WASHINGTON — The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested on Thursday in London to face a charge in the United States of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network in 2010, bringing to an abrupt end a seven-year saga in which he had holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in Britain to avoid capture. —NYT

“WikiLeaks founder” is a neutral way of putting it, as befits the most mainstream of mainstream journalism. Assange was called a lot of other things today that were anything but neutral.

The main story I listened to today on the subject was voiced by David Folkenflik, media reporter for NPR. I usually like his stories. But he referred to Assange at one point as:

“basically an anarchist”

There wasn’t any apparent disdain in the comment. But it hit me wrong anyway, as being beside the point at least.

Generally speaking, I like the work that Wikileaks and its founder have done in making transparent what the Rulers would prefer to keep hidden.

Generally speaking, I am for “the absence of rulers”.

People often try to dismiss Assange by calling him an egomaniac. He well may be one, but that’s irrelevant to a rational discussion of what he’s accomplished (or perpetrated if you prefer).

So is painting him as an anarchist, and especially as ‘basically an anarchist’, whatever the fuck that means.

Perhaps the moral is that any exercise in opening oneself up to an audience is also going to be an exercise in opening yourself up to being labeled. People who don’t like you will apply icky ones. People who like you will try to find prettier ones. Everyone in the middle, or anyone aspiring to an elusive objectivity, like a ‘media reporter’ or a film critic, will throw up a bunch of word salad on deadline, and whether it makes any sense or not won’t affect how much or how little anyone is paid.

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I didn’t think this is what I would spill today. It’s been a rough, shaky pair of midweek afternoons. I think mainly it was because an early morning meeting yesterday disrupted me far more than it should have. In any case it is now blessed Thursday night and I am home in the darkness. I stand relieved.