I liked Glenn Greenwald’s reporting and how it’s critical and provides views based on empirical research. I lost a friend over it last fall, my friend thinks I’m sympathetic to white supremacists and the ideology of the right but I was just pointing to Greenwald’s coverage of an issue and that had no shortage on display of name callers, corruption and cancelers. It is sort of amazing to me, after identifying most of my life on the left, that nowadays I’m noticing some left identified groups making no bones about discrimination, name calling and erasure of those deemed undesirable. I’m staggered, weren’t we a moment ago saying that’s the bullshit about the right? Didn’t they get the memo about what side they’re on? Is this what it felt like in different decades when someone told their friends you have to hear Bitches Brew, you have to hear Trout Mask Replica, you have to hear Aphex Twin, you have to hear Grandmaster Flash and they were met with the insinuation they were not advocating significant music.

I liked how Edward Snowden exposed the global surveillance system and put his life at risk in order for people to understand how corrupt governments are including or maybe especially his own. Glenn Greenwald was the journalist he approached all those years ago to make his story public. I like how Greenwald defends Wikipedia’s Julian Assange, the man who unites Obama and McConnell, both desire to jail him for life because he committed the crime of letting you know what evil has been done that you are not supposed to know about. Greenwald’s own journalistic interests stem from growing up viewing Watergate and grasping the fact that his own government was caught manufacturing consent. Isn’t improvisation also part of a journalist’s tool-kit? It was fun the other night when I wondered if a guy like that would agree to an interview with a guy like me and my piddly column in Guelph’s Improvenotes Journal about improvisation. And within 24 hours he replied yes.