Raise the Hammer

"The wastebucket is the writer's best friend" - Isaac Bashevis Singer

Kevin,

I think you would do well to pay some heed to the above ...

You are a child. No writer worth his salt would respond to the comparatively mild and polite criticism which I offered with such bitter ire and rancour. The fact that my criticism did elicit such a violent response quite clearly indicates that you are fully conscious of your utter lack of talent and creativity. You are a hack. You are a fraud. You are one of those completely ungifted, sickeningly egoistical self-published poetasters whose crap people read only out of pity or perhaps a cruel desire to mock the ineptitude of the self-purported "author". You contribute nothing, either to this site or to writing in general. I do however quite enjoy the fact that my remarks obviously caused you some considerable irritation. I think that people like you, so full of bitterness and hate, should be prodded into irritation and discomfiture. I'll therefore respond to your frankly stupid reaction in hopes that it will induce you to embarrass yourself even further ...

Firstly, I am no supporter of "censorship" in the proper sense of the term (i.e. the suppression of voices as an instrument of social control). What I do support is the publication of viewpoints which meet a very basic threshold of prima facie merit. Your writing does not, in my view, meet this basic threshold test. I think it is empty-headed garbage which doesn't deserve to see the light of day. I think its presence on this site discredits RTH in the eyes of anyone who possesses even a modicum of critical intelligence. I have a right to express this opinion just as you have a right to keep churning out your illiterate trash and Ryan has a right to keep publishing it. I am not attacking this right. I am merely offering reasons why I think it should not be exercised.

You write: "We disagree on many fronts. You, obviously, think quality writing requires one to be pedantic, pretentious, and pompous." This is a greater leap of logic (or ASSumption to put it in your own crass terms) than anything in my post above. You may very well think that I am pompous, pedantic, or whatever else you said. I never suggested that I was a great writer. I never in fact held myself out to be any sort of writer at all. I don't want to give you a lesson in elementary critical writing (although it seems blatantly obvious to me that you need one), but the assumption I made in my earlier post above, and which formed the basis of my first criticism of your article, is a basic rhetorical device intended to undermine your position by implying that there is some personal-emotional (rather than rational-objective) basis for your argument. It is, in other words, a self-conscious assumption, and a tactic commonly employed by opinion letter writers, critics, and people in general who have a basic command and understanding of our language. Sorry it was lost on you.

Wilde must be turning in his grave knowing that his words are being put to misuse by your nasty, arrogant self.

Keep scraping the dregs, my friend!