Thus Crushing My One True Chance at Lasting Fame

This just in from the folks at Google: The WitList is simply Not Google News Material. Or so they tell me after a long and careful review. Here's their response in its entirety:

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response.

We have reviewed the site http://www.witlist.blogspot.com but cannot include it in Google News at this time. We do not include sites that are written and maintained by a single individual. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.

Regards,
The Google Team

I had suggested, perhaps immoderately, that if they were going to let white supremacist sites like the National Vanguard wade into their pool of news sources, they could surely help calm the waters by including The WitList. I promised not to wear a hood, goose step, or break into "Springtime for Hitler" at cocktail parties. Apparently that was not quite good enough. Though after the outcry over NV (which apparently is staffed by multiple fascists and thus passed muster initially), Google banned hate sites from its news pool.

Then again, maybe it didn't. A search of Google News for "National Vanguard" lead me to the Official Wire, a wingnut site that picked up a story by a National Vanguard author that has more than a whiff of Final Solution about it:

Zundel's Persecution: By Order of the Jews

by Kevin Alfred Strom

RUSSELLVILLE, AR -- (OfficialWire) -- 03/08/05 -- .... Mr. Ernst Zundel, late of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and now of Mannheim prison in Germany... was just shipped in chains to Germany after the most shameful imaginable quasi-legal terrorism and sham proceedings by the governments of the United States and Canada. The Star Chamber has returned to North America. Mr. Zundel's "crime" is that of publicly doubting what Jews say about World War II -- nothing more. All else is pretext.

The "missed immigration hearing" was the Bush-neocon administration's pretext to kidnap him and ship him from his home and hearth and wife into Canada, where he was held in solitary confinement for two years without charge and subjected to a secret trial under a "judge" who once headed the secret police agency which knowingly put him in mortal danger, probably hoping to kill him on orders of its Jewish masters.....

Google Uber Alles, mein komrades?

So in this universe the blog Wonkette, which despite its singular title (the dishy Anne Marie Cox) has an editorial staff, qualifies. Talking Points Memo, the policy-oriented blog written by the less dishy but far more wonkish Joshua Micah Marshall, does not. No matter that Wonkette serves up frothy but forgettable tidbits of Beltway gossip and Marshall's blog took down Trent Lott. Rules is rules.

But pity poor Google. In an age where journalists get paid to serve up fake news and governments serve up fake journalists, where armies of partisan bloggers dig under rocks trying to find (and discredit) stories while print and broadcast reporters regurgitate whatever they've been spoon-fed, Google is out there trying to define "legitimate news." Good fucking luck.

Meanwhile, I guess I've got to hire a staff. That, or be doomed to toil in obscurity, far from the cocktail parties at the Mayflower Hotel and guest spots on Bill Maher. Anybody out there want a job?