The Local Independent

“A thousand thousand slimy things lived on and so did I.”

–The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By Patrick Brodrick

            Like some scarred and tattooed Lazarus back from the pit, forsaken by God, the reports of The Independent’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

            When the TOS [Terms of Service] Warning flashed in red across the top of The Independent last Saturday my first reaction was, “Fuck, I finally crossed that line in the sand and now the chickens have come home to roost.” I immediately contacted the service provider, wordpress.com, inquiring about what part of the site was non-compliant and how could I right my wrong. Unfortunately it took days for me to get a response, and in that time I worked myself into some self-loathing frenzy and, I’m ashamed to admit it, I let the fear’s claws catch hold in my hide and in a moment of weakness I purged The Independent of all my writings.

            I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not proud of, but the five days following my cleansing of The Independent were the first time in my life that I’ve had trouble looking in the mirror. Adding salt to the wound were the e-mails and phone calls from readers.

            “Where’s the blog? I’m so confused,” read one e-mail.

            “Sorry to hear about the blog site, you were a little harsh, but I enjoyed it,” said another. “I like when people push the envelope.”

            I tried to rationalize my decision with arguments that rang hollow to me, sinking me deeper into the pit where the fear rules with an iron fist. People asked who filed the complaint and I gave them my five best guesses.

            “Those guys are scary,” one responded when I offered my list of suspects. “You were pretty brave to do it at all.”

            “They are the cowards,” a friend wrote me. “You had the stones to write what a lot of people are thinking.” 

I’ve been down low before, down so low I could no longer see the light of day and had to spit to see which way it fell so I could tell which way was up, and this was one of those times. Each day as I fell deeper into the pit I could hear the fear sharpening its claws and licking its lips at the prospect of fresh blood.

       “Pick yourself up for Christ sake,” something from deep inside shouted at me. “Are you going to go out like this you spineless ape? Are you going to let these sideways pricks win? Like this? Go down swinging you sorry son of a bitch!

         I started sending frantic e-mails to wordpress explaining what The Independent was; whom I thought filed the complaint and why, but for days I heard nothing. Then on Thursday, Nov. 15, I finally got a response: 

“What I will do is ignore any other complaints about your blog if that will work for you?I will advise anyone that they need to leave a comment on your blog.”–wordpress.com                

         The next thing I did was contact a take-no-prisoners lawyer in Boston that recommended a number of firms that would be more than willing to supply me with a bloodthirsty beast of a lawyer ready to tear the flesh from any thin-skinned officials and their glass-jaw cronies looking to trample my First Amendment rights.

          As I sit here, way past the witching hour, my hands shaking so bad from the adrenaline coursing through my veins I can barely type, I’m tempted to list the names of the people I know in my bones tried their back-alley bullshit to shut The Independent down, but I won’t. I’ll simply bask in the knowledge that if they even have a trace of integrity, I’m pretty sure they don’t, they’ll have to live with the haunting demons of hypocrisy and know that all their talk of the importance of free speech is empty.           

          I almost wrote, “I wonder what it feels like to live with that hypocrisy; how does it feel to not be able to look in the mirror?” But for five days I lived with those feelings and couldn’t stomach it. Those poor bastards will have to live with their demons for a lot longer than that.           

           So to anyone wondering what happened to The Independent, that’s the story in all its vileness.           

           And to those that thought it would be easy to kill The Independent and more importantly what it represents – the truth – I just have one thing to say:           

           “A thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I.”