I’m proud to admit the first female in to the shithead Hall of Fame: Kathleen Parker. I needed the national FERVOR over her leaving of the CNN show Parker-Spitzer to calm before I emblazoned her inside it’s vaunted halls of mediocrity. Maybe you are wondering what one like Ms. Parker would have to do to even be considered for the hall of fame considering her bona fides: Pulitzer prize winning writing, national syndication in hundreds of papers, blah blah blah. Namely, the Hall of Fame board recognizes her for the most American of American traits: Mediocrity failing upwards.
Yes, I’ve always had a bone to pick with Kathleen Parker, and it’s mostly to do with her limp-wristed political writing and frothy feminism. She correctly acknowledged she won her Pulitzer prize for Palin bashing (which she then took back in some many words/columns in the weeks to follow her initial bashing on Palin, but once again there’s no Pulitzer for rhetorical consistency}. I was also just as surprised that she was tapped to co-host a show on CNN (which isn’t surprising of them) with Eliott Spitzer. Who we all know is very intelligent, but sense he was mired with scandal makes his intellectual fortitude about on par with whatever Ms. Parker would bring to the table, right? And wouldn’t you know it, they’re politically dissimilar, perfect CNN!
But this article isn’t about CNN’s resume for the Shithead Hall of Fame. I’m sure you’ll be voted in one day CNN, a girl can hope!
Parker-Spitzer, while not a ratings juggernaut, did have one piece of silver lining: it exposed Ms. Parker’s incompetence as a co-host. The great thing about actually thoughtful, intelligent people is that they are adaptable. Hence, when Spitzer was doing solo shows the ratings doubled, he could hold his own with any, and hell, the guy is on point for the most part. Parker is a pundit that needs a leash. This is why you don’t see Sarah Palin outside of Fox News. If given the run of the table they are unfocused and since they don’t have any real opinions (cherish the thought), can’t deliver in anything but lead on sound bites. These sound bites are just merely crumbs from the interviewers’/host’s table and are never the prevailing thought of the pundit. The host will be like “I hate gnarled, hairy toes,” then people like Palin or Parker just chime in with the “Yes, those are bad!” to give the essence of group think to the argument. She was timid in her co-hosting duties, and rarely, if ever disagreed with anything Spitzer argued. She’s the one from the right wing, huh? To be fair, she does say she’s “a little to the right of center” which means she’s flip floppy at best, and indecisive at worst. These are great qualities to bring to a crossfire debate type show.
Ms. Parker also likes to come from that right wing thought that if you’re published in a paper that that somehow makes you a journalist, which then gives you some form of integrity. This is the exception and not the rule; as I’m sure many viewers of the Parker-Spitzer show soon realized. She writes about culture and politics: two things that are never etched in stone, therefore you can write about them as the wind blows. Again, consistency isn’t one of her strong suits so what better topics to base your writing career on? It’s how Pat Buchanan can say on MSNBC that rich fat cats and corporations are destroying the middle class, then write an editorial admonishing public unions for collective bargaining and teacher for striking on the future generations and setting a bad example.
I guess all the blame can’t really be put on Ms. Parker for her disastrous Parker-Spitzer run. CNN has a weird hyperbole fetish and an intense desire to seem “fresh” and “With it”. Like all those Piers Morgan Tonight spots where he says he’s going to tell it like it is and ask the hard questions. Then you watch his show (when he actually has a guest) and it’s a just a British dude engaging in polite conversation. So when you try to frame your debate show with the “He’s a Liberal New York lawyer and she’s a Conservative D.C. writer…sparks are gonna fly, you better bring your welding visor America”, you can’t be to surprised that the so saying “slightly right of center” isn’t going to exactly clash with a common sense, or even informed argument.
