OLD TIMERS (Part One)

From my hard drive ^ | 6/3/2013 | By Laz A. Mataz

[oldsalt]

I originally found FR while still reading posts in a group that was originally on Prodigy...anyone remember that group?

I was on the old Prodigy Whitewater board for a long time and came over to Free Republic in Oct 98.

I've never been much of a poster,but I tend to comment a lot on things that interest me.

All I know is that I'm a lot older than I used to be!!

[basil]

Great! Still going strong here—still grieving over the death of Doctor Raoul, though.

Most of my time is still taken up with Second Amendment Sisters. We had a “Ladies Learn to Shoot” class this weekend here in TX—had about 30 women take the class. That’s always a lot of fun!

[Lurker]

Who you calling an “old timer”, punk? LOL

Still alive and kicking.

[redhead]

WOOT!! I’m an OLD-TIMER!! (wait...is that good?)

[redhead]

Read down the list, and started saying what I knew about the names on there: Gone but not forgotten, Banned, not posting, still pissing people off, bad-boy, etc. It’s amazing how many freepers have come and gone. Big family!!

[Wonder Warthog]

Still here. Still kickin’ and bitchin’.

[BubbaJunebug]

Just found this from ‘99

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/pf/p-j111299.html

Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com

November 12, 1999

CORPORATE LIBERALS TARGET CONSERVATIVE WEB SITE

If ever there was a case of Corporate America versus the Little Guy, it is the lawsuit initiated by two media giants, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, against the populist-conservative website known as Free Republic.

INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON

In this corner is Jim Robinson, a Vietnam vet and retired software executive who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy around 1976. But that didn’t stop him from creating a software company, ProtoSource, that was soon bringing in over $2 million a year. Yet it seemed the Fates were determined to give Robinson a hard time: by 1996, the disease had progressed to the point where he could no longer work. To make matters much worse, his wife suffered a severe stroke: her left side was completely paralyzed, and she was unable to work. It was then that the board of directors of his company, ProtoSource, asked him to step down as chairman and chief executive officer. When his one-year consultancy contract ran out, the new regime informed him that it would not be renewed. It wouldn’t be the first time a creator and founder had been betrayed by his own creation – but Jim Robinson is a hard man to keep down.

YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN

Muscular dystrophy hadn’t felled him, and neither would this: he picked himself up off the floor and started Electronic Orchard, which marketed accounting software systems for agribusiness. In 1991, Robinson began to become interested in politics, and this naturally melded with his computer skills: he started posting articles and comments on the electronic bulletin boards maintained by Prodigy, and various Usenet groups, and in particular was active on the “Prodigy Whitewater News” board. In spite of officious attempts by the Clintonian yuppies at Prodigy to censor commentary, a group of conservatives began to make contact with each other. Some of the board’s habitués began to coalesce around the idea that the Clinton administration was rife with corruption, focusing especially on the scandals involving large contributions to the DNC by the “Lippo Group,” controlled by Indonesia’s wealthy Riady family. A cyber-community began to form around an idea that has since been more than confirmed – that William Jefferson Clinton is the most corrupt President in the history of these United States (yes, even including President Ulysses S. Grant!)

PRODIGY: THE EAST BERLIN OF CYBERSPACE

Robinson and his friends were beginning to chafe under the increasingly severe constraints placed by Prodigy on free discussion of the Whitewater scandal, then exploding onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. To begin with, Prodigy was one of those closed-system dinosaurs, a self-contained centrally-controlled cyber-universe modeled after the corporate entity that had founded it: You had to subscribe, and in return you were given a maze of politically correct “chat rooms,” bulletin boards, and other features. This was all controlled by omnipotent cyber-enforcers, who could silence dissidents with the flick of a button, by literally editing out speech deemed un-PC. There was no portal to the Internet. Like the residents of East Berlin at the height of the Cold War, the unhappy prisoners of Prodigy were trapped in a dreary world run by bureaucrats (albeit of the corporate variety), where conservative views were banned as “hate speech” and the colors were strictly earthtones. Conservatives and other dissidents, increasingly frustrated by growing online constraints, dreamed of making a break for freedom. Until the day the Wall came down . . .

[EternalVigilance]

Coteblanche did pass away, yes. She ran the Belvedere Room poetry thread here for several years. One of the best people to ever walk the planet. RIP.

[MSSC6644]

Thanks, Laz, for keeping us up to date. I’m still here, and I now have a new project that will keep me busy for a long time. Last week I was sent the letters my mom wrote to my dad when he was in service in WWII. I’m in process of transcribing them so I can share them with my siblings.

I would recommend that if any of you can get a hold of such treasures, don’t put off doing so. I’ve not been so enthralled with the past. The neatest thing is that the letters begin about two months before I was born. I’m a twin, and they were expecting only one. My parents already had three at home, so talk about a surprise!

Anyway, I have work to do now, so I’m going to get back to it. After reading through the list of “old-timers,” it’s obvious that we never know when we might get called home. And I do so want to share these letters with my family.

[The Cajun]

To quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Bring out the dead, bring out the dead."

The Cajun: "I'm not dead yet! I'm not dead yet!!

[woofie]

Please put me in the partly deceased category

[Jeff Head]

I am me, still here, still kicking. God’s speed bro!

[Chickensoup]

class of 98 and reporting in!

[vetvetdoug]

I'm still here but ran out of viagra trying to keep up with you.

[Kevmo]

A few years ago, FR changed something in its software. You used to be able to click on your freeper name, look at the URL and it would give you your freeper number. Mine was 1150, and so one of my taglines was something like “If I had signed up 4 days earlier, I’d have a 3 digit Freeper Number”.

One weekend about 5 years ago, I clicked through several hundred freeper pages by changing the freeper number. It was strange to see how many had been “banned or suspended”. And many of the ones who still existed, when you click through to their posts, they were lurking. By my informal accounting, only about 30% of those with freeper numbers less than mine were still freeping.

[Bullish]

I’m still checking in every day.

[ozzymandus]

Still here, even after you told me how much you wanted to stomp my guts out. I believe we both got a time-out for that one.

[KC Burke]

Registered has left.
OWK and one_particular_harbour are banned.

I’m only a fourteener but I was a constant reader in ‘98

[Liberty Valance]

I believe some of these were swept out during the great Conehead
purge of 2008. Last I heard they were in France.

[MileHi]

Still here.

What became of ovrtaxt? I stold my tag from him.