ABOUT ME: Who or what is Eclectic Miscellanea?
This is my inaugural post. I’ll post about once a day, but most of them will be MUCH shorter than this. I thought if anyone is coming to this site, they might be curious about where the name Eclectic Miscellanea came from, how long I’ve been tweeting online, and why I decided to try out coming out with a site.
Origins. I started my Twitter account in June 2008. At some point, I’m not sure when, I decided to change the name to create a new online identity that family and friends didn’t know about and couldn’t easily find, so that I could speak more openly about political, social, and religious views. Since I am a public employee, this also avoids my comments being associated with them (and vice versa).
Name. The original idea behind the account was to tweet about “random” things. It took me a long time to come up with the name and handle. Everything I wanted was too long at that point for Twitter. I’ve always liked the word “eclectic” and feel like it applies to me in my personal life. I like a wide variety of things that often don’t seem to go together — mindless, silly things on TV and online, and really stupid puns and jokes (now that I’m a dad, I can call them dad jokes), but also reading Chomsky and debates about the big questions of life.
I was also thinking it could be something related to the word miscellaneous. Miscellaneous what? So eventually, I put the two together and did a quick Google search (could have been Yahoo back then, lol) to make sure of the spelling and meaning of the word miscellanea — miscellaneous stuff. So eclectic miscellanea, voilà!
How do you say it?! When I chose it, I had no idea that it would be read on the air anywhere once, much less dozens (hundreds?) of times. People usually know the word eclectic. For miscellanea, it’s the noun form of miscellaneous, so the sc is pronounced like a double s link in science. John Iadarola (from The Damage Report) and Cale Brooks (from Jacobin) pronounce it well, and Malcolm Fleschner (Friday Post Game at TYT) also got it right the first time he read it. A lot of other people don’t know how to pronounce miscellanea, which is understandable since it’s a very uncommon word. So a lot of people usually say either Eclectic Mischellanea (with the sc being like in Italian — Joe Pesci) or just Eclectic.
TYT. I came across The Young Turks accidentally. If I remember correctly, it was in a hotel room in 2016 when I was looking on YouTube for coverage of one of the first presidential debates. I almost went with ABC or CNN, but hadn’t heard of TYT and thought I’d see what it was. I was starting to get disillusioned with MSNBC and Rachel Maddow, and TYT definitely seemed closer to my political views. And Cenk’s fiery rants won me over. At that point, I didn’t even consider myself a progressive yet but since TYT was Home of Progressives, I read up and no longer consider myself a liberal.
My first live read. After months of watching, I finally got up the nerve to send a live tweet to #TYTlive during one of the shows. It fell flat — not a single like. I only tweeted occasionally for a while, for work and personal reasons I didn’t watch regularly. Sometime around December 2017, I became a regular viewer and started live tweeting more often, sometimes getting likes and retweets. The very first time I was read on air though was a cheapy Super Chat I sent. If I remember correctly it was about some idiotic thing Trump had said (which unfortunately is impossible to remember given how idiotic Trump is), so I said that I thought that Trump was “like, a really smart person.” Cenk played the old soundboard clip of Trump saying that. I was so excited to hear my comment read on the air! I never thought that would happen in a million years.
Live tweeting. Shortly afterwards, as I continued live tweeting, I had another tweet read on air. And then another. Eventually, for whatever reason that still baffles me, they started reading my comments on air frequently. The first time John read a comment from me he said, “That’s a cool name.” Then about a week or two later, my tweets were being read so often, John said something along the lines of: Eclectic Miscellanea again, I think I must be under some contractual obligation to read his comments at least one time per show. After a couple of years of live tweets at #TYTlive, then #TDRlive and the members’ site, there’s a pretty good number of viewers from TYT who probably know about me. I’ve had a dozen or so people call me “famous”, which I’m definitely not but which is very nice of them to say. I was able to meet two people at Comic-Con 2019 in person thanks to them knowing about me from Twitter. I now also comment frequently on Weekends (by Jacobin) with Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila. So I went from not watching progressive media and hardly doing anything on Twitter, to being a frequent watcher and live tweeter during a few shows.
Charity. I am a fan of Bart Ehrman, the biblical scholar and best seller author (Jesus, Interrupted and God’s Problem, among many others) who appeared twice on the Colbert Report and in a number of other places. For several years now, he’s run a paid blog, the proceeds of which he gives entirely to charity.
Unlike Dr. Ehrman, I don’t have a degree in anything related to what I write about online, and probably couldn’t get paid subscribers even if I wanted. So instead, I thought — why not do a random website about random things that encourages people to volunteer or donate to progressive causes? With the approval of my boss (wife), I’m going to donate money every month to charity as a way to give to the progressive community, in addition to the volunteer work I do for TYT Army. So hopefully if people like this site, they will check out some of the progressive media or charities on the site and chip in or volunteer. Fingers crossed!