But Mr. Mayor, you maybe asking, didn’t you say she’s guilty of failing upwards, what do you mean? Here is what I mean America: people like her are needed to fill the void in newspaper editorials, or fodder for the sound bite 24 hour news cycle. She’s paid to have an opinion on EVERYTHING, it’s a great way to take up column space. She’s also that much needed right wing skirt that makes it seem like Republicans don’t hate women and want them to stay in the kitchen, making babies. Sometimes, her poignancy can surprise you, for example the Palin bashing. But when asked to foment an argument, they deflate so fast and so quick, that you have no choice but to call them out. They can’t embarrass you on national television like that ever, or for very long. That’s why she only lasted 4 ½ months on the Parker-Spitzer program. She couldn’t adapt so she sunk, and then had to “focus on her writing”. Really Ms. Parker? Was there something so burning inside you about the state of something no one really cares about in the national discourse that you couldn’t say in on your nightly program?
People like Ms. Parker shape the public discourse. They can be great providers of information if they so wish, but yet again without any rhetorical consistency you gain nothing as a public. If we wanted wishy-washy, hypocritical commentary we can just look to our congress for that buffoonishness. Hell, we have an entire “News Channel” dedicated to feeding a hive mind falsities. I don’t think it’s too much to ask of our punditry and talking heads to actually come to the table with facts, or at the very least, accountability for their actions. Ms. Parker’s career has been one of fluff and little substance, so we can’t really be surprised to find her lacking substance on anything of depth.
Perhaps, going back to the Parker-Spitzer debacle, CNN promised Ms. Parker that the show would be a pool of marshmallow’s and she wouldn’t have to do much but look pretty, disagree from time to time, and not have to do any heavy lifting; much like her column writing duties. They didn’t even screen test her or Spitzer to see if the two could in fact work as structured. I think the screen test alone could’ve given sufficient answer to that. She left the show, supposedly, because they failed to deliver on the promise to move the show to more cultural/entertainment venue’s, her bread and butter. This is where I can fault Ms. Parker for her lack of adaptability and the core reason she’s in the Shithead Hall of Fame today.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Can you say “over privileged, home-schooled, xenophobe” kids?
I have to say that my favorite thing when reading an opinion piece by anyone associated with the fundamentalist Christians (and the right wing in general), is the lack of relevant statistics and/or facts. Can’t find a pertinent fact to back up your bald-faced horseshit? Just make up a vague time/place/idea/person/fact completely without source and continue on your journey. The backbone, nay cornerstone, of most of these nincompoops is hyperbole. It’s practice, performed at an obscene level of loudness, just bulldozes your senses where I could honestly see someone getting duped by this nonsense, and especially if they are on the same wavelength as the author of the piece. It becomes harder and harder to digest reality when you only have the stomach for narrow minded hyperbole fantasy land tidbits.
Enter one Elijah Friedeman, from The Millennial Perspective (a fundamentalist hive mind resume available for Conservative Think Tank whoring and some vacation bible school pizza parties). He’s also about 17/18 years old, yet another of these right wing wunderkinds who somehow have the intellectual maturity to understand such concepts as indoctrination and other first world problems that face our nation. He’s also familial to the American Family Radio, so he didn’t have to work up to this point in his budding editorial career.
So I found it awesome ironic that he started his editorial “Can you say ‘indoctrination’ kids?” with this gem:
“Recently I crossed the threshold from fact-based reality into a bastion of Obama-loving denial.”
In this piece he goes to a public school, and to his horror discovers that the children are being forced to worship and exalt Obama. He doesn’t name the public school, mostly because he experienced it in a fever dream, and partially because it does not exist. If it had a name I’m sure it was Robert Kelly Elementary. The teachers are all wearing starched khaki uniforms, it’s less a school than a crudely constructed aircraft hanger. There are loudspeakers saying things that Mr. Friedeman supposedly found “emblazoned on a wall”.
He is struck by the fact that a sitting presidents picture is hung up at all. This is his first clue that something is amiss. Unlike Mr. Friedeman, I went to public school my entire childhood. The sitting president ALWAYS had a picture hung up somewhere in the school.. So if his logic is true, then I’ve somehow been indoctrinated by the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations to exalt them and….wait, that DOES explain a few things! This is why I cry out “It’s Supply side Economics!” and “Tear down this wall” in my sleep sometimes!
