We have a comment - Anthony Cristofani visits for a second time

A long time ago, back in September of 2007, I read a curious article in the New York Sun where Pete Seeger recanted his love of Communism. In January of 2009, a Mr. Anthony Cristofani posted this comment:

By your definition, the U.S. must be communist: brute thuggery and corruption. And I guess Venezuela, then, is NOT communist. Have you actually read any Marx, Lukacs, Marcuse, Jameson? No? Don't write, then.

Needless to say, I did not agree with Mr. Cristofani's assessment of the USA or of Venezuela. As for his reading list -- I in fact have read Marx, clawing my way through the turgid writing of Capital and the Manifesto. I spent a little time on the web, came up with some interesting history of Mr. Cristofani and posted my reply on January 24th, 2009. A few days ago, he visited again and posted this rebuttal to that post.

Bravo. Excellent demonstration of American hypocrisy and repression. Couldn't have demonstrated it better. Bring up irrelevant personal history of the author (just like Mao's China), and bad fact-checking. More human beings have been killed by the U.S. and the TYRANTS it puts in power (Chile, Indonesia, South Korea--the list is endless) than by communist regimes. BY FAR.

I'd write longer, but unlike you, I have more important venues for publication than a blog for failed writers.

Mr. Cristofani chooses to not debate with logic but to fling a few handfuls of poo and then shamble away into the darkness again. You say "irrelevant personal history of the author" -- I say it is very relevant as it shows the true nature of your character that you would ever consider such an action, let alone carry it out. You are a typical trust-fund baby who grew up not really having to think critically and you believe that slogging through post-modernism is valid academic work. Like I said in my previous post (accompanied with very clear documentation), your zenith was fifteen years ago, get over it. The fact that at age 33, you are still a student speaks volumes.

Anthony Cristofani -- Research Interests: 20th Century French and German Philosophy, Italian, Critical Theory, The Frankfurt School, Prison Studies, Memoir and Metafiction

Talk about being fit for the workplace. You are useless for anywhere --but-- academia. As for the trust-fund baby comment, your Grandmother's estate was "interesting" enough to be cited in the following casebook: Wills, Trusts, and Estates (Casebook) by Jesse Dukeminier, Robert H. Sitkoff, James M. Lindgren, and Stanley M. Johanson From page 862: The citation also references your armed robbery and jail time, quoting from this L.A. Times article. Again, character. Martin Luther King was very much into the Content of a Man's Character. You do not have very much. You say:

More human beings have been killed by the U.S. and the TYRANTS it puts in power (Chile, Indonesia, South Korea--the list is endless) than by communist regimes. BY FAR.

My reply -- Bullshit. Show your work. Document your numbers and cite references and they had better be valid verifiable sources, not some weekly newspaper catering to some special wing of the intellectually bereft. I am not saying that the U.S.A. didn't fuck up big in a number of foreign policy maneuvers -- look at the help Robert Mugabe got from Jimmy Carter and also Carter's promotion of Arafat all the while Arafat was looting the Palestinian people but to say that we are worse is inane. At our darkest, we do not begin to approach the 100,000,000 deaths that can be directly traced to Communist control. Even poor old Pete Seeger sees this now. Your closing comment was priceless:

I'd write longer, but unlike you, I have more important venues for publication than a blog for failed writers.

First of all, I have publicly stated that I am not a writer. The two main camps of blogging are the Linkers and the Thinkers. Back in December of 2006 I identified myself as being firmly in the Linker camp. That being said, where are your writings Anthony? Hmmmm??? The North Coast Journal article on your conviction for armed robbery and your three years in prison said that you spent your time:

Anthony ended up doing three years in prison for the crime, spending his time writing a novel, learning French and studying poetry.

So where is your novel Anthony? It isn't at Amazon. Not at Lulu. I googled your name (only 99 hits) and got a lot of references to your MySpace page and your Band as well as your LinkedIn entry and your FaceBook entry. Even a couple references to this blog (heh!). I did find a few poems -- here, here and here, a short story and a comment to another story. But no novel and certainly not a prodigious output for someone who presents themself as a writer. The writer Robert Anson Heinlein once said the following:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects"

I have personally done sixteen of the twenty one, not just know how to do it but I have done it. How about you? Mr. Cristofani, you are a pale maquette of a human being.