Regina Cannot Explain It All

spiers:

nerdshares:

spiers:

Nerdshares:

The reality here is that it doesn’t matter what I write or how reasonable my arguments are, the bottom line is: I expressed an opinion, about a colleague whom you all like, and you are angry about that.

People have expressed negative opinions about people I like before. And publicly. I never get angry about it. (Unless you’re insulting my momma or something. And Choire and I are friendly, but not exactly BFFs.)

But when I feel like it, I do respond. As I just did. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what blogging is for. You dismal of my response as anger indicts your argument and your writing more than anything else you typed out just now.

Here is the way things have unfolded. I blogged about feeling like the Awl is waste of my time. A few people reblogged that. Many people, like Pareene, who did not even read my blog post and had no idea what I was saying, responded. You attempted to argue that “being shot down” was censorship.

You are now saying that “I have written tens of thousands of blog posts, some of which are crappy” is a legitimate response to someone’s criticism and not laced with condescension and that I should be appreciative of such a comment.

Fek (Foster) now calls me “joyless” and “Catholic,” all because I wrote one post about someone who is well-liked.

None of my arguments were unreasonable and I’ve yet to hear one on-point reasonable response from anyone.

You’ve heard plenty of reasonable arguments. You just haven’t responded to them.

Pareene argues that Choire’s Denby post is valid because it’s a critique of Denby’s historically bad writing, and a reminder of why he’s wasting pages in the New Yorker. If you think Denby is actually a good reviewer, that is a response and a fair one, but instead you just dismissed Pareene.

I dismissed this because the blog post, as written, amounts to “and David Denby sucks!” I’m saying, rather than write a blog post about how you read 1/3 of a sentence and dismissed the review because you clearly do not like this reviewer, why not write a post that addresses his point? Or any point?

In other words, I didn’t respond to Pareene, who didn’t bother to read my blog post, because his response was “well, David Denby is pretty terrible,” and my argument is, irrespective of Denby’s terribleness, the post is simply not that compelling. Because if it’s about Denby or anyone else, it’s a still a critique based on 1/3 of a sentence.

I said that shutting people out of discussion (as Jezebel has historically on several occasions by banning commenters who expressed opposing viewpoints in ways that they thought were distasteful—very relevant to the Cintra Wilson debate) amounts to censorship even if it’s informal. You just noted that there was no formal censorship, which doesn’t address my point.

But who has shut people out of the discourse? I’m wondering where the censorship is occurring. I can well agree that that kind of censorship is harmful. But the censorship on Jezebel is formal censorship. If I knew specifically what you were attempting to convey here, I would be happy to respond to it.

Choire showed up and acknowledged that the posts you referenced may have just been unrepresentative of his other work, some of which is crappy thanks to the sheer volume of their output. You could have said that volume is no excuse, that you don’t think it’s unrepresentative, etc. Instead you complained that a major writer responded to something you wrote about them on your blog.

Instead of being happy that people are trying to engage you and address what you wrote, you seem offended that people are responding. No one who has responded has suggested that you’re an asshole for writing what you did—or made any personal assumptions about you at all (i.e, that maybe you’re just *angry*!)  If you don’t want people to respond, I’m not sure why you’re blogging in the first place.

I think everyone can acknowledge that this has not been the most calm or respectful debate. There is no question that piling on is occuring here. I am not angry. But I think the condescension in the comment Choire left is clear. The proper, expected response from me is contrition or embarrassment. But I’m simply expressing a point, and I am confused by the level of enmity it seems to have generated (perhaps not from you, if that’s what you’re saying, but it’s out there). He didn’t say “this post is not representative of my work.” He said he doesn’t expect that I’m well-versed in his work, and I don’t think I’m being pedantic by pointing out a difference between those two statements. There is no genuine attempt at engagement there.