He blames the putting up of this “memorial” on a zealot…I mean teacher or school administration. His evidence is that all the accolades to the president are typed out and laminated. Okay, first of all, the typed out part? Have you seen a first graders hand writing Mr. Friedeman? I mean, had you gone to a real public school you’d see the evidence that it’s mostly fierce gibberish at best. You’d be surprised the gymnastics the shapes of letters go through via the hand of a 7 year old. Secondly, laminated? Do you realize how many items the public schools laminate? And as an aside…have you seen a first grader’s clothes after a typical school day? Colors like that don’t exist in the rainbow yet somehow reside as stains on children’s clothing. The lone bright side of his lamentations is the fact that if one of these glorious displays were erected for George W. Bush he’d be against it too. So I guess we can give him points for consistency.
Then he moves forward with the noticing of a display of student essays. To his dismay these aren’t about themes from American History or great American Inventors (I’m catching a theme here). Never mind that he’s at this public school in a vacuum and surely these mad scribblings have been here since AT LEAST January 2009. The topic of the essays are how the students could help the president better the nation. Mr. Friedeman is again devastated that a fifth grader, who we all know has great interest in our nations politic, did not say they would help the president by opposing his policies. Mr. Friedeman the most pressing problems that face our nations 10 year olds is: lack of toy in Kids Meal, the plague known by it’s street name Cooties, and the existence of Santa Claus.
Finally, he stumbles around the campus till he garners an opportunity to ask an imaginary fifth grader Tea Party demagoguery…er I mean American History questions. The child doesn’t know that America once belonged to another country, never heard of the Revolutionary War, and woe of all woes Lexington and Concord. He concludes that this is why the politics of youth are so damaged.
I’m sure Fifth graders are taught the early history of America. In fact a cursory search of Google, “Are Fifth Graders Taught American History”, displays a lesson plan for a fifth grade class. Did Mr. Friedeman check the parking lot of Robert Kelly Elementary to see if a short bus was parked outside? And again with this old-timey rhetoric of the youth movement somehow being a bane to society what with it’s passionate politicking!? Oh you
can die for you country in illegitimate, disregarded wars; but heaven forbid you actually get passionate about your politics and vote for a black man.Mr. Friedeman could’ve used this incendiary expose of our public schools as a stepping stone to why our school kids are so uneducated. This is the fact that betrays his age and lack of skill as a shim sham salesman. He could’ve assailed the under funded school districts, that underpay their teachers. The over stuffed classrooms that allow the struggling children to fall through the cracks unnoticed. I guess they don’t really cover causality in Friedeman household.
Mr. Friedeman, from what little information I’ve gathered on the internets (I learned it from watching you Mr. Friedeman), was home schooled. He has been indoctrinated to sell shim sham from his family’s general store. He practices the age old art of fear baiting, narrow minded fundamentalism that has propelled some of the worst morality battles in recent times.
To top this off I have to say what the hell do you know Mr. Friedeman? Have you even started college yet? Of course you’ll be going, I’m sure all your tuition and whatnot is already secured and even graduate school, if you’re so inclined as to not just go ahead and run the shim sham radio empire of backwards leaning evangelical couching antagonism known as your brand of Christianity. I assume you will, during your college years, assail the very education system you are benefiting from with it’s Socialist indoctrinating Professors and the myriad of women that would be better off standing next to a kitchen counter making your dinner, instead of educating themselves.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
It's Always Greener on the Social Media Side
If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from Game Developers Conference last week is the fallacy that mobile/social game players are some how going to transition to the console market as new game users/players looking for a bigger experience. I liken this ideology to the gamer trying to get their significant other to play games with them beyond the usual game(s) they latch on to.
