We bring you a book report from WereBear, which she and I first started discussing 3 months ago. The book is: The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, by Joe Conason.
But first, a picture of Bud.
When did the madness start? A book of the middle era.
by WearBear
Mr Conason was a political columnist for twenty years, and was the executive editor of the New York Observer. His book, Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth is from 2003, around when I began getting more politically active… and found this blog. I found it a helpful, and well-written, backwards glimpse of How We Got Here.
This one begins in the Fifties, with words of admiration for historian Rick Perlstein, and a reference to his article in The Baffler. (The Long Con) I’ve read it, and it’s a fascinating account of how direct mail revolutionized Republican fundraising in the Goldwater campaign of 1964. Before that was McCarthy, who was early in the conservative anti-communist movement.
It started with the televangelist mailing lists. People already gullible and far too trusting of authority. The same copywriters were already adept at the tools they used. It appears a seamless transition from fundamentalist Armageddon fundraising and right-wing rabble rousing. But in some ways, it’s a medieval mindset at work in both.
Scaring people with “exaggeration, deception, and fabrication, permeated with racial apprehension and hostility.” The one goal was “to squeeze every penny from their dupes.”
This continues to this day, as a mentor/protégé/poacher/betrayal cycle which continues in front of our eyes. While this introduces Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, that’s only the start of a pattern.
It’s full of astonishing quotes and picturesque turns of phrase, and I enjoyed reading it despite the subject matter. If anyone wants to dip their toes back into the murky water, this book’s deep background has the benefit of distance.
From the publisher’s website:
From the “professional anti-communists” (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the “populist” grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the “prosperity gospel” (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It’s a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have – and they are named in these pages.
In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right’s long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation.
I know Republicans have become very dangerous, but they are also stupid and unwilling to understand cause and effect. Their ego will always persuade them they are incapable of error. Like the analyst who correctly predicted much of Hitler’s behavior,
If this book sounds like too much right now, I suggest The Myth of the Out of Character Crime by Dr. Stanton E. Samenow. Helpful for identifying them in our own lives, as well.
—
Your humble scribe, WereBear, is currently working on a second book about cats, and the first one (The Way of Cats ) got many lovely reviews.
Elizabelle
Ooh, great topic. Thanks werebear.
And I am not going to be the first jackal to misread that was a photo of Baud.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a cat.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: Baud should be that handsome!
No Nym
I remember Conason! I used to read him a lot. Thanks for the reminder. Along these same lines, I found the Netflix documentary Turning Point: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War highly instructive as to how we arrived at this moment. It directly makes the connection between Putin and Big Orange. Also, if you ever get a chance, read Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer about how the Right was manipulated into shifting from “keep the government out of my healthcare” to being against abortion. All the intel is out there, isn’t it?
No Nym
@WaterGirl: I believe Baud is a 6-foot-tall supermodel.
UncleEbeneezer
Mothers of Massive Resistance by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, chronicles how White Women were a huge part of the newsletter production/organizing all over the country. Anger over desegregation of public schools was a pretty major driving factor (surprise, surprise!) though not the only one.
A Ghost to Most
It started with the Southern Strategy, in 1968. St Ronnie of Raygun supercharged it. None of this is new.
WereBear
Consider this below the fold, because the Criminal Mind is the true enemy here. According to Dr. Samenow, criminal behavior arises from “errors in thinking” which results in their ability to use denial (“Kaaaaa-ren, nobody goes to jail unless they want to!” Ray Liotta, Good Fellas) and other coping mechanisms to ridiculous levels, propping up their decisions while never considering how their shortcuts keep getting them in trouble.
Whenever he interviews such recently unmasked miscreants, despite being Pillars of Community/churchgoing figures above reproach, the behavior goes back decades. They were not significantly unmasked before, that’s all. They were able to keep their true character on the down low.
Likewise, Doubting MAGA were could have been people who did not realize they were trapped in a Truman World by their own varied selections of ways to get their news. This is worse than a cult taking over your town. (Clearwater FL) It’s a cult taking over your STATE.
They might be at a sunk costs/double down decision point.
trollhattan
Am 2.something books through the Perlstein tetrology and they’re as emotionally exhausting as they are informative. Doubt he, or anybody credible, will be able to handle the Obama-Trump years to similar detail. Not and live, anyway. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of ‘splainin to do as to how we find ourselves here.
Did learn recently and unrelated to Perlstein, that Ayn Rand dismissed the Birchers as worthless because they were too laser focused [wait, lasers aren’t invented yet!] on anticommunism and not as robustly pro-capitalist. Loonies too loony for the loony.
