Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Saturday, November 19, 2011

OWS -- Occupy HOPE

By John Ballard


This just in...


OccupyThis image represents my support for the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement spawned to stand up against corruption, imbalance of power, and failure of our democracy to represent and help average Americans. On the other hand, as flawed as the system is, I see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive. I still see Obama as the closest thing to �a man on the inside� that we have presently. Obviously, just voting is not enough. We need to use all of our tools to help us achieve our goals and ideals. However, I think idealism and realism need to exist hand in hand. Change is not about one election, one rally, one leader, it is about a constant dedication to progress and a constant push in the right direction. Let�s be the people doing the right thing as outsiders and simultaneously push the insiders to do the right thing for the people. I�m still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image, but feel free to share it and stay tuned�


-Shepard Fairey


Occupy_HOPE-500x753[1]


?LaWeekly story sez



Here we go again. L.A. street artist Shepard Fairey has released a second original design for the Occupy Wall Street movement -- and this time, instead of playing it safe with a wistful scene out of an Angela Davis documentary, he's given his own (in)famous HOPE poster from Obama's first election campaign a rebellious makeover. It uses all the same colors and graphic-design aesthetics as the original. Only difference is, Fairey has replaced President Obama's heavenward gaze with a "V for Vendetta" Guy Fawkes mask -- one of the key props used by Occupy Wall Street protesters.


Across the bottom, the poster reads...


... "Mister President, we HOPE you're on our side" (little passive-aggressive there?), and it's stamped with a "We are the 99 percent" logo.


For one last dose of irony, Fairey recycles the same red-white-and-blue "O" he once used as Obama's first initial into a ring around the "99 percent" slogan.


"I'm still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image," the big-time graffiti artist writes on the blog for his Obey brand. In case you missed it, he's referring to the copyright lawsuit filed against him by the Associated Press for using an AP photographer's Obama portrait as a guide for the HOPE poster.


So either he's scared to get sued by the makers of "V for Vendetta" (doubt it), or he's worried the image still too closely resembles the Obama portrait -- even with the president's facial features swapped out for a creepy anarchist's grin.


Obama himself likely won't be raising a fuss, considering he already threw out the HOPE posters with his last campaign's bathwater, and has been trying desperately to make the OWS kiddies dig him again.




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