A World Without Mitch
I know what all of you are thinking--Morrie S. is washed up, afraid to come out and speak the truth about Mitch Assclown. Well, you're wrong. The truth is, a dingo kidnapped my eight-week old stepson, and I had to get the posse together to exact revenge on the dingo community. We set out to fuck up the livelihood of the dastardly dingos by destroying the smaller animals they dine on, thereby disrupting the food chain. And you know what? Mission accomplished. Granted, we were unable to recover the missing child, but revenge is indeed sweet.
At the same time, Mitch does not have a column today. We can all imagine what it would be like if he did, however. Melodramatic language about the Pistons' having their backs to the wall sprinkled throughout a truly lame Mitch Albom pep talk. As if anybody cares what he thinks. Goddamn, he's so full of shit. I am waiting for some hate mail or postings by actual fans of Mitch's writing--the truth is, NOBODY actually thinks he's a good writer. He's slept his way to the top, particularly with those who reward his alleged journalistic skills. Fucker.
But he did write an excellent column yesterday, wearing the hat of a media critic--he's one to talk, after his excellent ethical shortcomings have been exposed. What an arrogant sonofabitch. Mitch laments the lame, superficial, shitty media culture in which he is a beneficiary. You don't like the shallow, slanted 24-hour news cycle full of meaningless, cheesy, talentless hack "journalists"? Then step down!!! As much as I hate your novels, your radio program, and your other pathetic endeavors, I would settle for you resigning from the Detroit Free Press. Seriously, what the fuck is he doing with all this grandstaning about how bad the media is these days? Just because you write for a paper and not a cable news network, you're not a part of it? You are absolutely a part of it. The WORST part of it, especially with language like this:
Maybe I'm just getting older. But I'm not sure everybody knowing two minutes of everything is a goal to which humans should aspire. There's a value to smallness, to villages that are not global. There's also a value to life's mystery. To saying "I wonder what's happening across the planet" without having a machine you think can tell you.
Pretentious bag of douchery.
That's what I'd like to ponder. How world our world be if there had never been a Mitch Albom? What if some powerful man in the future created a half-man, half-machine asskicker, let's call it a Terminator (T-800 or T-2000), that could travel back in time and stop Mitch even before he began? Man, life would be good. I'd still have some enamel left on my teeth, for I wouldn't have vomited uncontrollably day after day after reading his sentimental bullshit. Life would be good. All WoJo, all the time. He's the man.
Read his column, write him some hate mail, and keep watching out for Jon Voight to fall victim to the Mitch Albom curse. Jack Lemmon, rest in peace. You didn't deserve the fate you fell at the hands of Mitch Albom.
P.S. Out of appreciation for equal time, you can write me hate mail too.
posted by Morrie @ 10:51 AM
4 Comments:
Are you serious? That Sunday column is horrible. It reads like one of those goofy old stories you occasionally see from the 1950s, where some know-nothing just experienced "tee-vee" and decided that the crumbling of American society was around the corner.
Even if one agrees with his overall point, it's just a really bad column, like all his stuff. He just can't present a sound argument. Week after week, Albom seems to come up with these positions off the cuff, then scribbles out whatever's in his head at that moment.
He never seems to understand the bigger context of a given topic -- i.e., he's shallow and doesn't have critical-thinking skills. He never seems to have a grasp on any of the standard arguments that have come before -- i.e., he's not very well-read. And he never seems to have a sense for anticipating (and thus preempting) potential rebuttals of his points -- i.e., he's a poor debater and doesn't belong on the op-ed pages of a major metro daily.
In other words, Mitch Albom seems to suck.
Somebody tell me, PLEASE, how this idiot has been honored so widely over the years. There are a billion-gazillion better writers out there, including the majority of his colleagues at the Freep. I swear, I just don't get it.
Jackie, you said:
"Somebody tell me, PLEASE, how this idiot has been honored so widely over the years. There are a billion-gazillion better writers out there, including the majority of his colleagues at the Freep. I swear, I just don't get it."
On this site ppl seem to think its cool to think Albom isn't a good writer, but he is. He is. If he wasn't he wouldn't have a job or a fanbase. That's a free market at work. Yes there are beter writers, Jackie but Mitch is still a good one. And btw no, no hate mail from me, I think we all know when we're being baited, Morrie.
An interesting observation. At the end of Mitch's columns (as posted by you, Morrie, earlier in your blog's career before you stopped posting them, but also found by me on the actual freep.com boards) it read:
"Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. He will sign copies of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" for Father's Day on June 12 -- 12:30 p.m. ..."
Uhmm... one little problem. Father's Day is on June 19th, not June 12th.
Maybe he (they?) meant that Mitch would be signing *on* June 12th *for* gifts to give *on* Father's day the week after. But if so, why not just say this? I think it's more likely that Mitch and his Free Press friends were trying to draw father/son crowds to his book signings. Implying that Father's Day was a week earlier, just to cash in? Disgusting.
And like anyone would subject their father to Mitch Albom as a gift, anyway. What a fucking douche. I wish I had noticed this earlier: I would have gone to the book signing and asked Mitch to make the signature out to "Morrie S. for his great blog".
By the way, Morrie-- who are the five people you think you'll meet in heaven? We already know that if one of them is Mitch you'll be in Hell instead, but otherwise...?
Keep keeping it real.
R.P.
"On this site ppl seem to think its cool to think Albom isn't a good writer, but he is. He is. If he wasn't he wouldn't have a job or a fanbase. That's a free market at work."
The free market certainly determines who and what are successful. So you're correct on that count, obviously.
But you've made a logical jump by asserting that the high quality of Albom's writing is the particular reason that he has a job and fanbase. That's not necessarily so. His success and employment status could stem from any number of other factors.
Your logic is akin to the following:
1. Britney Spears is a singer.
2. Britney Spears operates within a free market.
3. Britney Spears is popular.
4. Therefore, Britney Spears is a good singer.
My own take on the matter is that Albom's writing is the reason for his success. But it's not because he writes well. It's because he writes in a certain way -- specifically, by pandering to the lowest common denominator. His rhetoric could be ripped to shreds by the typical high-school debate team member.
It's one thing if he's writing about sports, which doesn't demand some grand logical consistency or sharp critical-thinking faculties. It's another thing when he's given the space to present commentary about social and cultural issues.
There's nothing wrong with such pandering, in and of itself. But the fact that such pandering has earned popularity for Albom doesn't mean it's automatically "good writing," unless you're using a different definition of the word "good."
Albom's column on Sunday was a perfect example of his non-sports work. As noted above, it makes a rudimentary argument for a really shaky proposition. There are so many better thinkers out there, and many of them are much, much better than Albom at expressing their thoughts. So it is worth saying again... Albom does not deserve to have that space on Sunday. The stuff is insulting to anybody with half a brain. It should be utterly embarrassing to the Detroit Free Press.
Post a Comment
<< Home