IMO Bircher “principles” have lasted longer than Rand’s brand of silliness, which puts blatant Republican pro-Kremlinism in a really weird light. They hated Eisenhower, what would they think of Trump?
WereBear
@Elizabelle: Baud and Bud are known for not wearing pants.
It’s easy to get them mixed up.
JoyceH
I’m sure Conason is much more knowledgeable about the lying grifters than I am, but just from my own personal observation. Newt Gingrich was the first office seeker that I was aware of who was deliberately lying for votes, but in the last several decades I’ve noticed new players on the scene. Newt and his contemporaries knew they were lying. But some of our members of Congress now are the people who believed the lies. They’ve bought into the con. To a certain extent they’re now participants and lining their pockets but deep down they believe it.
WereBear
@A Ghost to Most: In the Fifties, this book starts.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I am a cat, and you know it.
trollhattan
@A Ghost to Most: Yup, Reagan dragg…uh, let fundys into the tent. Lucky, lucky us.
Elizabelle
@WereBear: One of them has opposable thumbs. Both are very clever.
We do not even want to discuss faulty litter box use, though.
WereBear
@No Nym: Yes! They were looking for a lever.
schrodingers_cat
From the Indian context, I have seen that lies works if you tell people what they want to hear.
There is a reason why so upper caste Indians are in thrall of Modi, though they should know better. He tells them what they want to hear. Its not all lies, that would be easy to debunk. Its truth laced with exaggerations and some outright lies.
Its pretty much the same reason why Rs have won the white vote.
Hoodie
From what I recall about Maddow’s Ultra podcast, this stuff goes back at least to before WWII. GOP congress members were sending Nazi propaganda received from the German government directly to their constituents. Russian fascists have effectively taken over that role with the current crop of authoritarians.
Melancholy Jaques
Joe Conason is a familiar name, I’m sure I read him, but I cannot recall what, where, or when.
Do these “How We Got Here” books give us any ideas about “How The Fuck We Get Out Of Here?” I’m not saying that to be negative, I really want to know.
Because we can’t do what Republicans did. At some point they realized that as long as they continued to be the racist white supremacy party, they could completely fuck over the average person & the majority of white people would still vote for them. We don’t have anything like that on our side. Our voters can barely stand to look at each other.
No Nym
@Hoodie: Yes, it is a confluence of things in the world, as history always is. I would say it goes back even further.
As to WereBear’s comment about the psychology of it all, I think the criminal mind + the Greed Is Good ethos in America + unresolved racism, misogyny, and xenophobia + individuals unwilling to reflect or hold themselves to any moral position = the pickle we’re in. And by moral I don’t mean church–just a belief in something as simple as the Golden Rule. It’s a toxic brew.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
People believe what they want to believe.
No Nym
@Melancholy Jaques: Yes. The Netflix documentary returned over and over again to the strength of people in the streets. Highly recommend it!
Baud
@No Nym:
Probably right. Direct action isn’t the best way to prevent pain, but may be the best way to come out of it.
rebelsdad
@schrodingers_cat: I think that’s been part of Trump’s electoral success. He’s an inveterate liar but he’ll pick something that is a legitimate issue and then lie about it for his own benefit, e.g. yes the US was paying more for NATO than European countries were and they should’ve stepped up their defense investments, but that doesn’t mean they were taking advantage of us and that we should end NATO.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep and giving them factual information does not usually change their minds.
WereBear
@Melancholy Jaques:
My take is that It has to do with the accelerating lapse of organized religion in the US. In 1813 it was Protestant churches breaking into northern and southern denominations, based on whether they wanted to enshrine slavery into their dogma or not.
It’s the same old thing and it goes back to 3/5 of a person. It’s the Confederacy and we can’t rest until it is rooted out and burned.
It has to be repudiated into the shameful thing it is.
No Nym
@Baud: I don’t think prevention is on the menu any more. People are going to get hurt, no matter what.
Baud
@rebelsdad:
Agree. There’s some fraud in federal spending, but taking a flamethrower to everything doesn’t deal with it. There’s usual some kernel of reality that they cling to to justify whatever they want to do.
Baud
@No Nym:
Right. We passed that point with the election.
No Nym
@WereBear: “It’s the same old thing and it goes back to 3/5 of a person. It’s the Confederacy and we can’t rest until it is rooted out and burned.
It has to be repudiated into the shameful thing it is.”
YES. Also, the belief that women are not fully human that emerged with the major religions, if you want to really do a backbend in time! Each of us, all genders and colors, have to do the internal work of rooting this garbage out of our own psyches. Then it will disappear from the world we live in.
rebelsdad
@WereBear: The only thing Sherman did wrong was stopping with Savannah.
