to see that sfist is still true to form with its hateful inanity. and all along, i thought it was just me!
and i'm really sorry for the rest of you clueless putzeratti who couldn't hear Pete's voice in his blog entry. it made it extra special for those of us who could.
Well, if not knowing "Pete" personally makes us "clueless putzeratti," then count me in, because I have no idea what the man's voice sounds like. Me or 99.99999% of the rest of the people who read the piece.
Absolutely. I, for one, can't imagine a better moment for someone to debut a blog centred on an obsessively reiterated theme of ambivalence about great wealth.
ORLLY?
RobinSF: Good times never seemed so good.
I've been inclined to believe they never would.
more butter on that popcorn please!
-MD
so good, so good, so good!
: )
Peter Getty, do you, your family name, but most importantly readers everywhere a huge favor and just STOP WRITING. Your blog post was so embarassing, I would feel sorry for you except you have no excuses to have posted that ... it really goes to show how provincial, dim-witted, and arrogant you are. Your writing and I'm sure you in person are fricking insufferable. Just stop, please.
I can cook better hot-dogs at home? Is that supposed to be a meaningful or interesting observation? Jesus.
So much of "City Brights" reads like something from "Who Cares?" magazine to begin with...I would think the Gettys have enough money and interests in other things to give not even a tinker's cuss for what a few commenters said that didn't worship their blogs as God's Word.
In a related story, Paris Hilton is still running around naked sucking on anything that lands in front of her.
At least Peter has the social grace to keep his peter in his pants. Let us all be thankful.
*Amen*
Peter Getty: Not a girl's kind of girl.
We've been bored around here ever since Jen Siebel's internet access was taken away.
So KEEP THE GLORIOUS, THINSKINNED, ACRONYM-LESS, THESAURUS-RACKED COMMENTS COMING, PETER! We loves ya!