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In Reply to: A critic castigates the critics -- Excellent article! posted by clarkjohnsen on February 2, 2007 at 18:07:01:
And nothing that hasn't been written before by other audio reviewers. The most interesting aspect of the PF piece is why the author thinks he has to hide behind a silly nom de plume. He's not the White Rose Society facing death if his name is discovered by the authorities. I don't have a lot of respect for people who lack the courage to sign their names to their opinions.
Follow Ups:
Rob, Rob ... not every critic belongs to the "I'm so heavy I scare myself to death" club. Some girls just wanna have fun.I leave "profound" to the self-identified "serious" journalists. I am just seeking the refreshingly sun dappled waters of info-tainment.
If completely original ideas are required for good reading ... then we are all in grave trouble. Too many audio reviews are about as original and scintillating as airplane barf bag instructions.
A sense of humor ... rent one ... you might enjoy it enough to buy.
When is a secret not a secret? When it's so poorly held it is obvious, and obviously word play.
Best Wishes, The Good Doctor
PS ... And always remember kiddies, take yourself too seriously, and no one else will be able to.
Try reading some of the newspaper work by H. L. Mencken, H. Allen Smith, or George Bernard Shaw to see how it's done.My post title was aimed at your fellow "PF" writer who ludicrously over - hyped your article as "castigat[ing] the critics" when it's anything but that; "castigating a straw man" is more accurate. It's obvious to anyone who has even browsed through a copy of "Stereophile" or "TAS" at Barnes & Noble that the subjective reviews are exactly that: subjective. They are one person's description and appraisal of the performance of one sample of a product in one unique environment. JA, Harry Pearson, et al have never claimed that other samples of the product in other systems and rooms will perform exactly as they experienced it. Objective reviews are ones in which no personal interpretations are present. Reporting the height and weight of a speaker or the power output of an amplifier are objective. Describing the sound of those speakers or amplifier are subjective.
Save the jejune pseudonym for World of Warcraft. If you're going to write opinion pieces for publication then you should have the balls to sign your real name to them.
RobSo, let me see if I get this right. You are angry because someone else cited my article in a positive way … hum, OK. The article was for fun, nothing more. That point continues, apparently, to elude you.
But you really should be more careful; you re-make some of my points about critics so eloquently someone will assume we are working together covertly, and we certainly don’t want that.
Jejune? Wow, I haven’t actually seen or heard someone over the age of seventeen publicly use that term since Woody Allen’s, Annie Hall, and he was only doing it to castigate pseudo-intellectual puffery.
Interesting too you should immediately descend into genitalia when gently prodded … but here we have an opportunity to appeal to the objectivists. You take a picture of yours, and I will take a picture of mine and we will send them in to the Bored and they can do a double-blind size comparison. What say? In the name of Science, let the games begin!
You also remind me why I so rarely visit these sorts of places … kind of like trying have a nice picnic in an abattoir.
All kidding aside though, Rob, thanks for the giggle. I appreciate your humor. It’s been a harrowing day and I needed a lift.
You wasted several hundred words bashing a preposterous straw man of your own creation, mythical reviewers who are "trying to maintain some sort of illusion of objectivity," when in fact no one asserts that the reviews in Stereophile, TAS, Hi Fi + , etc. are anything but subjective. It's a controversy that exists only in your fevered mind. The article is silly and pointless.I was briefly mystified as to why anyone with pretensions to being a writer would attack another person's eloquence until I came to this hilarious grammatical atrocity: "...since Woody Allen’s, Annie Hall, and..." Suddenly it's all clear. Since you're unable to use punctuation at a third - grade level then of course you're intimidated by literate adult vocabulary. I suppose your inability to punctuate explains why you need to hide your real name and your embarrassment behind a pseudonym too.
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