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I was hearing recently from a friend about a cat that died, an old, sick cat that had led a long and glorious life in the neighborhood playing, fighting, and just generally hanging with all the local cats. When this cat felt the angel of death knocking on its door, it went out on the front lawn and just lay down to let its body and spirit separate. And within a short time, a dozen neighborhood cats were surrounding it on the lawn – NOT CLOSE, because they didn’t want to get whatever that cat had! – and NOT WATCHING EITHER, because it was a very private event for the dying cat – but just being there, and thinking to themselves, There but for the grace of Cat God go I.
Just so, we gather on this post to watch the last weak gasps of Red County, the OC’s original Republican blog, originally founded by Matt “Jerbal” Cunningham as “OC Blog” and then turned ambitious and national by Chip Hanlon; yes, Chip Hanlon of major SEC fraud fame. Word was that over the past year it was run and/or owned by race-baiting Wall Street servant Congressman Ed Royce, but everyone’s hush-hush about that. I imagine a lot of you-all can fill us in on the rest of the history, and perhaps a small percentage of what you say will be true.
If you click on Red County now, it will still come up, with some fear-mongering Roycean pablum from late July, but it’s not supposed to. The Red County is now in Terri Schiavo land, smiling up vacantly at balloons.
And it leaves a void in the local blogosphere, it really does, leaving, as the biggest county blogs in California’s largest Republican county, THIS here radical Mosh Pit and the sometimes-okay Liberal OC. A couple of disaffected Red County denizens – Chrisses Emami and Nguyen – had already jumped ship and started their “OC Political Blog,” RSS’d at the bottom of this one, which fills us all in on the scintillating intraparty chismes transpiring in a corner of the OCGOP. Well, okay, we occasionally hear things there first that turn out to be important. So we keep an eye on ’em.
Two of our Republican friends are also starting new blogs – disaffected Orange Juicer Geoff Willis has just told me he’s launching a blog called “Thinking Right.” (He would call it that.) I doubt it will have much local news, going by his previous interests, but it will give him a forum to attack his two bete noirs, which are “political correctness run amok” and the Obama administration. And we’ll be sure to link to it once it’s up, so we can all go over there and give him hell like we always did when he was here.
Chip Hanlon, Cynthia Ward, Jerbal.
And finally our pal Cynthia Ward, Ahab of the Galloways but our ally in many other important matters, is starting HER new site, which we expect to be the most interesting. Of all the contributors to Red County, she and Allan Bartlett were the ones of whose writings we least often said, “Now that is one steaming pile of horse manure!”
Now is the time to come forward with all our memories of Red-Faced County. Being the statesman of the OC Blogosphere, I will keep my schadenfreude down. Down, schadenfreude, down! Being a statesman, I won’t bring up the Meg County controversy, friendly Chip’s legal troubles, or ANYTHING about Matt “Blogging doesn’t pay the bills” Cunningham. But the rest of you are not statesman, so … let ‘er rip! I’m going to go pour myself a drink.
I’m sure it’s no accident that you posted a white cat to represent the Red County.
I looked for a while for a bunch of sad cats. I was thinking of my story in the first paragraph. Can’t believe they don’t have multiple sad cats looking like they’re at a wake on a lawn. They have every other kinda cat picture.
Just don’t drive after that drink Vern.
I don’t believe in Karma.
I wrote previously that I had forgiven Chip Hanlon and Matthew Cunningham years ago for being double-dealing political whores. I continue to stay involved in politics because I meet people like Allen Bartlett and others along the way that remind me there are true people out there for the cause.
Hanlon reaped a whirlwind. I sincerely hope that Mr. Hanlon finds God, or at the very least his integrity as a result of his world collapsing. Everyone is redeemable – but I have a really hard time thinking that either Hanlon or Cunningham are.
I learned a lesson – Matthew Cunningham is a step worse than Hanlon. Cunningham has deluded himself in to believing that his political prostitution is the right thing to do and that every position he takes is the right one.
In retrospect, when Hanlon got bought off by Whitman and threw me out of the blog – it was because his house of cards was collapsing and he needed some cash desperately.
Cunningham has no such defense for his behavior at all.
