quote:
Originally posted by MguyX
Sal, I take issue with your infallibility.
On numerous occasions and in numerous threads to state as a postulate the facts that you do not write boring reviews, incomprehensible reviews, inapt reviews, inaccurate reviews, or, indeed, any reviews that can reasonably be rejected.
The fact that you, as do the rest of us, get rejected reviews means any one of several things other than that the editor is dense, asleep, or incompetent. If everyone else in your estimation is wrong, then maybe your estimation bears some review. The art of writing reviews is not comparable to mathematics: the answer (i.e., what works) is not necessarily the product of a given word combination.
There are differences of opinion, which often derive from different life perceptions. Accept that and human communication will produce that much less frustration.
Once, way back in law school, I laughed while remembering a somewhat funny bit in a generally unfunny movie: Harlem Nights. The thing that was funny derives from a colloquialism that was prevalent in my youth and which I had not heard for years. In fact, it was a statement that I had heard only other Blacks use, ever. Unfortunately, I was sitting in a caucus after an editorial board meeting for a legal periodical when the memory overtook me. One of the other editors asked why I was laughing, and I knew immediately that he would not understand. I explained that the joke was an aspect of a cultural experience to which he could not relate and that it would make no sense to him. He pestered me and pestered me until, finally, I quoted the phrase (which I will forego here, since it will occasion the same result). He looked at me as if I had no critical acumen or artistic taste in my body.
"I don't get it," he said.
"I told you you wouldn't, and I can't condense 27 years of life in the ghetto in order to make it any more accessible." Then it got ugly, as he called me a racist to propose that there were expressions of humor that he could not access or appreciate because he was White (of which notion I quickly disabused him, noting that his race was not the issue, rather it was his relative cultural experience).
"Still, I don't see what was funny about it at all," he said, to which I answered before stepping out the door
"That's because you're White."
And, as to be expected, when I related this story to a group of Black law student friends of mine, only some chuckled at the reference (because to even those in the know it may be only mildly amusing) ... but they laughed at the story.
So before you go getting all "White" on the MERPs, consider that maybe there's a different point of view at play. Ad hominem arguments about those with whom we disagree, do nothing to strengthen a qualitative counter-opinion: all they do is create or keep the controversy going. If that's the result you want, however, then by all means have at it.
Jeez!: while I hate having to be obvious, I meant the last reference to "White" as an ironic and possibly amusing metaphor, not as a racist dig of some sort ... unless you got offended because you're White.
This conversation is hilarious, MguyX, and you wrote it in such a way that I pictured it as if I was there. It made me laugh. And yes, I got that it was a joke.
EM :)
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Do reviews have to contain jokes now?
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 00:33:51
