Tony Ortega and The Underground Bunker

Tony Ortega is a former employee of the Village Voice—a publication which found itself in hot water when it was revealed they’d been advertising the services of known sex-traffickers in their seedy ‘Backpage’ section.

Ortega now runs the Underground Bunker blog. Billing itself as the go-to zone for (eye-rolling sensationalized, bigoted, anti-religious) rants, it gives away Ortega’s game. How much clearer can it be that this supposedly “legitimate” blog is nothing but a bully pulpit from which Ortega can indulge his intolerance disguised as social outrage and foist off entirely fabricated nonsense as “breaking news”?

Sources in the journalist community consider Tony Ortega a developer of false leads, and let’s be clear Ortega is not a real journalist and here is why. When evaluating information, we are often admonished to “consider the source.” In the case of Tony Ortega, the warning applies not only to the content of his blogs but also to Ortega personally and the “publications” for which he worked.

Alternative papers are free weekly publications that earn revenue most often through the sale of the kind of advertising that reputable newspapers won’t permit – adult bookstores, strip clubs, classifieds with strong sexual content, etc. In between the trash, they slip in tabloid-style articles, promoted as “edgy” or “daring” when, in truth, they are simply fabrications sensationalized by low credibility writers like Ortega. While some of these “papers” make an effort to rise above the rest, most are gutter rags that all too often define “alternative news” as a slanderous substitution of the facts.

Ortega has spent his life practicing this excuse for journalism within the New Times Media and the Village Voice Media franchise of alternative papers. This platform has suited him well, for Ortega wrote for sleazy tabloids like he was born to it, a disposition that was in evidence as far back as high school.

[Header image: John Rickard]

Leah Remini Has a Radicalization Problem

An honest question for Leah Remini’s anti-religion program:

With all their angry (at times positively unhinged) accusations of criminal activity on the part of the Church of Scientology, where is the evidence that Scientology is actually breaking the law?

Mike Rinder and Leah Remini certainly have resources (A&E’s corporate legal department for

Continue reading Leah Remini Has a Radicalization Problem

(In)Convenient Journalist

Tony Ortega is one of America’s most infamous Twitter hatemongers, a blowhard opinion-slinger who regularly tweets his thoughts and opinions on the very narrow number of subjects that seem to capture his fleeting attention.

But lately a kind of meta question has swirled around Ortega: Is he a journalist? And if not, what

Continue reading (In)Convenient Journalist

For Critics, Consent Is A Four-letter Word

Controversy-hungry critics, like Tony Ortega and Mike Rinder are famously insensitive to privacy concerns. Looking over their online posting history we see example after example of what the internet calls ‘creep shots’, pictures of people, their homes, their places of business, posted without consent.

While this activity this activity is in many cases

Continue reading For Critics, Consent Is A Four-letter Word

Those in Glass Houses

Sometimes you can tell as much about a Twitterer by what they repost as what they post. In a case like Tony Ortega this fact begins to blur a little as so much of what he tweets he has plagiarized either from others or (as in the case of his recent “self-published book”) plagiarized

Continue reading Those in Glass Houses

Tony Ortega Mocks Employment

These are turbulent times for many in the United States of America. A recent Federal shutdown (the longest in our nation’s history), coupled with a slowing economy have seen rise in the economic hardship felt by many in this country.

It’s staggering then that from the safety of his underground lair Tony Ortega

Continue reading Tony Ortega Mocks Employment

Tony Ortega’s latest target

ony Ortega found a new enemy this week in Aziz Ansari, Saturday Night Live’s latest host. Apparently Ansari’s frank and heartfelt defense of religion in his opening monologue rubbed Tony Ortega the wrong way and prompted him to repost yet another bigoted tweet accusing Ansari of being a poster boy for his

Continue reading Tony Ortega’s latest target

Win a Date with Paul Haggis

Paul Paul Haggis has been conspicuously silent of late given all the heat surrounding him in the wake of his multiple rape allegations and his shakey, ever changing excuse attempts.

Well, hang on to your hats. It seems a PR move to ‘rehabilitate’ Haggis’s image as current poster boy for #MeToo victimizers everywhere is currently

Continue reading Win a Date with Paul Haggis

What Motivates Tony Ortega’s Campaign of Hate?

We posted earlier about what really motivates supposed critics like Tony Ortega and others in his vehemently anti-religion army to do what they do. Many have often suggested that what drives them is somehow a desire to simply spread the hate they feel in themselves outward against a perceived scapegoat as some kind of

Continue reading What Motivates Tony Ortega’s Campaign of Hate?

Phony Tony TV

We reported earlier on Tony Ortega’s delusional idea of starting a propaganda network hosted on his failing blog.

Touting “some really significant stories coming soon” Tony Ortega is trying to sucker his dwindling battalion of fiery ‘anti-religionists’ into supporting his fledging attempt to get an imagined ‘video arm’ of his propaganda movement up

Continue reading Phony Tony TV

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of others.

It’s a complex negative emotion. Rather than feeling sympathy towards someone’s misfortune, schadenfreude evokes joyful feelings that take pleasure from watching harm come to someone. While research suggests his emotion

Continue reading Schadenfreude