Leitch on Ebert

I don't have an opinion one way or the other about whether Leitch should have written the piece or what his motivations are. However, I am completely on board with the idea that this is symbolic of the snark generation of Internet 1.0 kind of coming of age and realizing how they came off. There was about a five-year span there where any time I talked to a high school student with aspirations to write sports, I knew he was going to tell me that he "considers my style kind of like a Will Leitch/Bill Simmons/Chuck Klosterman-type of writing."

 

I'm only 26, so this may be marking me as a fuddy-duddy before my time, but I've always been of the opinion that before you can let loose with a unique, genre-bending style, you need to establish yourself as a restrained and disciplined writer. Defying conventions doesn't mean anything if you don't have a firm grasp of what those conventions are and why you might want to defy them (look at abstract and surrealist painters - most of those guys could paint masterfully in a conventional style, they just chose not to).

Far too many people who want to get into writing read someone like Hunter S. Thompson and go, "Oh, THIS is real journalism, this is how it should be!" and then go write about how their high school wrestling championships were a pit of depravity and unrestrained machismo that rips bare the heart of the American dream like an icepick to a pig carcass, or whatever.

Likewise - and bringing my post back to something more on-topic - when Ebert lets loose on a movie or on some celebrity, it's only impactful because he's not constantly doing it. Looking around the internet, I see far too many writers (film and music reviewers especially) who feel compelled to go to great lengths to either hyperbolically praise or trash anything that comes across their desk. It's funny at first, but it gets tiring and old really fast.

 

Leitch, Simmons and their ilk -- astounding examples of untalented hacks leading the pussification of the American male writer. Norman Mailer would sooner stab his wife with a pen than apologize for anything.

 

Good gosh, this Oprah episode is equal parts heart-breaking and uplifting.

 

I'm DVRing it! NO spoilers!

 

Norman Mailer wouldn't write that he hated Roger Ebert simply for the sake of having said it, either.

I liked Leitch's piece. I thought it was endearing and gave you a great look at the man Ebert has always been. It was a story much more about Ebert than it was about Leitch. But for Leitch to write it, he had to be totally forthcoming. Besides, Ebert's reaction to "I am tired of Roger Ebert's Fat Face," or whatever it was called, was the most illuminating thing in that entire essay. Of course Will Leitch was new-age erudite and looking to leave his mark. The idea that he would lash out at his hero says a great deal about his character. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a fascinating read, and that doesn't mean he shouldn't have written it.

 

So many great posts on this thread, about timing and opportunism and class and the lack thereof, so I just want to add this:

Genuine remorse and regret doesn't belong first in print. It begins with a truly sincere (and probably painful) PERSONAL apology--a call, a letter, a meeting--directly to the person who was brutalized/humiliated/hurt. After that, if you really have to write about the experience, have at it

Anything less is just cowardly.

 

This is what also struck me most, thinking about it his afternoon. Might seems strange to think of it this way at first, but it would have taken far more courage to write this and send it to an audience of one, instead of writing for an audience of thousands you hope Ebert is a member of.

 

Forgive me for not remembering (nor taking the time to re-read) but did Leitch say he'd not apologized to Ebert before now?

 

Leitch said that Ebert emailed him as soon as it hit the internet and Leitch said that he wrote back apologizing profusely.

 

Here's what I find funny about some of this debate: People are more focused on Leitch the Person, the Poor Apologizer, the Web 2.0 punk, than this actual piece of writing.

No matter what you think of the guy, he is a writer, so he wrote about this personal story in his life that makes him look like an asshole. That's the best kind of writing, y'know, the honest kind. He told me he was wary of putting it out there, but i'm glad he did.

 

He said he apologized at the time, sent flowers after Ebert's surgery.

Maybe he felt he felt he needed the grandiose mea culpa, but to do it in the wake of Esquire and Oprah is just so....obvious.

It shouldn't matter that Ebert is an icon and a current topic of conversation. It should only matter that this really great man helped a nobody at the DI, and helped him hugely.

And once again, in the wake of this public apology, Ebert helped the nobody, and helped him hugely.