Adios, motherfuckers

After I talked to Andrew about my writing a farewell post, I started cycling through a series of possible pronunciamientos, essays and strident yowlings. The whole thing just seemed exhausting. And after all, haven’t I had four and a half years to say what I had to say? I’m not an “activist,” not – and this will shock some of the people whom I’ve dealt with over the years – terribly diplomatic. If I didn’t believe that free speech is the most important right we share I sure as hell would not have done this for so long. I don’t really know Andrew but he seems to possess the single most important qualification for the job of running the CPB. Not passion – the Venn diagram you’d draw of that would have a lot of shared shade with arrogance and self-regard – I mean a sustained organizational sense. It’s not sexy, but it’s what gets the job done in a world that, believe me, would really rather you didn’t.

Anyway, in the end I couldn’t come up with a final post that expressed what I felt better than the email I sent to Andrew so I am going to just reproduce it here.

Andrew:

I read your post and liked it, overall. The most important thing you said, and something I’ve said almost since I started the CPB, was that orgs thrive on hand-overs. Once you’ve done something with a high level of demand but increasingly incremental positives, you need to find someone who combines passion and competence to take another run at it. So, we’re going forward. It goes without saying that no one who’s put so much of themselves into something is not going to have some reservations. But things are just ruined by people who let their fear of such reservations do in their willingness to “engage in risky behavior.” For all my faults, and they are legion, that is not a weakness I have.

As you go through the process, remind me of what you need and I’ll get it to you. Keep in mind I’m still trying to find a (fucking) job, but I’ll get you what you need with as much dispatch as possible. Hold the idea of ‘packets’ in mind, though – ask me for a couple things at a time, so my head won’t explode.

Finally, I would like the opportunity to publish a ‘farewell’ post on the CPB once the new and improved platform is up. After that, that will be it for me. Regardless of the fact that I’m not dealing with an inexperienced person, as I have in the past, I do reserve the right to say this: Be responsible with this thing. Jeff Ooi, before he was a Malaysian senator, Ammar Abdulhamid, before he was a Syrian exile and fellow at the Brookings Institution, contacted us before they went in to be interrogated. Omid Sheikhan contacted us pleading for us to find him an attorney, which we did through Shirin Ebadi’s firm.

As much as the mass of blogging men and women have set our fucking teeth on edge more often than not, we love them. We wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

Best,
Curt