Like a dog going back to verbal vomit
Today's Asshat once again is me. I promised, Promised, PROMISED myself I wouldn't read Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at ESPN this year, but as soon as it was there, I broke down and read it. I did have an interesting revelation, though.
In his columns, Easterbrook often combines dazzling insight with remarkable shortsightedness-sometimes in the same sentence. I think I've figured out why. Most people, it's fair to say, think in only one dimension. (This isn't really accurate, but it's close enough for horseshoes.) They just think about single causes and their effects. Easterbrook often thinks in two, examining multiple causes or looking at effects outside what would seem like a closed system.
A good example from this week's column is his talking about a publishing scandal, where Penguin got caught out for publishing a "memoir" of a woman's struggle growing up on the streets. Only problem: it was fiction from start to finish. It had as much relationship to truth as a Kobe Bryant press release. So Penguin, the author, and a bunch of reviewers looked stupid. Easterbrook was right to point out that the reason Penguin didn't fact check was because they didn't care: True life stories are all the rage while novels (what this woman wrote) mostly sell like crap. Where he's wrong is this sentence:
Penguin asserts with a straight face that the company never noticed a woman claiming to have experienced a traumatic inner-city childhood in foster homes had the mannerisms of a private prep school.
Which gets to the problem Easterbrook has, and why he pisses me off so much. He never examines his own conclusions or looks at the causes that affect the forces he notices. There are a bunch of reasons why a developmental editor wouldn't notice "private school mannerisms": starting with the fact that lots of people in publishing (like me, for example) don't know anyone with a posh prep school education. Why would they notice? And it's not hard to affect mannerisms. So this thing he fixates on is the least interesting thing about the story, but he acts like it's some kind of huge revelation, because he never stopped to examine his own logic.
Now, he's hardly the only person to do that, but he's a little more self congratulatory about his insight, such as it is, than most of us. It's fine that he's a little more observant than your average journo, but it ain't all that impressive. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but he still can't see as far as someone with two good eyes and the will to use them. And that gives me an idea for a nickname. I may start referring to Easterbrook as One-Eye (with apologies to Glen Cook).
Oh, and Britney on the cover of Atlantic Monthly isn't the end of the world, Gregg. It just means that despite the fact that you've written for it, Atlantic Monthly isn't all that and a bag of chips. Maybe you should flog some other rag in your bio.
In his columns, Easterbrook often combines dazzling insight with remarkable shortsightedness-sometimes in the same sentence. I think I've figured out why. Most people, it's fair to say, think in only one dimension. (This isn't really accurate, but it's close enough for horseshoes.) They just think about single causes and their effects. Easterbrook often thinks in two, examining multiple causes or looking at effects outside what would seem like a closed system.
A good example from this week's column is his talking about a publishing scandal, where Penguin got caught out for publishing a "memoir" of a woman's struggle growing up on the streets. Only problem: it was fiction from start to finish. It had as much relationship to truth as a Kobe Bryant press release. So Penguin, the author, and a bunch of reviewers looked stupid. Easterbrook was right to point out that the reason Penguin didn't fact check was because they didn't care: True life stories are all the rage while novels (what this woman wrote) mostly sell like crap. Where he's wrong is this sentence:
Penguin asserts with a straight face that the company never noticed a woman claiming to have experienced a traumatic inner-city childhood in foster homes had the mannerisms of a private prep school.
Which gets to the problem Easterbrook has, and why he pisses me off so much. He never examines his own conclusions or looks at the causes that affect the forces he notices. There are a bunch of reasons why a developmental editor wouldn't notice "private school mannerisms": starting with the fact that lots of people in publishing (like me, for example) don't know anyone with a posh prep school education. Why would they notice? And it's not hard to affect mannerisms. So this thing he fixates on is the least interesting thing about the story, but he acts like it's some kind of huge revelation, because he never stopped to examine his own logic.
Now, he's hardly the only person to do that, but he's a little more self congratulatory about his insight, such as it is, than most of us. It's fine that he's a little more observant than your average journo, but it ain't all that impressive. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but he still can't see as far as someone with two good eyes and the will to use them. And that gives me an idea for a nickname. I may start referring to Easterbrook as One-Eye (with apologies to Glen Cook).
Oh, and Britney on the cover of Atlantic Monthly isn't the end of the world, Gregg. It just means that despite the fact that you've written for it, Atlantic Monthly isn't all that and a bag of chips. Maybe you should flog some other rag in your bio.