In the end, Matthew Cunningham got off way easier than Chip Hanlon. Hanlon will likely end up in Prison or so financially devastated that he will be on welfare.
Meanwhile, Matthew Cunningham continues to leech $200 an hour off of the first five bull—- that he opposed when it was on the ballot, and the list goes on and on and on.
I learned another lesson – simply telling a couple people when I have a conflict of interest is not enough. I told Hanlon and he misused the information – and for 2 1/2 years since, political opponents throw it in my face, occasionally, I get calls from the media about related issues.
I learned to jealously guard my integrity, because at the end of the day no one can take that away from me unless I let them…
… and this is where Karma comes in. Matthew Cunningham and Chip Hanlon attempted to destroy me and now look where they are. Both exposed, Hanlon destroyed.
… that’s sad.
It’s been painful to watch the Red County wither away. I stopped visiting the site months ago – it became irrelevant, which is very hard to imagine considering all the “interesting” things my buds in the OC GOP have been doing in recent years. I don’t pretend to know the financial part of it, but they must be in dire straits… I do remember the “good old days”, when I first began publishing MY blog and trying to learn from the “big guys”. What I learned was that old saw, “The bigger they are, they harder they fall” is true.
I wish them well.
ocpw does not mean orange county public works. It does mean orange county political whores of which there are two notable ones: the Mater Dei political whore alumnus of the year which is Carlos Bustamante and the Servite political whore alumnus of the year which is Matthew Cunningham
The dynamic duoof Orange County political whores. Tied for Second place is Laura Cunningham and her Prop 8 notoriety and Lorie Galloway and her combined nonprofit organization’s history of deficits and the Galloway bankruptcies and electoral carpetbagging
what a dynamic foursome!!!
And the purpose of maligning to respected institutions of learning which had nothing to do with any of this is …………………………………….. ?
Should Vern be suspect as well – having attended MD.
Argghh! That must be why I’m such a Galloway fan.
Seriously all you people who love to trash the Galloways and their Eli Home, brace yourselves for the truth. This month. No more bullshit.
Note that Allen Bartlett receives high praise from Sgt. York – Allen is another MD grad – should he be suspect as well?
I’m thinking about OC Watcher calling Bustamante, Mr. Jerbal, Mrs. Jerbal, and LoGal, “political whores.” And I have to say that for three out of four of them it is NOT AN ACCURATE DESCRPTION.
Whether you’re making money at it or not, it is never whorish to be doing what you believe in, which in the case of LoGal is helping the poor and abused; in the case of Mrs. Jerbal hating on the gays; and in the case of Carlos getting his dick sucked.
Mr. Jerbal? Making BANK on shilling for a liberal program he once railed against? Okay.
Thank you, Vern, I think..?…frankly I am too sad at the loss of what could have been to be able to say much. Did you know that the original intent of Red County was to hold republicans accountable? Had everyone been able to stay on track that site could have been a game changer in this election. Instead we will scatter in splintered directions, each of us focused on our own little corners of the world.
I fully intend to continue challenging liberals to let their actions match their words, but I promise to also hold Republicans accountable, possibly more so than Dems. In the end I do not follow liberals into battle (often) so it is far more important to see conservatives lead with integrity. And kick their teeth in when they don’t. I have a few folks willing to write with me, stay tuned, we should have something up and running soon, I still have a great deal to say.
Hey pot stirrer, is that name trademarked? Still working on the name for the new site, I like that one. The Golden State Potstirrer?
FFAF?
FF_F – a Bushala franchise corporation.
Not much money in it. None, to be exact.
That’s the thing. I was polite to have my mourning cats in the first paragraph say “There but for the grace of God…” but it’s not really true.
Red County turned into a big money-making operation a long time ago. And as we learn from Cynthia, that’s what’s brought it down – disagreement among the investors.
INVESTORS????????????
This here blog costs me $50 a month to keep on line, and I make a little bit more than that in advertisements. And we are INDESTRUCTIBLE.
I took the reference to be to “Anaheim.” “Amigos al Anaheim” maybe?
There already is an Amigos of Anaheim. Moving on…
“Another Amigos al Anaheim”? That’s 4 “A”s.
Oh, OK — adios.
