PAYING WRITERS IS SO OLD-FASHIONED

DIGGING DEEPER

By Ivan G. Goldman

I'm one of many authors on a Website called RedRoom.com. Today the site managers asked us to blog about writing for free, and the activity was, no kidding, somehow tied in with HuffingtonPost.com, a site that doesn't pay bloggers and is mostly a news "aggregator," a term that, when applied to websites, apparently means it's an entity taking stories from everybody without paying for them. I submitted the following blog:

Personally I find that writing for free is both stimulating and rewarding. Being paid for your work is so 1970. So when RedRoom asked me to blog about the subject and even offered me the possibility of relaying my thoughts on the topic to Arianna Huffington, why heck, who could resist an offer like that?

You know, at the end of a long day of writing for free I like nothing better than to gather with other writers on the lawn of mistress Arianna and sing old favorites for her and her guests while they're out there on the front porch sipping mint juleps in the twilight and talking all that talk they like to talk, which is so much kinder and finer than walking the walk, don't you think? She says we're happy to just keep doing what we're doing the way we've been doing it, and who's going to contradict her? Not little old me.

Look, whenever I need a new banjo string or something like that all I have to do is requisition one through channels and in three or four weeks, presto, there it is, delivered to the back door of our adorable little unpainted, ramshackle cabin -- a pre-owned banjo string, thanks to the kindness of strangers. So who needs cash? Not us. We're all completely taken care of, thanks especially to the generosity of our mistress Ms. Huffington. Why just last week I had a complete meal. I still remember it fondly. So when those damn-yankees come around talking union or the Underground Railroad, heck, we don't even listen. We're just happy as clams at a clambake, if you know what I mean.

Sure, I know in the old days writers used to get money for their writing, but then they had to worry about where to put that money and paying taxes and all that complicated stuff we don't have to put up with anymore. We let Arianna handle all the tiresome details, which, thanks to her unselfishness, relieves us of a terrible burden.

After AOL bought her site for $315 million, right away I thought, darn, she won't have time for us anymore. She'll change and start paying us in money like those terrible corporations she despises, and we'll be dealing with tax brackets and all that. But no, she continues to do what's best for us no matter what, and we don't have to figure out capital gains or royalties or adjusted gross income or any of that devilish rigmarole that writers had to worry about in the bad old days. And you know, Ariannna doesn't even like to talk about this subject. She dodges any sort of publicity for her generous policies that are so touching and in keeping with her Grade A Liberal inclinations now that she's no longer running a Republican husband for public office whether he likes it or not.

Also, when we get sick or something she worries about us terribly and sometimes she even blogs about how awful it is that 40 million Americans have no health insurance and stuff, and I almost cry just thinking about her concern. So I'm tremendously pleased to see RedRoom partnered up with Arianna and also very optimistic about getting another complete meal next week.