from Morons Streaking In Goobertown: Sixteen Blogs.
The best and worst of the Buzz Fugazi Screaming From The Basement Blog on MSIGARMY.com
October 16, 2008
(Editor’s Note: Buzz Fugazi continues to be on a leave of absence. With the My Senator Is Great Brodzky poll showing Barack Obama edging ahead of his out of touch opponent, the distinguished Senator from Exxon, we decided to reprint this Buzz response to a query from an ivy league alternative journalism project in 1994).
Introduction: A letter I wrote to a name I couldn’t make out from an alternative journalism project at Cambridge University.
To: Rirb Coura, or whoever…
From: Basement c/o Adnon Kitkuda (Editor’s Note: Though the nickname Buzz goes back to 1975, Buzz used Adnon Kitkuda as an alter ego in the Southern Illinois alternative press from 1989 to 1994).
RE: alternative campus journalism
11/24/1994
Good Samaritan House
Carbondale, IL
Dear University Conversion Project Comrade(s):
I was very pleased and excited to receive your inquiry postcard. The only reason I did not respond sooner is that I hoped to enclose a November ’94 issue of BASEMENT. This proved unrealistic; the new BASEMENT was supposed to be more relevant than ever, but it’s just another bad college try.
As you can see from the enclosed back issues, BASEMENT is—as an editor for a local daily put it—“sort of an ego thing”: cultural catharsis, satire, etc. It’s good for a few snicks, but it’s hardly a speed bump on the fast road to a rigid crypto-fascist theocracy. We won’t be laughing when we get there. We’ll need back issues of BASEMENT to throw in our trashcan fires as we stand disenfranchised in East St. Louis—along with the crackheads—contemplating our thought crimes, begging Quayle for a presidential pardon.
Forgive my hyperbole. Too much newsprint has soaked into my fingers and polluted my brain. Plus, I’ve been a staff resident of this emergency shelter for over a year and I actually get to watch herds of children being escorted on America’s peculiar deathmarch for “the underclass” (or whatever it is we’re supposed to call those who probably won’t belong in the New World Order)…
Anyway, I’m impressed that your outreach efforts extend to obscure characters in minor league cities like Carbondale. I would like to know more about your organization and the kinds of papers you’re hooking up with. The corporate media is doing a suck job of informing the public and we can thank them and our inexperienced, poorly organized selves for all the goofy Gantry-type assholes who are marching to power under the gold (twisted?) cross.
I’ll be relocating to Chicago in a couple of months, gearing up for the ’96 election. I’m interested in joining forces, sharing info and experience with anyone who can help combat the dangerous manipulation of information by Pat Robertson and friends, an arrogant and corrupt circle of elites who hide their disdain for civil liberties and economic justice with carnival evangelism. I hope we can learn from the way the New Right overcame factionalism with money and incessant grassroots networking.
Good ideas that seem politically impossible now may be very feasible after years of concentrated hard work. Let’s get busy. Meanwhile, let’s try to maintain some sense of humor. Go Team, Rah, Rah, Rah.
Don’t Tread On Me.
Adnon Kitkuda
The Buzzsheet 