Roger Ebert's blog has become his latter-day opus. Since his recovery (and just barely at that) from cancer, some folks, including myself, view his movie reviews as different animals than his previous ones - after all this is a different man on this other side of his life. (A brush with mortality does that, they say.)
Ebert recently put his finger on what's really going on in the public/media healthcare reform debate:
I don't pretend to know if this information is available to the angry people who have shouted down their representatives at town hall meetings. I think I do know where their anger is fed. The drumbeat of far-right commentators fuels it. Their agenda is not health care, but opposition to the Obama administration. It takes the form of demonizing Obama. It uses the tactic of the Big Lie to defame him. An example of this is the fiction, "he wants to kill your grandmother." Another is the outrageous statement that he is a racist who hates white people. A person capable of saying that is clearly unhinged and in the grip of unconditional hatred.
My emphasis added.
In short, it's about nothing other than being anti-Obama.
I bring this up because one truly weird bit of fallout from the Kanye West episode - where he yanked the mic away from Taylor Swift in mid-thank-you-speech - is "legit" reporters (like Terry Moran) broke with a long-time precedent to Twitter that Obama called West a jackass during off-limits, pre-interview chatter, and criticized the pres for saying something that's demonstrably true (even by the offender: "But I need to, after this, just to take some time off and analyze how I'm going to, you know, make it through rest of this life, how I'm going to improve").
How's that for a case in point?
4 comments:
So how does Roger Ebert keep up with the superior blogging while Michael Blowhard bows out? All I can say is, it all makes me even more grateful for the big man's word craft (grumble, grumble).
Yep. And Yep.
When I read M. Blowhard was going into semi-retirement, it felt like the passing of an age.
I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the comment trolls that tend to overtake the comments on his posts. There's about a group of five who are convinced of their intellectual superiority, but have demonstrate the same.
Or maybe he's gotten a job again and wants to save up the energy for that.
Yahm! It's been a month! Where are you?
Most humble apologies.
I've just been slammed at work and at home (my wife had to put her 'rents in assisted living apts., so I've been doing the whole show for a bit).
I'll post soon.
Thanks for asking!
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