Sean Parker: My Critics Are Nazis
Since Friday, I have received four emails from Facebook billionaire Sean Parker. His tone was cordial and calm. He asked me to relay his email address and, later, a private message to his neighbors and I did. That must've been his Dr. Jekyll side. In an "epic rant" to Page Six about the same subject, Parker repeatedly compared me and my employer to attack dogs owned by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's genocidal propagandist.
Unlike your average persecution complex, the Silicon Valley variety is not shy with Holocaust metaphors. This is the second time in a month that one of them felt justified drawing a line between criticism from the press to the state-sponsored slaughter of millions.
Parker's rant was prompted by a post we wrote about complaints from his neighbors. They were ticked off that cars were moved without notice, traffic disrupted, and snow plowed into the middle of the street in order, they claimed, to install high-speed Internet at his $20 million home in the West Village. Greenwich Village residents typically pay a lot to live in the tony area and thus have a of history of publicly airing complaints about their famous neighbors' misdeeds.
After we reported the story Thursday night, Page Six wrote a similar piece the following afternoon and that's what elicited the elaborate Goebbels parallel:
"Your headline might as well have been from an Onion article, perhaps it should have read: 'Snowplow succeeds in moving snow from one location to another, angers neighbors.' In all seriousness, tell me your real thoughts on Gawker media and their decision to cover this hard hitting scandal in the first place?"
Even though Page Six didn't follow up on the story, he added, "You probably feel as though Nick Denton, with his reputation as a legendary muckraker, a real Bob Woodward type, leaves you no choice but to jump on every scoop that he and his team of misfit mini-me's manage to break at Gawker. If you didn't fast-follow, you'd risk being left in the dust by the frenzied pace with which he and his deranged little elves can churn out under-reported, nonsensical, lowbrow bulls - - t.
"You . . . must feel constant, unrelenting pressure from Denton, that sinister little beast that he is, always nipping at your heels like a tiny obnoxious dog (the kind of dog whose head could only be a fraction the size of Denton's giant oversized pumpkin head). . . Nick Denton is basically Joseph Goebbels' annoying little shitzu (sic).
"You're always going to be less irritating and unfortunately much, much easier to sue since you don't have the luxury of operating your super-villain lair out of some tin pot banana republic like the Cayman Islands. [Gawker recently responded to a suit from Quentin Tarantino claiming the company was based in the Cayman Islands.] When compared to the ferocity of Goebbels' fleet of diminutive attack dogs, Page Six is now the slow, soft, fluffy, methodical and even sometimes — wait for it — accurate NY gossip rag. If Denton is Goebbels' shitzu (sic), then that makes you Murdoch's dobermin (sic) pincher (sic), politely sleeping by the fire for most of the day and only occasionally waking up to bark when the doorbell rings."
Who has time for spellcheck when they are foaming at the mouth, ravaged by the triplicate terrors of wealth, fame, and a multi-million West Village apartment? Parker's previous foray into media criticism lasted 10,000 words.
To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.
[Image via Getty]