Beavis and Butthead

— If Beavis and Butthead had a media watch column, it would look like this: In the world of Web logs, talk is cheap. How dumb do you have to be to fall for an April Fool’s prank? Dumb enough to suspend Jeff Jacoby for writing a patriotic column; dumb enough to publish Ellen Goodman; … Continue reading “Beavis and Butthead”

— If Beavis and Butthead had a media watch column, it would look like this: In the world of Web logs, talk is cheap. How dumb do you have to be to fall for an April Fool’s prank? Dumb enough to suspend Jeff Jacoby for writing a patriotic column; dumb enough to publish Ellen Goodman; dumb enough to insult James Lileks for writing too much. In other words, dumb as the Boston Globe, and gracelessly insane.

It turns out the little prick doesn’t like letters to the Editor correcting his mistakes, for some strange reason:

We in the glamorous media business have mixed feelings about the men, women and, yes, children who write in to express their views.

Beam’s whole anti-blog screed was a recycled version of this column, in fact.

9 thoughts on “Beavis and Butthead”

  1. Does the reference to “the glamorous media business” give you any clue as to whether Beam was being ironical here?

  2. I do believe Beam was trying to be ironical in saying he has mixed feelings; the article makes plain that Beam’s feelings of contempt for those outside the media business who opine are anything but mixed.

  3. Whether he was making a shoddy attempt at irony or not, it’s a lousy piece of work. Just like his other column. How does a guy go on this long and still get paid?

  6. I thought the more interesting aspect of the earlier anti-letter (as also reflected in the anti-blog column) is the absolute elitism involved.

    So, basically, people who write letters to the editor are doofuses (doofi?), with too much time on their hands. Their opinions really are irrelevant (even when correcting errors), and the job of writing should be left to their betters.

    What, exactly, is the role of the press in a democracy, in these peoples’ world-views???

  8. I suppose some elites are formed on the basis of merit, some on the basis of other things. The Blog elite, if there is one, is more based on merit than the Globe elite can ever be.

Comments are closed.