Learning To TOCC Again

By JIM CASEY
May 20, 2011

I been publishing TOCC.tv, The O’Casey Chronicles, for more than ten years. For most of that time I’ve presented new content on a weekly, or more, basis. The last two years have been the only major hiatus. The publication has been through several evolutions over the years. For awhile, when I had more resources and time to devote, I presented news articles about local happenings as well as editorial content. After this redesign, one more of many, I will be focusing on my editorial column.

I’ve got hundreds of articles in the archives. But, being the hack that I am, as the Internet has changed and browsers have changed and html has changed, much of the older content doesn’t render well anymore. It’s still there, if you find it, you might get bounced around between several Home Page Indexes. As time goes on, I’ll dig a few out and repost them in this latest format – simplified for mobile devices.

It’s an irony and a shame really. This page design is basic and essentially failsafe. If I had just done all those other pages like this from the beginning, the archives would be well organized. But, if you’re an HTML junkie, you know that all them wonderful java scripts and pop-up windows and frames were just too good to pass up!

So, why do I do it? Because I can. You should know, I am not associated with any of the main stream media and never have been. If it ever appears that I’m acting as a “stringer,” it’s their intention, not mine. My intention in presenting TOCC.tv, has been from the very beginning and will continue to be, to offer a more straight forward commentary than you will get from the big guys. My editorial content is my opinion, but it is based on what I believe to be factual. I don’t believe in news for the sake of news. News shouldn’t be entertainment, sadly, that is exactly what it has become in so many publications and shows I see on TV these days.

I also mention that while TOCC content is sometimes mockish, as is the nature of editorializing, TOCC.tv isn’t intended to mock the media in a general sense. When I first started publishing, by one report, I was one of the first fifty-thousand websites of this type. There were only a few online communities, no Face book or Google, “blogs” hadn’t been conceived, and there was certainly no such thing as a “podcast.” Now there are literally millions more or less in this same genre. This is also to say, I posted a good amount of video in the beginning. My vision was, and ultimately still is, for an Internet TV station. That’s exactly what TOCC.tv was for a period of time when no other established TV Stations were on the Internet in any form.

The rest of the reason and story: Our country, and our world, is in the midst of major governmental and social changes, most of which I believe are not good for the independence and autonomy of the individual, or the Constitutional government that made this country successful. There have certainly been mistakes and shameful moments in our history. Never-the-less, our foundation is what has allowed us to move beyond the inequities of before. What is perhaps most shameful, is that we seem to be at the point where those most important values are being traded away for quick fixes that pacify the masses and line the pockets of aristocratic greed – creating new inequities and setting the stage for even more.

And so I publish. For a awhile I carried banner advertising by Google. Then I began seeing that they don’t seem to have any boundaries when it comes to privacy, tracking, and collecting information. So I opted out.

Finally of course, if you at least agree in principle with the TOCC.tv mission, and if you ever come away happy for a good read, by all means follow the button on the navigation bar that says “CONTRIBUTIONS” and drop in a $20 or a $100 every once and awhile.