Kelly
Willamette University history prof Seth Cotlar https://bsky.app/profile/sethcotlar.bsky.social is a good follow on this sort of thing. He’s working on a book about the right wing. Posts tidbits as he finds them in the archives. He grew up in what is often called Pennsatucky and has been watching Oregon’s Republicans go nuts from our capital city Salem for a long time so he has a perspective from both coasts.
Jeffro
folks can trace it back to whenever they want, but for me the “hockey stick” curve (only down instead of up) representing the GOP’s descent into madness started with the ascent of Newt Gingrich and the start of Fox News (so, 1994-1996ish)
Gingrich is the one who started using all kinds of vile language towards Democrats, all the time. And Fox, well, they’re the ones who started poisoning Americans’ minds 24/7 while posing as a ‘fair and balanced’ news network.
(Limbaugh went into national syndication in 1988, so you could start there too)
WereBear
@rebelsdad: Agreed.
Kelly
and disregard the rest
Elizabelle
Anticommunism was the Nazis’ big ticket.
Never mind that a lot of Germany was starving and suffering from the draconian Treaty of Versailles reparations; the Bolshevik Revolution and all its horrors and displacement had just happened 16 years before Hitler came to power. Would guess most Europeans were aware of the basic outline of the 1917 Revolution and the years after, and Germany and other advanced nations were teeming with aristocrats and industrialists afraid of a repeat. Recall, Hitler’s failed beer hall putsch, for which he was too lightly punished (!), took place in November 1923.
I have been reading a lot about the Nazis’ rise to power, and fear of communism was rampant. At least as important as the economic devastation, and it stayed a constant through line, even when Germany’s economy improved slightly (prior to the US crash in 1929). Plus, you had a lot of people — even among the early Nazi members and supporters — who did want to see some form of socialism, however light, come to Germany. There was concern for the economic inequality and lack of opportunity for many workers.
So: anticommunism for the rightwingers in the US of A. Communists! — behind every curtain and in every government agency! Stalin. Later, Castro. A whole host of villains.
We have been seeing this for years in all the spit-addled letters to the editor and tetchy comments on news sites. Everything is socialism! Communism! Hailing from the Social Security collecting generation.
Say that, and you do not have to make any good faith arguments or even consider what was being proposed.
No Nym
@Jeffro: That was definitely a crest in the wave. I saw it in my own family. My brother started then on what I now recognize as the road to MAGA, listening to Art Bell and Rush Limbaugh. They are so far past reason, they are incapable of even taking rational positions any more. They have lost inner coherence.
It doesn’t matter where it started, unless you like to think about such things, and I do. It’s here, and we gotta deal with it.
BethanyAnne
If you want to go back further than the 1950s, you could read “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History” by Kurt Andersen. It came out I think during the pandemic, and I really enjoyed it. I have come to believe that the stories we tell ourselves are crucial.
rebelsdad
@Jeffro: Gingrinch is a nasty little imp. I was in high school and remember his antics. Unfortunately I was in my Young Republican era at the time. One thing that snapped me out of it was Michael Savage’s constant labeling of liberalism as a mental disorder. Two generations have been steeped in this rhetoric and now it feels like Rwanda in early 1994 here.
schrodingers_cat
The dying off of the WWII generation has seen rise of the revanchist right globally. I don’t think that’s a coincidence
Just like this country, India RW turn started in the late 80s and early 90s. It has taken them about 30 years to gain complete power.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Intelligent people, however, understand that there is an objective reality that stubbornly refuses to bend to our wants and reshape their thinking in alignment with that objective reality.
There are a lot of not-very-intelligent people in this country.
A LOT.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: I agree.
Recall, Barry Goldwater became the avatar of actual Cold War era conservatives, and he thought the radicals and religious right were nuts. Did he at some point say he would like to kick Jerry Falwell in the ass. Anyway:
― Barry Goldwater
The preachers were never preaching the actual bible. Their god is mammon, with a serious side of segregation and stopping social progress (Blacks! Women! Homosexuals! Any and all icky types and ideas!) in its secular tracks.
Steve LaBonne
It started in 1607. The great majority of white Americans have always refused to understand and acknowledge anything about our history as a white settler country founded on theft, genocide and enslavement. Buried, unacknowledged history will continue to poison everything for as long as this country exists. For truth and reconciliation, truth has to come first.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Communism under leaders like Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot has rivaled Nazism in its cruelty and death toll. Any ideology or person promising easy answers to difficult questions should be questioned.
Jay
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-breaks-alleged-rapistsex-trafficker
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yep. That idea is the basis for the liberal tradition in Western society.
