You know how people are. They can't stand to see you be exactly who you are.

 Six more days. Less than a week. Is it getting dumber? Yes, yes it is.

 I think it's time I do a little more explaining on how I approach the News. For what it's worth, for the Gibberish - this here - I do whatever I damn well please. Anyhow, when picking sources for links, my only rule is if it's a local story, try to use a local link. Otherwise, go nuts. There are a couple of far-right sources I won't mess with because anything useful they might provide will come from someone not skirting libel laws. But as far as it goes, Fox News or The Wall Street Journal is just as good as MSNBC or The Washington Post to make my point, and there's little intrinsic difference in The Daily Beast or Politico.

 I trust you to wade through whatever bias there is because as I've said a number of times before, every news source has a bias and anyone that claims not to is lying. Impartiality is a goal to strive for, sure, but in the real world, it's almost impossible out of stock quotes or box scores. That's just how it is. Even at the very bottom, every news source is a business trying to make rent, so there'll be bias there. And hell, that's probably the strongest bias there is.

 The same goes for partisanship. Back in the day when your average city had half-a-dozen daily publications, most of them wore their partisanship on their sleeves. The election of a particularly controversial official might spawn three or four new rags all by itself. So long as they acknowledge the partisanship - or at least wear it close enough to their sleeve that it makes no difference - I have no problem with it. Again, I trust my readers to be able to see past the partisanship. News doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not like the speed of light.

 By that same token, I don't put much stock in names. When I was a baby journalist, sure, there were reporters I took far too seriously. And, sure, there are folks I like to read because they're good writers. But most of the journalists I follow because of the beat they're on, like David Neiwert on white nationalism or Greg Palast on voting rights. The rest? Well, your heroes will always, always let you down usually through no fault of their own, just because they're human. I mean, I admit to my admiration of Hunter Thompson's skill as a wordsmith and the way he approached the job, but I know enough to not take him too seriously.

 Now, I said all that to say all this. The big kerfuffle on Twitter today - or one of them anyway - was the split between Glenn Greenwald and the publication he helped to found, The Intercept. Apparently, it's over the mag's disinclination to take the Hunter Biden laptop pseudo-story as given while like the overall narrative that sometimes the big-time media's selectiveness in what it chooses to cover is to the detriment of the public. Here's The Intercept's take and since I can't find Greenwald's take, here's one from fellow traveler Matt Taibbi.

 Before we get too deep in the weeds here, I have to say I really don't give much of a shit about Glenn Greenwald. He's won a Pulitzer, good for him. I read his blog back during the Iraq War days on a fairly regular basis and he was good on that beat. I cooled towards him as the decade wore on, mainly because he had such a hard-on for Ron Paul, a man I've considered a pseudo-fascist con man and just another political dirtbag for going on 20 years. If that upsets you, tough titty, it's not up for debate.

 I dropped out of things halfway through the Obama administration, so by the time I got back to politics in general and Twitter in specific, around 2016 or so, Greenwald for all intents and purposes seems to have morphed completely into a tweet-feud champion. I think the first time he drifted back across my radar was his first appearance on Tucker Carlson's show. Carlson is not only a complete joke and a rotten human being, he's a white supremacist in the "lapdog for billionaires" mode. It was said Greenwald only went on his show because no one else would take him, but that doesn't speak highly. Again, this is not up for debate, and you're welcome to cry more about it.

 So I am obviously not "unbiased" about this and I'm not claiming to be. But I'm not expressing the outright glee a lot of folks on Twitter are at this news. Again, I really don't think the particulars are important much less interesting, the whos and the whats. What I do think is worth discussing is Greenwald's claim he's being censored, and that is incredibly stupid.

 What he's being is "edited" and that's part of the gig. It's being said he had a clause that no one could edit his stuff and that is, well, fucking stupid and disastrous for a writer. Really, for any creative endeavor, not having someone in the process with the swing to say "hey, let's think about this first" runs the danger of choking to death on the smell of your own farts. Doug Sahm's best music was made when Jerry Wexler was at the helm, for example.

 I won't lie, when I was a baby journalist I hated being edited for content. Especially when I wasn't involved in the process, it used to drive me nuts. But the older and wiser Matt understands that having an editor helps make things better and more focused. God knows, this stuff tends to ramble on and would probably be better with someone reading behind me.

 If that's true, though, it's pretty sad as Greenwald is 53. Furthermore, any claims of him being "censored" when by all appearances he quit on his own does little more than damage actual claims of real censorship, like when a state government prohibits its staff from talking about climate change or the federal government makes demands on Voice of America to pump up the Trump Administration.

 Best I can gather, Glenn wasn't forced out. He quit and the folks at The Intercept told him not to let the door hit him in the ass. Sort of like when Bari Weiss quit The New York Times op-ed staff in a huff, no one was all that bothered she wouldn't be in the office Monday morning. There's undoubtedly a lot of office politics going on here that's finally bubbling up, but I don't think it's really important and I really don't care.

 What this all boils down to is whatever censorship is, it is emphatically not "people disagreeing with you." Because you decide to quit a gig that won't let you do whatever the hell you want without any criticism, it doesn't mean you were "forced out." And people who disagree with aren't necessarily doing it because they're "neoliberal shills," they may simply think you've shat the bed once too often to be taken seriously anymore. Just how it goes, buckaroo.

 That's all of that, I think. Billy Joe Shaver died this week and that's a bummer. Johnny Bush died last week and that's a bummer. Otis is going through his nightly freak out and it's making my blood pressure spike. Where it goes from there, nobody knows.