A lot of gamers (for lack of a better term) try in vain to get their significant others to broaden their horizons beyond the simple games we introduce them to. Or more likely, they have an affinity towards say a Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario game, but beyond that it becomes the “there’s too many buttons” or “this is way too complicated”. Granted, there are some marginal success’, but for the most part you just have to hand them games you think they can handle, and hope that they will at least appreciate your hobby and not ostracize it as a bad habit.
The need to expand the new player market is a tale as old as time, wrought with much unsuccess. I still recall fondly the days before the need of a 30 minute tutorial on how to play a game. I still read the instruction manual, even though these days it’s about four pages long and most of that is the different languages version of the controller map. I don’t think it’s because gamers are dumb and need to their hand held, but I do believe that developers are trying in vain to corner a market that at the very least is fickle about their gameplay experience, and at the most can’t muster the attention to enjoy a lengthy interactive medium like the boxed copy of a console game.
I’m not trying to say I don’t think these social media gamers can’t go hand in hand with the more “hardcore” gamers of today, but developers need to understand that for the most part, their time is better spent not preaching to the choir, and plying those of us (“hardcore‘) with tropes from the social media side of games: the shortened bite sized experience, the micro transactions, simplistic game mechanics, on and on.
After spending much of the past decade getting people to sign up for the high definition experience, those of us who applied, I think, need to be rewarded for our efforts. To me this means cut it out with the four hour single player campaigns, or if you are going to pull that bologna, don’t charge full price and instead make the ratio of cost to game balanced and less price gouging. I know you might be saying “Mr. Mayor, isn’t the inflated cost of the game to offset the cost of the higher budget games what with their HD graphics and such?”, and to that I must concede a little. But at this point developers need to understand the audience they are developing for and make their game accordingly.
I’m getting off topic. I don’t think that the bulk of the social media gamers are going to transition in to the HD gaming crowd. They aren’t going to shell out the hundreds of dollars for the high definition television and many gigs of hard drive based consoles, superficial HDMI cables, that developers insist make their games worth the investment. They’re accustomed to free or micro transaction method, and that certainly doesn’t have much of a foothold in the console game arena. Coupling this with developers now insisting on nickel-and-diming their fans with downloadable content (DLC), in a lot of games that is already on the game disc proper and is merely “unlocked“ for enjoyment. The jury is still out on a lot of the pricing mechanics associated with DLC, most of which I think is way overpriced!
The greatest asset of the gaming industry as a whole is the fact that it’s ever changing, constantly moving. I don’t think social media gaming is a fad, but I don’t think it can sustain the glut of bloat ware that is cresting on the horizon. I do believe, however, that a lot of great games are going to be pushed on to the wrong crowd, and that a better understanding of that demographic should be heeded by developers looking to exploit it for financial gain. The games industry has a storied history on one’s game success begetting dozens of ill-conceived, bastard clones that jam up the landscape and ruin entire genres of games. For every Mario that blazes a trail there is a Gex just around the corner gumming up the works.
Much like the frustrated boyfriend that’s trying to get his girlfriend to play Halo co-op with him, developers need to bask in the glow of the tiny victories that may bring new sheep to the flock, and not try to replicate, the inundate them with samey experiences when they’re trying to expand their gaming palette. There’s a pretty plain reason why parents think games are pretty much all the same and easily confuse a Cabela hunting game with a Call of Duty title, it’s got shooting in it, it’s got loud noises…must be what Timmy was looking for. Aside from that, developers still need to cater and care for the fans that got them to this point: us “the hardcore”. Developers have plenty of slack to work with from our end. We don’t mind having more people to share our hobby with. We have been your acolytes since we were single digit aged.
A lot of gamers (for lack of a better term) try in vain to get their significant others to broaden their horizons beyond the simple games we introduce them to. Or more likely, they have an affinity towards say a Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario game, but beyond that it becomes the “there’s too many buttons” or “this is way too complicated”. Granted, there are some marginal success’, but for the most part you just have to hand them games you think they can handle, and hope that they will at least appreciate your hobby and not ostracize it as a bad habit.
