A reader writes:
When Friedersdorf and Wilkinson
piece of writing that attempts to achieve understanding – as a form. Our culture has an overabundance of professional arguers: people with opinions firmly in place who set out to convert us to their way of thinking (or, more often the case, to increase our certainty in the way we already think).
What we don't have much of are writers who allow us to see their own uncertainty and who invite us to think along with them. Montaigne says it best:
I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in.
Friedersdorf and Wilkinson are great writers and journalists, but they aren't essayists. They write not to discover what they think, but with their ideas already firmly in place. Is there anything wrong with this? No, but I don't need to turn to them to find out what they think about the latest political development, because I already know what they think, and so do they.
Having read your blog for several years, I have a general sense of how your mind works, but I can never guess how it will express itself on any particular issue or incident. That's what makes reading the Dish interesting.
My essay, "Why I Blog", might be helpful here. Another writes:
Why is the burden on you to complain more about Obama’s failings rather than on Friedersdorf to acknowledge any of the president’s positive achievements?
You mention the president’s failings far more than I’ve ever seen him acknowledge the president’s successes. These cats are projecting. As a member of the middle class, it means the world to me that you and Bill Maher (and only you and Bill Maher in my observation) notice that the president’s policies save middle classers like me hundreds of dollars a month despite the fact that – gasp! – the military still exists! If your flaw is detailing your responses to the Obama presidency in a human way, your critics’ flaw is ignoring how the Obama presidency affects the 100 million people in the country like me that make $30,000 dollars a year or less.
Your comments imply that your critics are not blogging with their all like you are. I agree with this implication.
The Dish 