Here's what being smug, lazy and just not very bright looks like
Rod Dreher on Terry Teachout on Bob Hope.
Dreher gets paid for as many hits which correct him as for those if he creates something of value, so the difference between his own farts and an opera are pretty much moot to him.Why not just phone it in as he does above?
By comparison, here's what being bright, acute, diligent and incisive looks like:
Steve Sailer on Terry Teachout on Bob Hope
Of course, being obtusely wrong has long been a mainstay of Dreher's schtick anyway. When you're paid in blog hits rather than the value of the content you produce, you say "Oranges are blue!", and dozens of college sophomores immediately fight for the chance to tell you, "Nuh unh!". Civilly, of course. So I guess except for comparisons like this, how would anyone really ever tell the difference?
Being profitably lazy and stupid for a living. Nice work if you can get it.
Sailer's piece is so good. He really brings the smackdown. This reminds me of a forum where some 14-year-old would posit that Hendrix wasn't any good--well, at least not compared to Megadeth and GWAR et al. The dude got destroyed.
ReplyDeleteIf this kind of thing doesn't show people Dreher's cluelessness then nothing will. Still waiting for the Terry Teachout Golf Classic.
BTW, Bob Hope did become Catholic shortly before he passed away in '03. So this attention to Hope being a WASP on Dreher's part, while technically correct since he was for most of his career, is a little bit bizarre.
I noticed that Dreher didn't put a "Read the whole thing" in his piece. Probably that's because he simply regurgitated bits of the Teachout piece. (I guess Dreher did add the bit at the end where he demonstrated that he missed the point of it.) Lazy work.
ReplyDeleteSailer's piece is in fact very well done in the technical sense. But, as usual, he's viciously wrong IMO (no surprise, I typically have this reaction with his pieces). This time he runs away with the "Jooos!!" point (which is bait for his animus), which I read the Teachout piece to not mean Jewish in the tribal sense but Jewish in the edgy ethnic sense. Certainly Teachout could have made the point better himself, to keep it from being red meat for Sailer et al.
Dreher of course also missed the point, which he made obvious by his reference to the two contemporary comics that I've never heard of.
P.S. Mark Steyn gets it right, as usual.
P.P.S. Sailer is right about Neil Simon plays, tho. I challenge you to make it through The Goodbye Girl (the movie with Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss -- who I hope were paid well for embarrassing themselves in that).
...he runs away with the "Jooos!!" point (which is bait for his animus), which I read the Teachout piece to not mean Jewish in the tribal sense but Jewish in the edgy ethnic sense. Certainly Teachout could have made the point better himself, to keep it from being red meat for Sailer et al.
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah. But Sailer gets bonus points for including Steyn's insights which I agree equates to "getting it right". Hope was more like a Thomas Edison, cranking out practical comedy than some unknown research scientist formulating one or two edgy in-jokes per year.
Then I'll just read Mark Steyn instead and skip all the bile.
DeleteI'm guessing Bob Hope also pioneered the "breaking the fourth wall" in modern movies and TV (which we see all the time now, in House of Cards and the pseudo-reality-show sitcoms like The Office, Parks and Recreation, etc.) Here's an example. Bob sings mostly to the camera and adds the asides, while Bing never breaks character. Pretty good -- he certainly elevated the material.
His material on TV was pretty much limited to Lutheran pastor jokes, AFAIC. His private jokes were funnier ("I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." -- H/T Mark Steyn)