ROLLING Stone once gave the world 17-year-old Britney Spears in Daisy Dukes with BABY written across the back. Thanks. Now they've treated us to one of the worst political commentaries I've ever read. No thanks.
The article "THE WEASEL TWELVE MONKEYS AND THE SHRUB (sic)" by David Foster Wallace is featured in the most recent Rolling Stone. The lead explains that since the magazine is geared to the young adult, and since the young adult doesn't vote, "it's doubtful you're going to read much of this article." On this lone point, the author is right -- but not for the reasons he thinks.
Readers don't appreciate being insulted. Inherent in his comment on RS readers' predisposition not to read his ramblings lies subtle antagonism. In other words, faithful reader, you won't read it because you can't. Assuming four years in the University's government department made me one of the lucky few readers, I forged ahead.
Referring to one of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign speeches, the author writes, "it's hard not to hear it as just one more piece of the carefully scripted bull---- that presidential candidates hand us." Maybe that speech was particularly challenging to that writer. More likely, he assumes the speech is too challenging for RS readers to understand. We all must now bow at the RS altar for having the foresight to hire such a genius.
Before we do that, we should investigate his writing style a little more closely.
"Crap" or "banter" easily could have replaced "bull----." Instead, he chose to alienate the Puritan members of our tight-knit nation. In reality, he may have simply lost a majority of his readers. Then again, that probably wouldn't bother him. After all, all the guys in the RS office probably found that bull-- line hysterical. Especially coming from a man who uses his own page space to call himself "the least professional pencil (Rolling Stone) could find." This guy almost never fails to put his hammer directly on the head of the issue.
Another aspect of the issue at hand is his excessively conversational writing style. To rip off another portion of this masterpiece, "But there's something underneath politics in the way you have to hear McCain, something riveting and unSpinnable and true." The slam on Spin magazine aside, what in the world is he talking about? I know, but only because I'm enough of an elitist to understand his mumbo jumbo. Thank God.
Thank the entire Holy Trinity that you only have to read the snippets I quote. It doesn't get too much better than the stuff I'm giving you. After grabbing his ignorant readers with a couple slurs and a reference to his lack of professionalism in the lead, the author dives headfirst into elitist Hell -- politicized ramblings.
Our good friend from RS goes on to write, "The national voting audience is the great huge outer box, then the SC-electorate audience, mediated respectively by the inner layers of national and local press ...." And on and on for a total of 31 printed lines. The entire paragraph is a single sentence. After having to scan his whole article for that sentence, I might have to burn the magazine.
I won't, however, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because I want to know what he has to say and I want to know why he chose to say it the way that he did. For all the nasty comments I've made about him to this point in the column, I've been doing exactly what he did. For that, I'm sorry.
Any time a writer insinuates that his readers are too stupid to understand what he's about to say, the writer has made a fatal error. His insinuation that RS readers will not read his article is equivalent to my decision to lead with a Britney Spears reference.
The only difference is that we write for different audiences. If you're still here, I understand mine. If anyone gets through his article with a greater understanding of how the political system works, he understands the RS audience -- a bunch of anti-establishment bulletheads who would rather buck the system than join it or learn about it. I reluctantly put myself in that category. The real difference is that one of us thimble-brains is better at it. If circulation is any indication, he's winning this battle.
(Chris DelGrosso's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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