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Topic: Alice Klein's rhetorical vapidity
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 25 October 2008 08:06 AM
From her (hopefully) last rabble.ca article - Can the majority have any pull? :"Orthodoxy is passé. it's time to get creative." This is great advice for any aspiring columnist. It's time to get creative with your choice of slogans - especially if you're going to use them as some kind of thesis sentence. "...Dion is staying on as the interim leader could be just the ticket" Yes, the "ticket" in this sentence can mean two things. How clever. "...he other party leaders have the courage to step up to the plate." What an original baseball analogy. Clever lines like this one come along once every generation. "The old thinking is coming so unglued, it's getting ridiculous." This is a wonderful contrast of the words "glue" and "ridiculous." Without glue, old thinking becomes ridiculous. I like the colorful imagery that comes to mind - and that she seems to be suggesting that "old thinking" was "glue-based." ----- Question: Why is this kind of second-rate rhetoric allowed to share valuable pixel-space with some of the talented writing on this website? Did NOW magazine buy rabble.ca? Was letting Alice Klein post her undergrad-quality crap one of the conditions of the sale? I'm sorry to be so blunt on my first post here, but I've been reading rabble for the last five years, and only joined Babble to express my concern about this writer's inadequate material. I can't believe you replaced Heather Mallick with this commercial media woman's worthless texts. Alice Klein needs to go back to whatever she was doing before her limp pen was allowed to contaminate this very worthwhile news site. [ 25 October 2008: Message edited by: QatzelOk ]
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560
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posted 25 October 2008 04:36 PM
Well, okay, you have a point, I guess. I just don't want this to turn into a bunch of personal attacks against one of our writers, and the tone of the first post wasn't promising. rabble.ca writers often DO read babble, after all, and I don't think there's any reason to be personally hurtful towards them. I think we can be better than that.Doesn't mean you can't be very critical of their writing, of course. The first half of the opening post was fine. But just calling their writing "worthless" and saying that a writer is "contaminating" rabble.ca (like, does that make her bacteria?) is not really making a real argument, you know?
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 28 October 2008 08:58 AM
I have little confidence to start with in their owners or editorialists. But this is not the issue raised in the OP.I don't know very much about the ownership structure of rabble. That's why I only insinuated that perhaps she might own the site. That being said, saying her pen is limp is NOT sexist. In fact, it is pretty sexist for you guys to be defending her as if she is just so fragile and helpless herself. She is a well-connected media owner, not some fragile little wallflower sitting next to a river throwing pedals into the water whispering "he loves me... he loves me not..." Anyway, for the people who defended Ms. Klein's contribution to rabble.ca, tell me, do you find her writing insightful and well crafted? [ 28 October 2008: Message edited by: QatzelOk ]
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790
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posted 28 October 2008 02:50 PM
Next time you start throwing some straw around I suggest you try and fashion it into a straw man, or woman.My opinion is that there is not a whole lot that seperates Klein's liberal views, from that of a number of regular editorialists on this board. I find the whole crew of them to be rather "limp." The only thing that distinguished Klein's "limpidity" from the rest is that she seems to be self-aware enough to realize that she is enough of a liberal to go out and actually recommend that in some cases, some people might vote liberal, as opposed to fronting the idea that the NDP is the "true left." So, I guess, in the sense that Klein seems to be aware that there is not really a whole lot of difference between the NDP and the Liberals, I guess Klein scores points for some insight. On the other hand her apparent support for either is questionable. [ 28 October 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003
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janfromthebruce
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14090
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posted 28 October 2008 04:43 PM
quote: Originally posted by M. Spector: She's certainly managed to insight a lot of critical response from babblers.
How incisive of you. I disagree that she is open about her "liberal" stance as she appears to frame her views with "I supported Layton in the election" and somehow suggests that she is just a critical NDP supporter. On the other hand, she does not criticize liberals, so it's definitely not an non-partisan frame. That said, the questions we have here about how authors/writers get to become weekly columnists has not been answered. I am wondering if Michelle can provide some enlightenment around this.
