Monday, November 04, 2002 :::
It's sort of an interesting review, and it casts a movie I might have otherwise ignored into an interesting light...hey, maybe I'll even go see it...
Then I read this:
People who are convinced that Eminem is destroying America might want to consider the delicacy of the white-black friendships in "8 Mile." (Perhaps the spectre of such friendships is what right-wingers actually hate most.)
I suppose things things like this could be answered any number of ways. The phrase that pays, for me, though, is "too stupid to argue with." How or why would I try to enlighten this ass, whose own hatred of "right-wingers" has obviously been subjected to a perfect transferrence; I have little doubt that "Perhaps" was added by an editor who still has a shred of humanity left in him.
Problem is, he's not making an argument based on this observation; he's just making the observation. He's not supporting anything or attempting to illustrate anything; he's just pointlessly slamming me and millions of people like me about whom he knows not the least little bit. You see this everywhere you turn, and it's saddening at the same time it's infuriating. But there's no answer. You can't say, "Your argument falls apart here or here or here" because...there's no argument.
But what can you do? It's become my habit to turn to liberals (Denby, Ebert, D'Angelo) for interesting movie and other media reviews, and conservatives (mostly) for interesting political observations. I can't stand a Medved movie review any more than I can abide Ebert's unfortunately more-frequent slippages into pointless, ill-informed and tendentious political commentary. So I swallow my bile and read on, hoping the next review won't contain more of the same.
So, David Denby and Roger Ebert: Educate yourself on real people who hold the political views you despise. You may find that they are far less hate-filled than you yourselves.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 10:50 AM
