Riemblog

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush yesterday. I will leave the politics of it all to those who are interested. I don’t care anymore. What I find more interesting is Libby’s name. And this on two counts: 1) its form, i.e., first initial, full middle name, “nickname,” last name; 2) the prevalence of weird, diminutive nicknames/stage-names in our diminishing culture. My inability to be outraged or even to care about the actual case is a good index of my political apostasy at this point. But names are interesting.

First, it is very difficult to find out what Scooter’s name really is. Don’t think so? Read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2007/03/13/naming-names-what-the-he_e_43351.html
His first name is Irve, after his father apparently. But of special interest is the form of his name. There is something inherently untrustworthy, I characteristically with no proof assert, about someone who goes with first initial, full middle, last. Never mind the cutesy nickname. Think G. Gordon Liddy (ah, the ironic resonance), J. Edgar Hoover, or for you literary types, J. Alfred Prufrock. I’m sorry if this is how you roll, moniker-wise, but it’s shifty and I, for one, advise against it. And what’s with “Scooter?” Why not “Chopper,” as a friend of mine was tagged in Viet Nam? Or “Hog?” “Scooter?” It sounds like a bad college frat hangover thing. You should outgrow these things. Especially if you are chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States of America.

Little names seem to have come into some sort of vogue, though. Think Fifty Cent (or is it Fi’ty Cent?) Why not Dollar, or Doll-ah? What about Usher? Why not Theater Owner? or at least Projectionist? I would think Concessionaire would be better. What about Movie Mogul? And why only Tupac? Why not Sixpac, or Case? Notorious B.I.G. was a noteworthy exception. Both notorious and big.

I don’t know, but things like this keep me up at night. Call me “Moped.”

By David W. Riemer

Poor Richard Schickel, apparently there is a “guy from car parts” after his job. Since the film/book critic’s piece (shouldn’t he choose one?) on the lack of qualifications of blogger cum book reviewers (“Not everybody’s a critic”read it here) fails to cite one offending source from the blogosphere that illustrates the genesis of his discontent with blog book reviews, I guess I’ll have to Google “book review blog car parts guy” to find out what it is he’s complaining about precisely. But in the midst of the slow, twisting-in-the-wind demise of the Los Angeles Times, this particular bleat about the blogosphere’s inferiority to the Times and other old media rings particularly hollow.

The very site of Schickel’s complaints makes clear the problem. As I alluded to earlier, Schickel is a regular LA Times film and book reviewer whose op/ed piece is running in the newly combined Sunday Opinion/Book Review section. I’m confused. Is Schickel qualified to write opinion pieces? According to Schickel, criticism goes beyond opinion (we agree on this). Is this piece opinion, criticism, a review of the NY Times article that gave rise to his flustered peroration? What? Schickel is clearly upset, the Times is confused, and I am amused.

I’m not really that much of a free-market guy, but this is clearly an instance of markets at work, both in the case of the bleeding-out subscripton base of the Times and in the case of information consumers using the web. Schickel decries the lack of credentials of blogger/reviewers compared to luminaries such as Saint-Beuve, Edmund Wilson, and Orwell. I would point out, not maliciously, but to his point, that Schickel does not hold up well to the inevitable comparisons he invites. And although I don’t know where to find him, I suspect the car parts guy might fall short, too. The appeal to authority doesn’t work in the current state of information markets. I coordinate a multimedia magnet school, and one of our jobs is to educate young people about the authority and usefulness of different sources of information.

Schickel grouses about the democratization of information that the Internet represents:

Let me put this bluntly in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism–and its humble cousin, reviewing–is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sese of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work…

While one may agree with Schickel’s sentiments, that will not change the new territory that the web is operating in. To obsessively fixate on the inferior nature of bloggers’ work in reviewing reveals a deep, dare I say, conservative longing for the status quo ante. Schickel suggests that criticism forms a conversation, or dialogue, through the work of art and the criticism, that continues through the ages. Weblogs perform a more fleeting, but to those who take the time to participate, interesting form of exchange of ideas. By being informed consumers of information, those who seek criticism on the web can find what they’re looking for. It may or may not be Saint-Beuve, or Wilson, or Shickel, or even Riemer, but it will be what it is. And that is how the world actually operates.

Want to read two excellent reviews of Shakespeare criticism? Visit this blogger’s Amazon reviews: Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare and Northrop Frye on Shakespeare