From: cow country | Registered: Apr 2007
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 29 October 2008 09:28 AM
there is not really a whole lot of difference between the NDP and the LiberalsNo one implied there was or was not. My criticism of Ms. Klein's writing isn't about her politics, it's about her crudely crafted writing and the way in which she proselytizes in a really transparent, unclever way. Her columns are never provocative or entertaining - just really, really bland and almost mind-numbingly predictable and partisan. If I want to be delivered to advertisers - or the Liberal Party - by a Pied Piper of Early Adulthood, I'll pick up NOW magazine (or one of its commercial clones here in Montreal). But that isn't really why I would read rabble.
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790
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posted 29 October 2008 09:46 AM
quote: Originally posted by QatzelOk: [b]My criticism of Ms. Klein's writing isn't about her politics, it's about her crudely crafted writing and the way in which she proselytizes in a really transparent, unclever way. Her columns are never provocative or entertaining - just really, really bland and almost mind-numbingly predictable and partisan.
There is a lot of crudely crafted journalism today. Journalists routinely rely on common cliched expressions, aphorisms and metaphors to make complex ideas simple, and to fit them into very restricted space requirement. A cliched expression is an icon as much as it is anything else, like a stop sign, or a yellow light that instantly relay implied and generally understood meaning. The difference between journalism and creative writing is that the purpose of journalism is conveying information clearly and simply to an wide audience, not making critical breakthroughs in art. Klein's work is by no means exceptional in this regard, and not even on babble. For instance consider Mallick's use of "pram faced" and "White Trash vote". [ 29 October 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003
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janfromthebruce
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14090
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posted 29 October 2008 05:16 PM
quote: Originally posted by unionist:
M. Spector, you give me groan pains. [ 29 October 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]
It panes me to see it that way.
From: cow country | Registered: Apr 2007
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 30 October 2008 06:41 AM
Cueball wrote: There is a lot of crudely crafted journalism today. Of course there is. But Klein's crudeness is tabloid-quality, not rabble-quality.The difference between journalism and creative writing is that the purpose of journalism is conveying information clearly and simply to an wide audience, not making critical breakthroughs in art. Yes, but that doesn't mean that journalism should be completely uncreative. The width of the audience should determine how comprehensive it is. If Alice Klein feels more comfortable writing for a mass audience who need simple propaganda, well, she has access to other more popularist media. She doesn't have to spoil the tone of rabble with inappropriately situated politics-for-dummies. Klein's work is by no means exceptional in this regard, and not even on babble. For instance consider Mallick's use of "pram faced" and "White Trash vote". Heather Mallick's use of these words to make a point is exactly the difference between creative and bland journalism. I enjoy the way Mallick's columns force the reader to consider things like "white trash" in a novel way. It enlightens, rather than manipulates. The political-correctness of Klein's text is part of what makes them bland. Her use of "our Canada" in the title of one of her recent articles was embarrassingly PC and crudely partisan. The article itself added nothing to any discussion on Canadian electoral politics - except maybe for time-constrained tabloid-readers. [ 30 October 2008: Message edited by: QatzelOk ]
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 30 October 2008 06:31 PM
quote: Obama is not Marxist.
Sorry, Cueball. I was referring to this paradigm-shattering interview when I answered your "How is Mallick not tabloid?" I thought that's what you were referring to. [ 31 October 2008: Message edited by: QatzelOk ]
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790
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posted 01 November 2008 11:19 AM
Surely you can come up with a better way to describe what is being done there, than to call it "high-school girl-clique investigative techniques". I would actually characterize it as McCarthyte red-baiting, which it is.But I guess your inference now is that Klein can be dismissed because of her "high school girl clique" reporting. I guess I am a little disappointed that the thread has taken this turn, and it seems we are heading in precisely the direction some here critiqued in an earlier thread, about thread titles and the use of the term "vapidity." I disagreed that there was anything particularly sexist about the term "vapidity", but I noted that the context of such descriptions indicates where they are really coming from. [ 01 November 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003
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QatzelOk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15680
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posted 01 November 2008 03:55 PM
Cueball, I think maybe a lot of contributors on this forum went to university back when "politically correct" was being toted as "the way" to peace.Instead, it just lead to yet another deterioration in our society's ability to communicate. Everyone is so careful to use the correct vocabulary that they can't really express any ideas or feelings anymore. And the only opinions that have any "authority" are of those who write as if the KGB is holding a gun to their temple. It's boring and intellectually vapid. The interviewer of Biden was bleached blond. It's not illegal to say that. Though YOU may actually wish it was.
From: Montréal | Registered: Oct 2008
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