When Writers Go Bad 1

Yes, that is a title from Gary Larson. Just like the one where we have what we say versus what the dog actually hears: Blah,blah,blah, Rusty,blah,Rusty,blah,blah,blah. So it is with writers. We think we write things of insight and clarity which by their sheer effulgence will enlighten the readers. If the glister is so great that the readers are rendered zombies by sensory overload, so be it. We have many fields out back that need cheap labor. I have started a miserable trek through the pages of writers on the politics of the day. Hitherto I have limited myself to The American Conservative, which has a bit of style and scads of substance, and Cal Thomas, who possesses neither. There are so many others, all with imperious likenesses on their pages, shot from a obeisant vantage point, giving the scribe an unusually majestic air of authority. Thus far, I judge that they need every such trick in the book, as well as prestidigitations from volumes not yet penned. Today I shall look at Townhall.com. This is a site I have seen before and I believe I wrote about its use of pictures of women with a focus on their breasts. We have today Suzanne Fields with The Cut-Rate Pursuit of Power: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2007/11/08/the_cut-rate_pursuit_of_power "The drip, drip, drip of robotic, monotonous answers is finally revealing acute insights, exposing the real beneath the veneer. We're finally getting below the paint to see the real people hidden under the polished political surfaces. Hillary's convoluted answers to simple questions suddenly betrayed her carefully applied cosmetic answers in the early debates, making it harder to keep her (face) powder dry. She's not just a front-runner and a woman, but half of a power couple who may finally be required to pay for the excess baggage, both his and hers. The former first lady is the most exposed candidate in the race, and the least known. Despite the endless revelations of scandal and sharp dealing, we've never got to the bottom of "Wifewater," her financial killings in the commodities markets, the whereabouts of the lost records that suddenly and inexplicably showed up in the living quarters of the White House. We probably won't ever learn more about them than the mixture of facts and factoids in all the books by and about the Clintons. But the questions, like ghosts, haunt perceptions of her character as the focus on the present continues to sharpen. The double talk -- "the tripletalk, quadrupletalk, Olympic nonresponsiveness," as columnist and author Peggy Noonan calls them -- suddenly sounded an alert, like fog horns cutting through the mist on a dark sea. " The drip, drip, drip which echoes very effectively the boredom of robotic answers carries through a bit too far. If we had limited it to the first sentence, it would be style and satire. However, by the time we get to the "convoluted...cosmetic...(face) powder" the beating tattoo of the drip-drip of cute tropes has irritated me beyond reason and has warned me that Ms. Fields is all style, style, style ( and not too endearing a style at that ) and no substance. If there is substance, she will be niggardly of it and dispense it to her famished readers crumb by ratty crumb to demonstrate her absolute authority. The appeal to Peggy Noonan helps oodles, since Ms. Noonan actually has style and substance, but it also makes it very clear that Ms. Fields has written herself into a Vicious Corner ( a la the good old Vicious Circle ) of absolute dithering wherefrom only a lifeline from Ms. Noonan - or some other writer with the good sense not to attempt to delineate blather by blathering oneself-may extricate her. If I write like this ( and I suppose I have indeed ), then take me out and shoot me; don't consider taking me to the venerable glue factory. At least keep your wife and kids off the streets, lest they be afflicted by the wayward hack writer! But there is more. On October 11, 2007 we see Huck Finn on the High Court http://www.townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2007/10/11/huck_finn_on_the_high_court When I saw this title, I said to myself that there was no way she could be talking about Clarence Thomas. No. Not really. Well......she is. Now why did I find this odd? There has always been a bit of controversy about the book Huck Finn, and the controversy was such that I found it hard to create an analogy between Huck Finn and a gentleman that sees himself as a bit of Bigger Thomas and Tom Robinson. In fact, if Mr. Thomas sees himself as Bigger Thomas and Tom Robinson, why perforce must we we go him one better and say he is an emblem of Huck Finn? Who, by the way - in case you have not read it- is a white boy who uses language that got Dog, the Bounty Hunter, fired. I know what this is: a writer short of time who becomes too enamored of their first take on a situation, so they try to force their tropes and turns and twists into a semblance of sense and tie it all up with a bow......or a St. Jude statue, as Ms. Fields does: "As a schoolboy, he won an award for doing well in a Latin bee. The prize was a statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. He suspected that it meant that some people thought his effort to learn Latin was hopeless. But he was proud of the statue. When a malicious classmate broke off the head, he glued it back. When the classmate broke it off again, he glued it back again. This time, it stayed glued, and he carried it with him wherever he went, all the way to the United States Supreme Court. No hopeless cause there. " I think Mr. Thomas may well tell the statue story and honi soit qui mal y pense. However, to repeat it in this way, as if this were a book report from the fifth grade we were trying to lengthen and pad out with fluff, is inexcusable. Next, we shall look at Thomas Sowell.