Leitch on Ebert

The timing, motivation, whatever, doesn't bother me.

If you had never heard of Ebert, you can tell from Leitch's story that he is a terrific person and a fabulous writer just from the quoted emails.

I am glad for the chance to read it, timing be damned.

 

And if I had never heard of Leitch, I might be more sympathetic.

But as others have pointed out, his long history of shredding people for the sake of entertainment just leaves me sad for Ebert, nothing more.

 

I understand. If it makes you feel better, the best bits of writing in Leitch's piece by a mile are Ebert's emails.

 

When everything you write is about ME, ME, ME! how does one then begin to parse where the person stops and where the piece of writing begins? It's a risk you take when you make yourself the protagonist in all your tales.

The piece was well written, certainly. But stopping there seems a surfacey reading, at best. I think what we're saying is that Leitch, even in his attempt to make amends, still comes across as someone trying to ride the current cultural wave and cleanse himself of past sins. Maybe he should send a thank you note to Chris Jones too for helping him remember how much he adored Roger Ebert before he shit on him in public in exchange for a few laughs.

But again, the writing was nice. What of the soul?

 

I thought my post implied this, but I'll spell it out: You consider this "the honest kind" of writing. I look at the repeated instances of this kind of behavior from Will, and I guess I just don't find the sentiment very honest. He is taking whatever opportunity he can to re-circulate his name, just as his apology for the Whitlock/How To Be Black brouhaha was well-timed to pimp the book. His chickenshit "Who, me?" act on HBO turns out to be a total preview of who he is, and it's anything but "honest."

And as others (Double Down best of all) have noted, what made the piece compelling was not even his writing.

So I gotta ask: He told you, as in, you the reader? Or as in, he's your buddy and you knew this was coming ahead of time?

 

Ebert linked to Leitch's story from his twitter account, by the way. This is ebert's tweet:

 

To answer the question, I don't know leitch but I've emailed with him before and I liked this story so I told him so via email and he responded. Ebert sent an earlier tweet about the story too where he called leitchs story "sweet"

 

I suppose I would feel more outrage if Ebert hadn't needed to apologize via Twitter to Rush Limbaugh in January after making jokes when the fat blowhard radio personality went into the hospital. Or that he referred to Tea Party people as "teabaggers" and then apparently lied in saying he didn't know what the term meant when he used it.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ebert2-2010mar02,0,4834863.story

Now I am no fan of the far right. But I don't see that Ebert deserves some sort of elder-statesman deification when what he's done is lower himself right down into the muck with Leitch and even worse Internet ranters. I don't see that his intellect, maturity, dignity and sense of responsibility necessarily exceeds that of Will Leitch on some days now.

 

Frank--Regardless of Ebert's status or crimes against Rush, etc, the fact remains that he was incredibly generous with his time and support and advice when a college kid sought him out, and the kid ultimately responded by publicly attacking him for no reason other than to show that he could.

 

Suffice to say, the fact that I'm on the same side of this issue as Whitlock is making me wonder if I should examine the other side again.

@WhitlockJason http://bit.ly/9jIc0A Read this & u'll understand y I've always believed Will Leitch is a phony piece of manure. Stu Scott crime came natural

 

Sorry, Frank. If that's the worst you can do, I'm going for canonization.