“Unless it is. In which case, never mind.”
I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with James Wolcott’s writing, but I’m not sure he’s the very best out there. I do see that he’s smart enough to pick his fights “upward” in the blogosphere, taking on the crowd at Protein Wisdom, the Tea Party tax protests, and Stacy McCain in a single post. That’s how it’s done, Babies. Well played.
McCain dismisses Wolcott with the envious shrug he reserves for anyone who seems to be making easy money via writing—noting that Jimmy isn’t “interesting enough to be evil.” (Stacy: most of those people aren’t getting paid for writing qua writing, but rather for being famous. And they are generally famous simply for being famous. You know that, deep down.)
Dan merely sets the record straight about his own participation (or lack thereof) in the Wars Over Intentionalism, and then confuses his copy-editor readers by placing a freakin’ footnote at the end of the entry that doesn’t appear to correlate to any of its actual text. (Unless I missed an asterisk somewhere, and must now commit proofreader seppuku. UPDATE: It was in the text he was quoting. Is it kosher to insert a footnote into someone else’s copy? Surely not; I shall say my own hand from self-execution. This one time.)
Darleen is too busy satirizing the Priapic Cult of the Presidency to bother noticing her mention in one of Condé Nast’s flagship magazines (or the blog thereof; I keep forgetting that these things have print editions, as well). Meanwhile, Patterico has a daytime job; he’s doing alright.
My memories of working at Condé Nast have a lot to do with clothing. No one ever said to me, point-blank, “we won’t respect you if you don’t dress well,” but that sensibility was simply in the air. For the record, the Condé Nast consumer magazines were very well capitalized seven and eight years ago, and I will remain forever grateful to know how consumer magazines can be produced, when management really gives a damn about quality, on every level, and is willing to staff its books with an eye toward maintaining same, rather than simply squeezing every title for the maximum short-term profit it can possibly yield.
It is the difference between getting through the year and building—or maintaining—a brand.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit Readers! I just want to take this moment to point out that Glenn is, as my little six-year-old cousin used to say of me, “a piggy giraffe.”
(My little cousin is now in his forties—married to a beautiful woman, and expecting his first child in May. Naturally, he now towers over me, as almost everyone does. He’s a good kid.)
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Either you missed it [the antecedent asterisk] or, in the mysterious way of the internet, it appeared only after you read and re-read to find it. See: “deliberate* misspelled”. So, proofreader seppuku can’t be required without further inquiry.
I want to personally thank you for putting that all in one place so I don’t have to do the heavy lifting.
About that footnote. Dan might be going beyond David Wallace and asterisking everything from the sky down.
As to the King of the Combovers, I suspect Wolcott’s suffering from severe traffic drop-off. It was once the case that any link on his page would send hundreds of trolls to my site, but lately I’m not even seeing an even dozen show up. Disaster. The girl’s gotta do something.
Good Lord, James Walcott is still writing his blog?
Who knew?
It’s like learning that Epson is still making and selling dot matrix printers. It seems faintly ridiculous.
What do Vanity Fair and The Atlantic have in common? Kind of an awful lot I think.
Attila, I’m under orders from my wife not to blog today, since I’ve got a paid editing project I’m working on, but will risk wifely wrath to point out how close you came to nailing the . . . er, intentionality of the “envious shrug.”
Being an autodidact trained in the School of Experience (“a fool will learn in no other,” as Franklin observed), I long ago noticed how some people succeed early and easily, with the unseen assistance of anonymous toilers who move heaven and earth on behalf of the Fortunate Child. In such cases, which are by no means exclusive to the profession of journalism, one might expect some show of humility and gratitude, some generous gesture on the part of the Fortunate Child. But such expectations are nearly always in vain.
Losers prefer to sit around whining about the shortage of “social justice” in the world. Baby, I get my own. But it’s not Easter yet, and I made a Lenten vow.
Joy,
Thanks for the lesson in blog-fu.
I was not able to force myself to read all of Walcott’s post — once I got the gist that he was giggling at his own cleverness without actually being clever, my mind wandered and I focused on the links.
Isn’t it funny that he was following Stacy’s rule about making a few well-chosen enemies to get traffic? Doesn’t that make him Stacy’s — what’s the word? —
bitchapprentice?I do love following your blog and seeing how your mind works!
Cynthia
Trog,
It’s true, I was a thespian in college — a TUG, or Thespian Until Graduation, if you will. 😉
Cynthia