The need to expand the new player market is a tale as old as time, wrought with much unsuccess. I still recall fondly the days before the need of a 30 minute tutorial on how to play a game. I still read the instruction manual, even though these days it’s about four pages long and most of that is the different languages version of the controller map. I don’t think it’s because gamers are dumb and need to their hand held, but I do believe that developers are trying in vain to corner a market that at the very least is fickle about their gameplay experience, and at the most can’t muster the attention to enjoy a lengthy interactive medium like the boxed copy of a console game.
I’m not trying to say I don’t think these social media gamers can’t go hand in hand with the more “hardcore” gamers of today, but developers need to understand that for the most part, their time is better spent not preaching to the choir, and plying those of us (“hardcore‘) with tropes from the social media side of games: the shortened bite sized experience, the micro transactions, simplistic game mechanics, on and on.
After spending much of the past decade getting people to sign up for the high definition experience, those of us who applied, I think, need to be rewarded for our efforts. To me this means cut it out with the four hour single player campaigns, or if you are going to pull that bologna, don’t charge full price and instead make the ratio of cost to game balanced and less price gouging. I know you might be saying “Mr. Mayor, isn’t the inflated cost of the game to offset the cost of the higher budget games what with their HD graphics and such?”, and to that I must concede a little. But at this point developers need to understand the audience they are developing for and make their game accordingly.
I’m getting off topic. I don’t think that the bulk of the social media gamers are going to transition in to the HD gaming crowd. They aren’t going to shell out the hundreds of dollars for the high definition television and many gigs of hard drive based consoles, superficial HDMI cables, that developers insist make their games worth the investment. They’re accustomed to free or micro transaction method, and that certainly doesn’t have much of a foothold in the console game arena. Coupling this with developers now insisting on nickel-and-diming their fans with downloadable content (DLC), in a lot of games that is already on the game disc proper and is merely “unlocked“ for enjoyment. The jury is still out on a lot of the pricing mechanics associated with DLC, most of which I think is way overpriced!
The greatest asset of the gaming industry as a whole is the fact that it’s ever changing, constantly moving. I don’t think social media gaming is a fad, but I don’t think it can sustain the glut of bloat ware that is cresting on the horizon. I do believe, however, that a lot of great games are going to be pushed on to the wrong crowd, and that a better understanding of that demographic should be heeded by developers looking to exploit it for financial gain. The games industry has a storied history on one’s game success begetting dozens of ill-conceived, bastard clones that jam up the landscape and ruin entire genres of games. For every Mario that blazes a trail there is a Gex just around the corner gumming up the works.
Much like the frustrated boyfriend that’s trying to get his girlfriend to play Halo co-op with him, developers need to bask in the glow of the tiny victories that may bring new sheep to the flock, and not try to replicate, the inundate them with samey experiences when they’re trying to expand their gaming palette. There’s a pretty plain reason why parents think games are pretty much all the same and easily confuse a Cabela hunting game with a Call of Duty title, it’s got shooting in it, it’s got loud noises…must be what Timmy was looking for. Aside from that, developers still need to cater and care for the fans that got them to this point: us “the hardcore”. Developers have plenty of slack to work with from our end. We don’t mind having more people to share our hobby with. We have been your acolytes since we were single digit aged.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Shouting Down From an Ivory Tower of Shitty Writing
This is probably going to be the essay I use to get in to the crappy old man gentlemen’s club when I’m AARP aged, but bear with me my beloved readers. You know that I don’t care much for the old people and their old ways, but on one thing I think we can both agree on is that young people without kids can shut the fuck up about parenting.
