Thursday, June 21, 2012

ALERT: Mitch Albom has written his shittiest column ever

It finally happened. Mitch harnessed all of the ineptitude he could muster and unleashed possibly the worst piece of writing (piece of shit?) ever composed in the English language. After I'm done writing this, I'm going to Google-Translate Mitch's column into French and send it to a fellow Mitchologist in Toulouse to see if it can set records in multiple languages.

Mitch is at the height of his powers. This column is so much stupider than anything I thought he or anybody was capable of writing. It's absolutely breathtaking. So much so that I had to dust off the old blog (which is so 2005) to share my analysis.

You can read his "column" here, or, if you just ate or have a heart condition, see DeadSpin for the summary.

I find it interesting that while Mitch's alleged industry, journalism, is in massive decline, he thinks it’s a good idea to publish a poorly conceived, arrogant, elitist, and completely irrelevant rant about how underpaid, ill-treated service industry workers (many of whom aren't provided benefits like health care, a retirement account, or an undeserved couple of weekly column inches in a major newspaper) aren't serving him up his lattes with the quality to which he feels entitled.

It's shit like this that demonstrates what a phony he is. He often positions himself in his political columns as a friend of the working class – he completely undermines that sentiment here.

If he now seeks to be anointed as the second coming of Andy Rooney (and I think he clearly does), then his time would be better spent at least trying to develop cogent, insightful, and original arguments about how it’s Wall Street, Washington, and the media that are making our lives shittier. I am on the receiving end of customer service numerous times each day, and I have to say that it's not a big fucking deal to have to repeat myself once in a while. If Mitch finds himself constantly on the receiving end of poor service, then I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that the common link between all of these shitty interactions is Mitch Albom.

Perhaps service workers get distracted by your smug, shit-eating, entitled grin, and as a result fail to record to their short-term memories the precise length of the extension cord that you evidently can't find on your own.

I would also suggest knocking it off with the tired curmudgeonly clichés (“Loud music, television, and video games are ruining everything! The customer is always right!”). Dickhead.

If the biggest problem in your life is the quality of the customer service you receive, then you should probably be pretty fucking grateful, right? Didn’t you learn that from Morrie on a Tuesday? Or did you make millions by selling those timeless life lessons without having actually learned them yourself?

“Hey, Mitch.” 


“Yes?” 


“How are you able to write your columns so quickly and prolifically?” 


“Well, I most often use the trope of writing lots of imaginary dialogue between two people.” 


"Like this?” 


“Yes, exactly like this.” 


“Oh, I see. It really fills space and a second-grader is capable of doing it.” 


“Right!”


"Wow."


"I know! And after the dialogue, I throw in a few inane words of wisdom for the readers." 


“This is incredible.” 


“Yep!” 


“Hey, Mitch?” 


“Yes?” 


“Go fuck yourself.”


Yes, Mitch. You can go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself...forever.