Admiration or Contempt?

Reader comment on: Pretty Confident

Submitted by Belladonna Rogers (United States), Jan 28, 2014 17:43

When facetiousness appears in writing, it is sometimes difficult to discern whether the writer is showing his playful side or is being serious.

A case in point is the concluding paragraph of The Editor's post, Pretty Confident, in which he writes:

It's hard to know whether to admire Mr. Bernstein because at least he's candid enough to admit he doesn't watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh before he criticizes them, or to have contempt for him because he doesn't even bother to pretend to know what he is writing about.

For this reader, it isn't hard to know. If I were Mr. Bernstein's editor, (which he is most fortunate I am not) I would deem such fecklessness and disregard for the bare essentials of even opinion writing to be a fireable offense. He'd soon be peddling his opinions -- unburdened as they are by the gathering factual information --- to another publication.

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