Vern — can we buy the site, maybe for another couple of bucks, leaving its liabilities with the current owner(s)? It could make for a hilarious parody site.
How do we know that it’s dead dead, though. The domain name is registered through 2014; what keeps them from flipping the switch on any time they want to?
And if Royce has owned it, shouldn’t that have been, um, reported somewhere, say in a statement of assets to Congress?
Greg, I may be mistaken, but I never found evidence that Red County ever went to Ed Royce, despite the many rumors. Quite the contrary, since the blow up seems to be between investors who no longer agree. No details, it just sounded like because they could not move forward as a united group they had to stop the whole thing, which would not be the case if a single entity owned it.
Say what you will about Chip, he has always seemed a gentleman to me, and it is beneath him to disparage the others involved, so we will likely never know the full story. But sold-to-one-owner does not appear to be the death sentence, indeed I suspect it might have kept the patient alive.
I did ask about grabbing (or buying) the name, which is worth its weight in gold, but did not get a very encouraging answer. If someone came up with some serious cash and could get the investors to all agree on terms, maybe? But I lack the resources to make that work, far easier for me to just move on with my own gig. I hope somebody gets to pick it up and run with it someday, if you are interested try contacting them, I just am not in a position to play ball on that level.
I’m sure these Republican investors who can’t agree on anything WILL come to agree to sell the blog real cheap to me and Greg Diamond so we can make it into a parody site.
Not.
Vern, Vern, Vern — these are big Republican investors we’re talking about here! No problem! We use cutouts to hide our identity. We lie about our intentions. Don’t worry, they’re used to it.
Cynthia, have at it… maybe we should franchise it! 😉
It is actually kind of sad to see the demise of Red County from a blogging perspective. While I am no fan of Matt Cunningham I really do think he should be commended on building Red County from the ground up during the infancy of the local blogosphere. Politics and personalities aside, it does take hard work and dedication to start a blog from scratch and create something that has a loyal readership.
Much the same can be said for Mike Lawson at the Liberal OC and Art Pedroza here at the Orange Juice. The heyday of the local blogs was when those three blogs were focused on giving their readers a new take on local politics and giving us all an avenue to have our voices heard.
Blogging used to be fun and interesting then. Now it just seems like a tool to try and settle scores based on petty vendettas. It is just a lot of inside baseball that just isn’t interesting to those looking in from the outside.
Plus when you have a strong viable Red County it gives you a different perspective on politics and in many cases reaffirms your beliefs. As a Democrat it was informative for me to see how those from the other side of the aisle viewed a particular topic. It gave us all a window into the minds of local conservative pundits.
So I won’t be dancing at the demise/death of Red County. The blogosphere was better when it was around. All local blogs really do have Cunningham, Pedroza and Lawson to thank for the blogosphere we have today. They were the pioneers.
Agree with all that. Hats off to our flawed forefathers. Except that nobody would mistake US, Orange Juice 2.0, for what you describe in your third paragraph.
I’m actually quite impressed with OC Political, which I hadn’t expected to be. While I disagree with many of their views, they are doing a good job for the most part. I hope that they avoid the traps that destroyed Red County.
So in terms of time put in at the same blog, who’s the elder of the OC political blogosphere now? Prevatt?
PS to Sean H. Mill:
Thanks Vern!
Whats sad is how you downplay your own contributions to petty vendettas Sean. No one wants to see you dance.
i think that i will buy it, cynthia, wanna come work for me
You better not say yes to willie, woman, after saying no to me!
*As Mark Twain said: The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
You can say that Red County is dust. You can say that Tom Fuente passed away
and is not offering his insight into how it should be run. You can say that Matt and Chris are not being paid and literally have little or no incentive to soldier on. You can say that Mitt Romney is hardly a poster boy for Red County to follow into the breech.
What you can’t say is: There just aren’t enough rich Republicans to make that Tonka Truck go…… No sireee Bob! Whose Bob? Bob is a rich Republican out there that wants to be somebody. His name may not be Bob – but we are betting you folks dancing on the Red County (Red Clownty too) grave….may be a litte better served…..reserving judgment for the time being…until at least after the election. Jumping to conclusions can or will get you every time.