Ironic who you see turning away from it.
Professor Bigfoot
@rebelsdad: Also, “John Brown did nothing wrong.”
No Nym
@Steve LaBonne: “Buried, unacknowledged history will continue to poison everything for as long as this country exists. For truth and reconciliation, truth has to come first.”
100%. We can’t change reality until we face it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: “My Bible is smarter than your ‘scientific method.’”
Elizabelle
@WereBear: I had a Glibertarian/social conservative telling me glowingly maybe 2 years ago how wonderful an institution the Electoral College is. It is the genius of our founding fathers. I was driving, so kept my mouth zipped and just listened.
Besides which, he is the very dear but somewhat whack husband of a friend of mine. He more recently blared at me in early fall neither of them could vote for either of the candidates! He was proud of himself there. His principles!
He works for the feds, and I do wonder how it’s going for him. All ears. I think I may be the last to hear of any inconvenient difficulties, though.
WereBear
@BethanyAnne: oh, I have been wanting to read that!
And I already bought it!
Good reminder.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: And thank you there, because I don’t know much about any of those eras, and they had a terrible body count and distorted social/political order.
WereBear
@BethanyAnne: Got it this month, 2018.
Like I knew it wasn’t finished yet…
Elizabelle
@rebelsdad: Fox as Radio Milles Collines. And all the rightwing wurlitzer, in its ugliness and well-financed reach.
WTFGhost
Hee. With “Conjunction Junction” going through my head, I’ll note, with purely good humor, that “and” fits in there as well, but “because” also works :-). (For me, “stupid and unwilling to understand” plus power = danger.)
TBone
This might seem off topic, but watching this character standing up for herself, on her own two feet of truth, and telling off the “old money” stupid as bricks Mainliners in that day & age in this Philly story gets me every time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Foyle_(film)
Simply amazing, given the context. Gooo Ginger! She talks about sending “her little candidate” into 2020 and 2018.
Soprano2
I was finally motivated to buy your book, Wear Bear. I need help with my kitties, trying to help them get along better and quit thinking it is OK to bite us!
WaterGirl
WereBear, thank you so much for the book report and the guest post!
No Nym
History is so full of models of courage as well as real bastards who deserve what they got. I was enraptured by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States many years ago. It was almost entirely about people who stood up to power when it was required. It was inspiring, and I find myself thinking about it a lot lately.
WereBear
@WTFGhost:
Bolded for “criminal mind” clue. Some of Dr. Samenow’s disguised case studies were bright, even successful. But stupid to be unwilling to learn from their experiences, and happy to ignore warnings.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: It was a group effort. When Bud wakes up I will tell him how helpful he is.
Greg Ferguson
There is a wonderful conversation from a few months ago between Conason and Rick Wilson on this book. They are in complete agreement about these guys, though they approached them from opposite ends of the spectrum. Wilson, who worked the close end, calls them “dogs”, pretty much without exception. It’s on YouTube, and fun.
WereBear
@Soprano2: Thank you! I hope it helps. You can always ask.
Aziz, light!
@Kelly: Cotlar is my go-to guy for insights into right-wing kookery in Oregon. Our politics have an ugly history. Dominated by the KKK in the 20s, then the locus of the most virulent hatred against Japanese-Americans in the 40s.
NotMax
@WTFGhost
A raft of quotes.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
– Søren Kierkegaard
.
“One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.”
– Aldous Huxley
.
“People who are interested in power are not interested in people.”
— John Ward
.
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
– Albert Einstein
.
“The government must be the trustee for the little man because no one else will be. The powerful can usually help themselves — and frequently do.”
– Adlai Stevenson
.
Martin
So, former colleague tells me that PhD admission to STEM programs around the country are down between ⅓ and half – higher in medical/biological/biochemical related programs. Some programs not taking any students because the cut in grant funding means all remaining money needs to go to support existing students. Some of the decline is due to a drop in foreign student applications dating back to the period of the election, some is due to loss of funding meaning programs need to cut back.
WereBear
@Greg Ferguson: All right, I’ll bend my rule and give Wilson a listen.
Conversation with Joe Conason and his book
The Hijacking of Conservatism
https://youtu.be/TeCStjFwwUc?si=cKHcX_bHTas9FZCT
UncleEbeneezer
@trollhattan: Rand’s principles effectively absorbed the Bircher stuff just in different language. As the book I mentioned above Mothers of Massive Resistance, highlighted, Anti-Communism was often the face of the movement but it included all the other stuff. Opposition to school integration, sex-education, multiculturalism, always went hand-in-hand with Anti-Communist messaging. And while Rand rarely explicitly mentioned race, it was always a pretty obvious subtext of her hatred of “takers”, who were basically the layabout/welfare stereotypes that were always applied to Black People.
