By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, DEC. 24, 2012 & BEYOND — ’twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring … nothing.

We shan’t burden you with tales of scandal and corruption. We won’t fill this space with senile  fluff. We won’t shamelessly waste a column to blatantly kiss up to local celebrities to make sure we keep getting free tickets to local events. No. We shall simply wish all of you a Merry, Merry Christmas.

For the 648th time since late September 2010, THE PLANET has been our gift to you. It’s has been free and it shall stay that way. We have resisted selling ad space and/or implementing a subscription model, though we have built up a readership base where several for-profit models would fit.

THE PLANET won’t do that. We aren’t interested in mere money., which, inevitably, have a certain filth factor associated with it.

We Tell the Truth

We want this website and its content to be totally free of all outside influence. We answer to ourselves and love it on our own terms. We tell the truth. We shall continue doing that.

THE PLANET laughs at the various folks, mostly Special Interest types who feel threatened by the truth, who wonder about the source of our funding. We have put up with all sorts of wild rumors about silent partners and secret backers. Fine. We learned long ago that we don’t waste energy upon what we can’t control. They can’t accept that we eat the costs, mostly in time. They can’t align the concept of altruism with their cynical view of democracy. They can’t accept that the impetus to truth would be propelled by its own idealistic fuel. They don’t understand the concept of information as currency.

Pity on them.

The fact is, we have created a site whose popularity continues to grow. We do no advertising or promotion. We rely on word of mouth. One tells two. Two tells four. Four tell eight, and so on. Despite what some so-called “experts” told us, our model has worked exactly according to the business plan we outlined more than two years ago, when we planned this experiment in melding the protocols of professional journalism with the fearless spirit of a Bierce-Mencken type crusader in a package bound by the endlessly and tirelessly energetic photons of cyberspace.

“Controversial?” Yeah, well, so was Jesus

There’s nothing like THE PLANET. That’s our gravitational pull.

We also laugh when someone describes us as “controversial.” We resist that and all other labels. “Controversial” is a code word used by the unimaginatively timid when they refer to that hot commodity, truth. Today, a dear priest friend of mine pointed out that the guy who is the “reason for the season,” Jesus, was, in his day, also called “controversial.” That’s the Jesus the current redneck fundamental evangelical strain that has recently infected Catholicism doesn’t get and conveniently ignores.  That little baby lying in a manger? That’s who he grew up to be: a man of truth who used love as the impetus to radical change.

Jesus upturned the tables of the money changers. He called out the Scribes and Pharisees for what they were: hypocrites. He pointed out how the “high priests” of the day loved to wield their power but didn’t think the laws applied to them. Yes, love is a mighty effective agent, even in politics.

“Controversial?” “Feared?” “Tendentious?” “Destroyer of People?” What a laugh, but okay. It just means we’re in pretty good company. Christians celebrate his birth tomorrow.

Anyway, please have a safe, happy, healthy Christmas and New Year.

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Excelsior! Faber est quisque fortunae suae.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.

LOVE TO ALL.