Chris Jones on Jason Whitlock

You seem to be suggesting that Jones and Whitlock should have been treated differently than everyone else on SJ.

 

No, I'm saying they were treated differently.

 

Fine, they made a choice. More power to 'em. But this constant fawning and defending and pining over their loss is fucking childish. Their well-known writers in the information age. If anyone wants to talk to them, I don't think it's very difficult.

 

Nope, not difficult at all. That's exactly right. Yep, you got it, betcha by golly wow.

Well, now that we've been set straight on this matter, what else do you suggest we shouldn't talk about on here? I just want to be sure.....

 

Chris Jones was better treated on this board than Jason Whitlock has been treated on Chris Jones' blog.

 

I see what Chris L means.

 

Well, glass half full, at least this got to page 8 before we started the same old conversation.

 

I wonder if there's a proathletes.com board where Brian Schneider says "Ah, screw Cliff Lee. I'm glad he left. I didn't want to kowtow to him anymore."

Or David Robertson says "Hey, if Alex Rodriguez can't understand he's just one of us, I'd rather he didn't share his input here."

I also wonder if they'd realize the professional insight and contributions they'd be missing from people willing to share, but unwilling to do so not necessarily out of arrogance (OK, I picked the wrong examples for that, of course, but you know what I mean) but out of simple common sense. If you're at the height of your game and willing to engage in some meaningful discussion of craft with a bunch of anonymous folks, why the hell should you bother sticking around if they take sport in bashing you?

That said, as much as I admire and appreciate Mr. Jones' work and understand some of his points on Whitlock, I don't think all of them were fair or that he did a good job of expressing them. Whitlock does bring some real skills to the table, even if you have to endure some of his wind-blowing to get to them. They have different styles and values, and Whitlock may not always be the most authentic, but I think many times he is just that.

I also think Jones has seemed to actually dwell on this more than Whitlock, though of course I don't know the history or the full extent of why. I think it was fair of him in the comments section of the blog to acknowledge he is human and can lose himself in emotion.

I also think Bill Reiter's post was exceptional. It defended a friend by making fair and valid points while also remaining respectful of the person he was addressing. Excellent example.

 

I find myself agreeing a LOT with this Muppet character.

All the smooching-up to people who chronicle what others accomplish in life -- which is accomplishing something, I suppose, but only sort of halfway -- makes me embarrassed for those doing the smooching. Go volunteer at the soup kitchen or read one of the classics or cure cancer or something, rather than fawning over some scribbler for a declining men's mag or yet another Web site.

Be the best writers you can be and stop all the genuflecting. They all put their pants on one freaking leg at a time.

 

Intransigence meets intransigence. You were expecting something different?

 

Nothing wrong with this post at all. Especially (but not exclusively) the third paragraph. It expresses my thoughts better than I've been able to.

 

Allow me to disagree. Maybe it’s just me, but I honestly don’t care WHAT one of these guys’ lap dogs have to say about them on this thread. To me, Bill Reiter’s rambling and accusatory post did little more than embarrass himself and make me think Whitlock, if he’s ever so much as heard of this Reiter person (I had to Google him), put him up to it. Maybe that’s inaccurate, but that’s what I took from it.

I happen to enjoy and appreciate both Whitlock’s and Jones’ work. They represent very different genres in journalism, and Jones probably needs to pipe down about Whitlock at this point to avoid further embarrassment of his own. Jones' post last night was a desperate attempt to keep this “feud” going, but if you think Whitlock is just shaking this off, you’ve clearly never read one of his columns or seen one of his tweets. He was handling this better, until he sent someone else to "do the damn thing" for him. Then again, sending someone else to do his bidding is a very The Wire thing to do, no?

As I said, maybe it's just me.