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: The technical term for this is “eating your seed corn”.
catclub
@BethanyAnne: I am pretty sure many folks here pointed me to “The Authoritarians”. I will repeat the favor.
Elizabelle
@WereBear: Thank you for that link.
I am very interested in this topic, but also cannot stand to marinate in rightwing Republicans.
Could not get into former WaPost editor Martin Baron’s book, because it was how the Post stood up to Trump. While Baron was there. I think he had some nice things to say about Jeff Bezos. But. Trump. Cannot do.
Whereas now with the WaPost and Bezos … bend the knee, bend over. Free markets and liberty!
Elizabelle
@UncleEbeneezer: LOL. I first took that as Rand Paul. Nodding along until hit the “her.”
Melancholy Jaques
@WereBear:
Shameful indeed, but for God’s sake don’t call them deplorable.
More seriously, I’d like to be optimistic about rooting out the Confederacy & its white supremacist creed, but I recall once Tito’s jackboots came off their neck, the people of the former Yugoslavia started gleefully murdering their neighbors for no good reason other than bigotry.
I used to think we outnumbered them, that they were the ebb and we were the flow. Now I think they are going to be running the country for the rest of my life.
John S.
@NotMax:
“It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The sad truth about bigotry is that most bigots either don’t realize that they are bigots, or they convince themselves that their bigotry is perfectly justified.”
– Wayne Gerard Trotman
“Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.”
– Herman Melville
“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Ceci7
@UncleEbeneezer: thanks for the recommendation! Just checked it out from my library (audiobook on Hoopla)
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: Overall or just international students?
TBone
@John S.: Lincoln quote also reiterated by Orwell in Animal Farm. Which is where we are now, except with added Nazis.
WereBear
Don’t worry, she said ironically. They aren’t running the country now.
If they had taken the slow, multi-year road like Hitler, with plenty of bribes first, horrors second…it could have been the end.
Now slightly optimistic, because only an utterly demented bully of a malignant psychopath cruising on expert PR who never listens to anyone would keep making these mistakes.
So he will keep making them..
WTFGhost
@Jeffro: Limbaugh was the person who showed you could be a total, lying, dipstick with a mean streak a mile wide, and people would eat it up with a spoon and demand more.
Gingrich took the Limbaugh show to the political arena, suggesting everyone ape Limbaugh’s (and Gingrich’s) speech patterns. There’s a Democrat [sic] bill? It’s a family destroying, anti-religious bill that harms US workers. There’s a Republican bill? It’s based on sound Christian principles and saves US workers and preserves the traditional family.
Even if the Democratic bill is about renaming a post office, you can call it family destroying, anti-religious, etc.. Do that long enough, and you have two types of folks.
Some folks know it’s all messaging. “So, Trump’s screwing the pooch on air safety – how can we change the attention of the major media? Anyone from Fox call you with some ideas?”
The rest become true believers – they’ve heard the messaging for so long, they really do think you can two trillion out of the government, and not cause a massive, recession.
WTFGhost
@WereBear: agreed. My fear is the damage he will do before flaming out. It may be better to burn than fade away, but not for the people whose home is brought down by the flames.
But he’s stupid, proudly ignorant, and thinks he’d notice if his mental facilities were weakening. (You ever hear someone say something so stupid, you want to grind what they said into the ground like a wasp that just stung you?)
He will make mistakes. I just hope they’re small and localized enough. If he treated bird flu like he treated Covid-19, we could end up in a really deep mess, with another pandemic, and we’d be flying blind.
John S.
@TBone:
The worst part about bigotry is how easily it can take hold. Once you give it purchase, it will grow and spread.
Jeffro
@WTFGhost:
Yup. This is what they do.
BethanyAnne
@WereBear:
Hehe. Time flies. I enjoyed the read. Opened my eyes to several things.
AWOL
For the record, I produced this book and my name is in it. (WG can verify.) It was fun receiving GTC3’s foreword late in production; I had some guffaws copyediting it in a decade of few guffaws.
We’ll have a more topical book out on Musk in a few weeks. We worked our fucking asses off.
sab
Wearbear: how do you make your cat pics look so fuzzy?
ETA Not bad photography fuzzy. Just photographimg furry little guys looking very furryhy fuzzy.
Gretchen
What is Watergirl’s email address? I tried [email protected] and it didn’t work.
WaterGirl
@Gretchen: There are only hyphens in teh address if there is a space in the nym.
John Cole
john-cole
Anne-Laurie
anne-laurie
WaterGirl
watergirl