A glance just now at my stats revealed someone somewhere had read a post of yore, my 10 May 2015 "Come on, surely SOME of Stonekettle's readers are only there to marvel at the gaping masses." That post was prompted by a few readers' hypersensitive reaction to my 9 May post, "The political Internet's devolution."
Both were a delight for me to reread. They reminded me of a "writer" long forgotten who is, for all I know, still sociopathically afflicting critical thinking and neglecting to check facts before putting pen in hand. As I vaguely recall, what inspired me to meditate on the awful Jim Wright was one of his typically logorrheic pieces of condescension toward others whom he deemed ignorant, in that case, of some Middle Eastern affair in which he himself utterly botched the facts.
Even though my 10 May 2015 post had little to do with the exhilaratingly tough-guy, militarily heroic (as he repeatedly advised us) Mr. Wright — he was merely a micro-metaphor for so much of the political internet's poor writing and, whenever possible, even worse thinking — my thesis remains standing strong and healthy: "It's true that I'm offended by bad writing, but I'm far more offended by the popular embrace of it." Such an embrace is also distressing, an inextricable part of the Great Dumbing Down of America.
Anyway, I thought it amusing — for you — to repost my 10 May piece of 2015, which comes additionally with a slew of irate comments from Stone Kettle or maybe StoneKettle's abused readers. Enjoy.
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"Come on, surely SOME of Stonekettle's readers are only there to marvel at the gaping masses"
It seems the zombies really do come out at night.
*Your writing is pretentious, overblown, and frankly, boring. You might do well to study and try to emulate Mr. Wright's style and populist voice rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks. The blogosphere prefers his writing to yours by roughly 1,000 to one; perhaps not all of those are simply brain dead zombies.
*this writing is depressingly, hopelessly pedantic, humorless, self-absorbed and dull. how or why this writer finds it profitable to criticize others is a mystery
*You … write like every precocious 11th grade emo boy [whatever that means] whose English papers I ever had the misfortune to grade.
*I can't tell the crux of your issue, whether it's that you disagree with Mr. Wright's opinions or merely his writing style.
That's a stiff-armed, pinwheel-eyed sampling of overnight and early-morning comments left on my previous post, such comments reportedly inspired by what one of the magnificently disgruntled says was a "masterful take-down of Dr. Carpenter's critique of Stonekettle Station." I would read the take-down, but I gather it's somewhere on Facebook, which, I find, has blocked me. I suspect skulduggery — hurt feelings and all that, which generated a petty complaint to Facebook's censors — but since my suspicion isn't a worrying one, I can't say I care.
The only comment that momentarily hurt was the one that called my writing "humorless." I may be depressed by the screaming popularity of juvenile prose (the Michelle Malkins and Stoned Kettles) which defines the chronic dumbing-down of the political Internet; I nevertheless make every attempt to battle my dysthymia with pluck and, above all, good humor, which befits a drowning depressive. I'm also a confirmed skeptic of the Montaigne School (oh dear, is that "name-dropping"?), but of one thing I'm certain: Humor is essential to survival on this planet overpopulated in cyberprint by the popularly godawful, and let's just say I'm surviving. My hurt soon passed.
Elements of the first and last comments above were spot on. "The blogosphere" does prefer commonness; indeed, I daresay by more than 1,000 to one. A literate reader made a brilliantly apt comparison yesterday Images when he observed that Stonekettle is the Thomas Kinkade of the political Internet. I most emphatically don't blame its scribbler for exploiting the vulgar appreciations of a mass market, which leads me to that other comment: "I can't tell the crux of your issue, whether it's that you disagree with Mr. Wright's opinions or merely his writing style." First, one doesn't "disagree" with a style. One may find it abhorrent and jejune and thus lacking in sophistication, but abhorrence is not disagreement. David Frum once wrote one of the most enjoyable, polished political works (Dead Right) I've ever read, and I disagreed with nearly every word of it. I also read, for instance, Krauthammer regularly — not because I agree with him, but because the man can write. (A too obvious pun comes to mind, so I won't go there.) Stonekettle I've read only three times. Each has been agonizing, so I avoid it.
Second, it's telling that this commenter found my larger point unintelligible, since I made it blisteringly clear: Stonekettle's dreadful writing "is not what haunts me," I explained. "Bad writing, in its commonness, is scarcely anything horrifying. No, what haunts me is that this particular piece has, as of this morning, 44,354 Facebook 'Likes.'" See: Thomas Kinkade, and then anyone with an eye for true artistry.
One last time. It's true that I'm offended by bad writing, but I'm far more offended by the popular embrace of it. And that, gentle readers, is why, on occasion, I'm paradoxically content with the aforementioned 1,000:1 ratio. That likely underestimated imbalance confirms my "elitism," which, sadly, there isn't nearly enough of in this world.
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postscript: Lord am I ever grateful for the regular readers of this site, and many thanks to its heroically commenting Anne Js, Peter Gs, Bobs et al. But folks, this is one battle that you, my fellow elitists, have lost. Together, we always will. Intelligent platoons of refined taste and critical thinking are no match for armies of, well, you know. As for the "writer" in question, earlier he tweeted me so that he might re-express his abject incomprehension of it all: "Oh come now, Carpenter, you wanted a spike in your pageviews, I gave it to you. Have a happy day, ya mother." Thus, once again, he reduces himself to Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man: the self-satisfied triumph of the herd.
Another regular reader emailed this: "The awful writing to which you allude is more than just 'dumbing down' or 'hysteria sells'. It's part and parcel of something larger, much more calamitous." To those of you who understand that perceptive sentiment, no interpretation is required. To those of you who don't, no explanation would assist.
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As far as I know, I'm still blocked on Wright's Facebook page, and I simply haven't the intestinal wherewithal to revisit his website — which I assume is, for the unhygienic masses, still up and running subliterately and benightedly?