Thursday 8/10/23
Is there a better example of a racist, village idiot checkbox hire/career than what one sees with Jemele Hill?
Saw she was trending. You don't even need to click to confirm it's her standard racist vomit.
What else is she going to do? She doesn't have any skills. Could you be more of a fool than this woman? More of a walking punch line to a bad joke? Could you have less ability? (Many writers--I'm applying the term liberally--have as little; I mean actually less.)
You have someone who has become rich for one reason: because they have been propped up to be gawked at. No one takes Hill seriously. No one wants to read a single sentence.
The Atlantic, espousing this racist approach to hiring and business, made her a staff writer. Do you think there's someone who savors her prose? Rereads a sentence? Cherishes the turn of phrase? Has an example of Jemele Hill's way with words lodge in the brain? Values her knowledge? Thinks she has any knowledge about anything? Any special insight?
I ask this sincerely: Do you think there's anyone in the world who enjoys reading Jemele Hill?
Do you think there's ever been anyone who took her seriously?
You are gawking at a clown. She's a side-show positioned front and center and a one-person hate factory. She's been given that positioning. Her abilities haven't earned anything. Her language skills are nonexistent.
There is no one who writes for The Atlantic right now who writes well, but she writes worse than the other people who write there, save for Scott Stossel who is so insecure that he can't help but try and overcompensate for that insecurity by larding up the pretension in the one thing they have him write every year or so when he's pulled out of mothballs like a barely-held-together sweater stained with gin and/or stale tears of self-doubt and pity. He's someone they carry out of long-established practice and charity, though, and pay a lot of money--which is just how it is, unearned entitlement and nothing else, and which he knows, and which is another thing to eat him alive from the inside out--whereas she's supposed to be a regular writer.
Which is pretty funny. Go take a look at her writing. Don't just take my word for it. Can you do less with language than she does?
For someone who's entire act is this zany, over-the-top, Gargamel-ish version of racism, it's amusing how bland and white bread her writing is. As I said, she doesn't have the language skills. It's like she has no idea how to write when you actually have to create sentences, and paragraphs, and pieces.
And what kind of writer are you if all you can do is say white people are racist? There is no other subject on which you can write. A staff writer being paid a lot of money who can't produce more than a token, empty, predictable, flatly written piece at the clip of one a month?
That's one of the best writers in the world, is it? I thought that's what The Atlantic was supposed to be about?
This is the first sentence of her latest piece for The Atlantic:
"The kickoff to the college-football season is a few weeks away, but fans are already seeing 2023’s biggest showdown—one that pits the long-term interests of schools and conferences against their own insatiable greed."
I read that and think, "Are you in high school?" Because that sounds like something a high school student would write. An unmotivated high school student just trying to do the assignment.
That's not the sub-head, mind you; that's the opening sentence to a piece. All of her opening sentences read like sub-heads, because she doesn't know how to write.
Do you think that's a compelling first sentence? Did it pull you in? Was it exciting? Did the language sink into you?
No. No. No. No.
Obviously no.
I wonder if Hill can even realize that there's no one who respects her. There is no one who thinks well of her. (Unless someone is doing the "Hooray for our color" thing that such a person would do for anyone of the same color, which no one should ever do, because you should be better than that and care about who a person truly is as a person.) There is no one who takes her seriously. It's checking in to see the clown.
How much of a disaster will she be this time? How low did she go? What simple-minded, cartoonish racist villainy is she spouting off about now?
It's almost like it's the Low Bar Olympics. Last time out she went this low, which was lower than the time before, and someone takes a quick glance--and that's all it ever is--to see if she's "topped" herself by going lower again.
That's why people click and follow. There is no other reason.
Why would any venue want to be about something like this? This is what you want to stand for? This is the writer to put forward? To get behind? This is the best, is it? Really? The best writing in the world. You think so?
Of course no one thinks this.
How do you live with yourself like that? Can someone be that lost in denial? It's like you'd have to be. Then everyone in your life has to go along with it.
Some healthy stuff right there. Probably doesn't help you get any better at writing either.
But obviously writing and the quality of that writing isn't what any of this is about.
Comments