'F--- Sister Jean'

I think we're both kind of right on this. Of course the Internet can be a harsh place. On the other hand, people get outraged in ways that they would not in the physical world, and outrage feeds upon outrage, and one guy tries to show that he's more outraged than the next guy, and, next thing you know, the Chicago Tribune's lead columnist is hanging up the phone and sighing. That is what he was talking about when referring to the Internet being "soft."

 

But that's what columnists do.

They insult other city's landmarks, then respond when someone insults one of theirs.

Great circle of life.

 

Yeah, I was going to say, he wasn't exactly putting himself on the line here.

But I've said time and again I try to take people's stated motivations at face value. If the columnist says he was offended, I will proceed under the assumption that he was genuinely offended and not playing to the crowd.

 

"Are you kidding?" rants Costello. "Choosing a place where fine cuisine is a Juicy Lucy (don't ask) and high-end shopping is going to Target?"

New York Columnist Insults Minnesota After Cousins Snubs Jets

"Remember, Robert Zimmerman left Minnesota to become Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village. Do you enjoy temperatures below zero all winter, Kirk? Minnesota has 10,000 lakes. You know what comes with 10,000 lakes? About 1,000,000 mosquitoes."

 

Give me Target over "gentrified Brooklyn" any damn day of the week.

 

New York columnist is a retard!

Discuss.

 

Etc., ad inf.

 

Except it's not soft. He couldn't say that on the radio. He'd be fired. He couldn't write it in a publication for anyone. They wouldn't run it.

Radio's soft, if you want to get down to it. Radio hosts more or less say what they want, then screen their calls to generally get people who agree with them, and, on the off chance they get someone who actually calls a radio host on their shit, turn so indignant that they pretend the caller is either "changing the argument" or is otherwise the stupidest person on the planet.

Radio hosts tend to have some of the thinnest skin of any journalists I've ever met, and it's because they operate, daily, in a tiny little echo chamber.

The Internet can be a rhetorical fight in a death pit. Poor radio man made a shitty joke and got lit up for it, and then - gasp! - a writer even called him about it. Whatever will Mic Jock do with this newfound awareness that his shit occasionally stinks? Make fewer shitty jokes? That's censorship.

No, that's the free market.

He's lucky to have a job.

 

Of course, because Jennifer Connelly.

 

The Dylan line is funny but not because it's funny.

 

I agree with just about everything else you posted, but I think referring to a sports radio host as a 'journalist' is a stretch.

'Performance artist' gets closer to it.

 

We have some good hosts in Chicago. A lot of times, I get much more nitty-gritty analysis from the radio than I do from the dailies.