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(Photo of McCarthy and Thomas by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid; Loren Feldman and Owen Thomas by Brian Solis; gallery by Noah Robischon)

He's fighting for himself ... It's dishonest and it's wrong. Facebook has a right to earn money. You agree to give them your data. Everybody knew about it going in, and that's not good enough for Robert, because he thinks ... he's above another company's terms of service ... For Robert to wrap it up under the guise of "I'm a freedom fighter for your data" is just completely dishonest.

Here's how Blip.tv's Hope twisted himself into this verbal impasse. In a spat with a viewer offended by Blip.tv's hosting of Feldman's videos, he embarked on a long anticensorship screed to explain why Feldman's 1938 Media would not be booted from the site. The viewer, identified only as "T.", then pointed to a line in Blip's terms of service which reads:

Content that is or may be deemed to be grossly offensive to the online community, including but not limited to, blatant expressions of bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred and profanity.

Hope then suggests this alternative outcome to simply booting Feldman off the site:

... the profound impact of a deeply moving work of art. Loren's video should inspire works which outlive it by decades, which look forward to the future instead of the past, which give us a glimpse of the glorious potential of humankind. Works which send shivers down the spine and trigger paradigm shifts, which children remember the rest of their adult lives.

Furrier had it is easy when PodTech was founded two years ago: any amateur video producer could attract a small but rabid following, no matter how abstruse their subject matter. And funding, likewise, was easily had, no matter how half-baked the business plan. Now, consumers, competitors, and investors are more savvy, and yet the Internet video producers of Silicon Valley, aside from a few success stories like Revision3, have failed to attract big audiences. PodTech's culling of Furrier and Feldman, while wise, comes too late. Investors should refuse to fund such a badly run business which is giving the entire online-video scene a black eye. For the good of the industry, it's time to shake this company out of the mix, in hopes of a richer harvest down the road.

It's particularly painful to watch someone become a vicious cornered little nobody — the kind of cracked-out mess of a man that you see pushing a shopping cart and squalling at strangers — when the victim wasn't that sane to begin with. So it's not fun to write this history of Loren Feldman, who's turned himself from a mildly entertaining jester into the horrible little child you knew in grade school who would grow up beating on younger children to make himself feel powerful.

Feldman made his name in the tech blogging circle by acting out and getting sillier than anyone else dared. I loved one of his early shows, "Jason's Place," in which he parodied self-important entrepreneur Jason Calacanis by wearing a diaper and riding a hobbyhorse:

Months later, Feldman would find himself sucking up to Calacanis, pretending his startup Mahalo is more well-known than Facebook.

Once Feldman had made nice with those he previously mocked, what was left? Feldman turned to the enemies of PodTech, the company he'd mocked in the video above before they became his publisher. I'll admit it got a bit personal when he responded to my articles about the company (I've been a vocal critic of the site) by recording a puppet show with a two-year-old's ass:

But I was at least glad someone was trying to be funny. Unfortunately, Feldman has recently abandoned even this pretense.

This past Friday, Feldman posted a video titled "Where are the Black Tech Bloggers?" In this video, after explaining his question ("I mean black guys love technology. Car stereos, cell phones..."), the white male dressed as a dated caricature of a do-rag-wearing, pot-smoking black gangster hosting a site called "TechNigga."

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This screw-up was particularly ironic for Feldman. A couple of months ago, he had physically threatened Guy Kawasaki, calling the entrepreneur a "stupid motherfucker" for saying he learned about selling from his Jewish friends in the jewelry industry:

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Now Feldman had resorted to offending entire races. The reaction to "TechNigga" was swift and negative. Unfortunately for Feldman, black tech bloggers do exist, such as Lynne Johnson. The Fastcompany.com editor called the video "bad black face."

Feldman has recently been doing work for the Huffington Post; owner Arianna Huffington told Wired writer Adario Strange about "TechNigga," "I found it both offensive and unfunny."

The next day, Feldman posted a seemingly sincere apology to all he had recently offended in this and other videos, including tech bloggers of all races and Valleywag publisher Nick Denton and myself. He announced he would soon enter one-day sensitivity training at a rehab clinic.

But this now looks like a ruse; during his supposed treatment period, Feldman posted videos such as the following, which includes a soundtrack with the refrain, "My niggas."

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Note that the more offensive videos have appeared using Blip.tv, an independent video distributor that any publisher can use without editorial permission, while the more appropriate-seeming clips use the PodTech player and appear on PodTech.net.

Feldman then apologized once more:

And released a rather funny parody of the boring gnaw-your-own-leg-off tech shows at sites like PodTech:

Before ruining everything with a final nasty strike at all who dared criticize his creative genius:

It is here that he questioned the testicular fortitude of everyone in the videoblogging community who had criticized him, as well as copping out with a "Sorry black guys, it could've been the chinks."

The obvious question is why PodTech is still in business with this insensitive, racist, bad-for-business videoblogger, and has not even criticized Feldman. The usually vocal PodTech owner John Furrier has remained silent, despite many calls for his response in a forum he frequently visits. As far as the company's behavior speaks for itself, PodTech and John Furrier apparently support Feldman's racist and hateful messages. This is one Don Imus who won't get fired.

Yes, it's about me. I'm so very proud of everyone involved. In fact, I like the clip so much, I recommend you link to it with the word "PodTech" like so: PodTech. Then Google searchers can easily find this high-quality content when they search the site!