Love him or hate him, you’ve gotta enjoy watching Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau descend into grouchy old manhood:
This is why I never read my comment threads at Rolling Stone and MSN. You want me to notice what you say, spend 44 cents. Snail-mail my gastropod. Still, the aggressive stupidity of these two comments exemplifies why I have a hard time getting misty-eyed about the inherent democracy of the online world. We know there are people with these prejudices reading us. We also know we’re making sense in clear and grammatical English, so fuck them.
The best part? That he’s right. Down with the idiocracy!
FIRST!!!!!!
HAHAHAHA, good one and welcome back!
I’m still stuck on the fact that he used the abbreviation “graf” for paragraph. I’ve seen this elsewhere, too. When did “graf” come into vogue? Has it been around for decades and I just never encountered it? It’s the worst word abbreviation ever. It’s trying to be cool, but it’s failing miserably. We hateses it.
Dude, that is OLD Skool journo talk. Dig his lede while you’re at it.
Christgau has written some dumb reviews in recent years, but I actually enjoyed this snarky little diatribe. “Apocalyptic tension” and “corrosive dread” are nicely descriptive, and if that kind of writing is natural to a critic’s vocabulary, he should feel free to tell people to fuck off and write the way he wants to. One of the great things about this internet democracy is that if you don’t like rich criticism, you can go read the reviews on Amazon.