I’m reminded of this need to tell these whippersnappers to shut the fuck up every time I read a college newspapers or one of these late twenty something managing editor’s who’ve just entered act two of their adult lives and suddenly have become the expert on whatever topics their reading pamphlets about. Mostly marriage, the inevitability of kids, home finance, you get the idea. What’s most annoying is all the prefacing that goes before they began to speak out of the echo chamber known as their ass with the: “I know that I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m gonna, cuz I can and I think that I have an idea so I’m gonna” motif, then proceed to baste their lack of intelligence with delicious hyperbole, and I really hope they have kids soon so they can be too tired to think and just churn out the clichéd “my baby’s poops” or “I’m so fucking tired, and I’m still at the presses crying next to a spool of paper stock cuz I was up all night with the baby”. Ceaseless, worn tripe that fills our nations papers!
Here we have Tommy Felts, a up and coming Managing Editor. (Preface)As a sidebar, I’d like to comment about the soul patch in his byline picture:
You can’t honestly think you’re being taken seriously with that thing are you Tommy? It’s 2011! Maybe this picture was taken when you were stupider…erhm, I mean younger, but still it looks like you’re trying to grow an asshole on your face.
Here he is with his take on the whole parenting thing. It’s couched in the girls gone wild as of late, and his preface is great:
…I’ve been advised by readers in the past to steer clear of these [parenting] topics when writing. But, honestly, given the state of many youth today, the act itself of having children clearly doesn’t make a person an automatic expert on parenting. So, I figure I’m just as qualified to share my two cents.
First, I’m sure this is just a writing disease that affects those of current generations, but is he being paid by the word? As a managing editor I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that he could excise a bunch of these words in his editorials and still make his point. I’m just a humble blogging man, and I think my verbosity is most heinous. I understand Tommy, you have a Journalism degree, but this mish mash of ten dollar words and the inability to use the semicolon or comma is absurd. And, the whole “But comma” or “So comma” this is blog. website aggregate, page view money generating, AAA ball team writing junk! At the very least you’re in the AA ball club so cut it out with the lazy writing style.
You see, I’m already lining up my seat at the gentlemen’s club! I’ve gotten off course! Ahem.
The fact that he’s been advised and cares nothing for it is great. As it provides the perfect example of that prefacing buffoonery that plagues this generation of editorial writing. He goes on to correct course and twist in to a, in my opinion correct, critique of kids these days (including us!) being completely useless making adult decisions, lacking structure, being self-important ass wipes. Who will then go on to critique us when they get old enough to be the managing editor at a mid sized paper. Calling Generation X and Y cynical, blameless, blowhards who have a lot to say about everyone but themselves. At that point I will be old and not be able to hear because I blew out my eardrums listening to crappy rapcore music when I was their age. And, I’ll be hunting the most dangerous game!
While I adore and appreciate the temerity of ignorant people hopping in to unknown, choppy waters of topics they have the slightest grasp of, you have to be in the shit to really speak to it. It’s called armchair quarterbacking in certain parts. Sure you got a precursory knowledge of the game. Yes, you could’ve made that play, read that coverage, on and on. But you’re at home, with ability to see the entire play unfold. You have limitless time to read the play, then you can bask in the aftermath and know the true outcome. But, you weren’t there, and I’m sure if it was you, it’d probably turn out worse.
As grating as it is to read those articles where the parent writes about their shitheaded kids and horrid nicknames for their spouses, at least their’s is a common knowledge and understanding that when a twenty something starts trying to tell it like it is “just cuz” that I can’t help but think “Yea, no” and skip the editorial entirely. Truth is, you don’t know shit, and I don’t think you’re opinion of the topic is relevant in any way. Coupled with the fact that, in the cast of Tommy, it has to be coupled with a critique of previous generations to pad out a word count and actually make a point. No one’s surprised that Billy Ray Cyrus is a shitty dad. Honestly, how many kids with never present parents turn out to be well adjusted adults? Instead of disciplining children and actually trying to correct their behaviors we ply them with sedatives and push them through under funded, over worked public schools and then are surprised when they become the monsters we raised them to be?
