Thursday, September 1, 2011

Is Steven Weber The Worst Writer on The Huffington Post?

It would be quite the badge of shame wouldn't it, what with Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn writing material for the same publication. I've printed below the first few paragraphs of Weber's new article for The Huffington Post...There is a lot more of it but I grew weary trudging through the mistakes of fact, logic, grammar and the sheer bravado of Weber's horrible prose. I know the point he's trying to make and politically I'm largely on board with him but doesn't The Huffington Post have a copy department or fact checkers or is Weber just too much of an egomaniac to be edited? Have a read for yourself...what would you fix if you were a copy editor for the HuffPo?
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Just came back from The Europe Place, having wandered about with family in tow (and vice versa), mainly making our way through Barcelona and Scotland, two cities steeped in history and art, drenched with passion and pride.


These are mature places, the denizens going about their business not as material-obsessed drones but as active participants in their respective cultures, able and articulate representatives of their countries. They are places whose maturity has enabled them to achieved a sort of balance of all the disparate elements which otherwise might threaten to swamp a national psyche and make it an unreasoning, destructive presence in the international sociopolitical scheme. In other words, it's nice there! (A side note: if the Earth is ever invaded by aliens, just send in some Scots. Those aliens -- or what's left of them -- will be limping back to their home planet within a few hours.).


And from that objective geographical perspective, I saw America from a, whattayou call it? Ah, yes: a parallax view (Another side note: great film by Warren Beatty by the same name. See it, why don't you?).


And fellow travelers I'm telling you, to understand the state of our own union, it's a view that really needs to be seen.


For, to return home from being abroad is to see America as it is and marvel at the mess it's become, like looking at a celebrity from a strictly verboten angle and seeing the scars, the stitches, the ooze. Which I myself have done, but never before a meal.


And one sees most clearly the utterly biased corporate media using all manner of cannily manipulative techniques to corral the nation towards its own selfish aim: to ensure profit at the expense of people. And one sees this only after having been removed from the sheep-dip that is American corporate media submersion. Only it's not parasites being cleansed from the sheep's wool, it's the ability to know when the wool's been pulled over its eyes...