I’m reminded of this need to tell these whippersnappers to shut the fuck up every time I read a college newspapers or one of these late twenty something managing editor’s who’ve just entered act two of their adult lives and suddenly have become the expert on whatever topics their reading pamphlets about. Mostly marriage, the inevitability of kids, home finance, you get the idea. What’s most annoying is all the prefacing that goes before they began to speak out of the echo chamber known as their ass with the: “I know that I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m gonna, cuz I can and I think that I have an idea so I’m gonna” motif, then proceed to baste their lack of intelligence with delicious hyperbole, and I really hope they have kids soon so they can be too tired to think and just churn out the clichéd “my baby’s poops” or “I’m so fucking tired, and I’m still at the presses crying next to a spool of paper stock cuz I was up all night with the baby”. Ceaseless, worn tripe that fills our nations papers!
Here we have Tommy Felts, a up and coming Managing Editor. (Preface)As a sidebar, I’d like to comment about the soul patch in his byline picture:
You can’t honestly think you’re being taken seriously with that thing are you Tommy? It’s 2011! Maybe this picture was taken when you were stupider…erhm, I mean younger, but still it looks like you’re trying to grow an asshole on your face.
Here he is with his take on the whole parenting thing. It’s couched in the girls gone wild as of late, and his preface is great:
…I’ve been advised by readers in the past to steer clear of these [parenting] topics when writing. But, honestly, given the state of many youth today, the act itself of having children clearly doesn’t make a person an automatic expert on parenting. So, I figure I’m just as qualified to share my two cents.
First, I’m sure this is just a writing disease that affects those of current generations, but is he being paid by the word? As a managing editor I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that he could excise a bunch of these words in his editorials and still make his point. I’m just a humble blogging man, and I think my verbosity is most heinous. I understand Tommy, you have a Journalism degree, but this mish mash of ten dollar words and the inability to use the semicolon or comma is absurd. And, the whole “But comma” or “So comma” this is blog. website aggregate, page view money generating, AAA ball team writing junk! At the very least you’re in the AA ball club so cut it out with the lazy writing style.
You see, I’m already lining up my seat at the gentlemen’s club! I’ve gotten off course! Ahem.
The fact that he’s been advised and cares nothing for it is great. As it provides the perfect example of that prefacing buffoonery that plagues this generation of editorial writing. He goes on to correct course and twist in to a, in my opinion correct, critique of kids these days (including us!) being completely useless making adult decisions, lacking structure, being self-important ass wipes. Who will then go on to critique us when they get old enough to be the managing editor at a mid sized paper. Calling Generation X and Y cynical, blameless, blowhards who have a lot to say about everyone but themselves. At that point I will be old and not be able to hear because I blew out my eardrums listening to crappy rapcore music when I was their age. And, I’ll be hunting the most dangerous game!
While I adore and appreciate the temerity of ignorant people hopping in to unknown, choppy waters of topics they have the slightest grasp of, you have to be in the shit to really speak to it. It’s called armchair quarterbacking in certain parts. Sure you got a precursory knowledge of the game. Yes, you could’ve made that play, read that coverage, on and on. But you’re at home, with ability to see the entire play unfold. You have limitless time to read the play, then you can bask in the aftermath and know the true outcome. But, you weren’t there, and I’m sure if it was you, it’d probably turn out worse.
As grating as it is to read those articles where the parent writes about their shitheaded kids and horrid nicknames for their spouses, at least their’s is a common knowledge and understanding that when a twenty something starts trying to tell it like it is “just cuz” that I can’t help but think “Yea, no” and skip the editorial entirely. Truth is, you don’t know shit, and I don’t think you’re opinion of the topic is relevant in any way. Coupled with the fact that, in the cast of Tommy, it has to be coupled with a critique of previous generations to pad out a word count and actually make a point. No one’s surprised that Billy Ray Cyrus is a shitty dad. Honestly, how many kids with never present parents turn out to be well adjusted adults? Instead of disciplining children and actually trying to correct their behaviors we ply them with sedatives and push them through under funded, over worked public schools and then are surprised when they become the monsters we raised them to be?
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