Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Timeline of why everyone thinks I hate Scotty B.

So, how did we get from there to here?

August 3, 2008:

I find Scott Beveridge's blog. This is the entry that I read.

I read Scott's blog maybe two or three times a week for about a year, along with a few others...

July 17, 2009:

On another blog, some anonymous jack-a-tard claims that the OR is part and parcel of the vast liberal left wing mainstream media (may or may not be true, who knows?). It appears in the comments of this post.

On July 20th, I took up Brant's challenge to find one instance of bias in a non-editorial story. How did I do this? I went to www.observer-reporter.com and clicked the FIRST STORY link at the top of the page. I am a brilliant critic. I can make any story say whatever I want through my clever manipulation of language.

I posted my hastily prepared piece on an old blog that has since been decommissioned. However, I retained the piece on my new blog (hooray for posterity).

You can read it here (make sure you read the comments, as they provide some valuable background and elaboration).

Warning: The formatting sucks because I wrote it in Word and then uploaded it to Blogger. Google and Microsoft aren't really all that enamored with each other.

I have to assume that Scott perhaps got wind of this and was less thrilled with reading it than I was in writing it... I really didn't expect any backlash, seeing as how it was a harmless exercise in deconstruction and certainly didn't speak toward my personal feelings regarding Mr. B.

Remember, I am still reading Scott's blog at this point...

Also on July 20, 2009:
Amanda G. writes this post on Scott's blog. I submit the following comment:
"White people, gotta love 'em."

Needless to say, it never got posted. The next day (July 21), both Scott and Amanda de-friend me on Facebook. "A-ha!" I say... something must be amiss!

Intermediate to those events was a SECOND critical analysis of a non-editorial piece by your's truly... but this one had NOTHING to do with Scott Beveridge. Mike Jones took issue with what I had teased out of Scott's story... I told Mike that I can do the same thing to ANYTHING written by man (or woman) and it doesn't matter what the content or the context is and it has NOTHING to do with the author and my opinion of him/her.

To prove the point, I asked Mike to give me an assignment... to which he responded with some godawful story about NASCAR, which I don't know shit about. Nevertheless, I produced a super awesome ingenius piece on Jeremy Mayfield, Jenna Fryer, and Methamphetamines... You HAVE to read this one.

Which leads us up to today... where, apparently, there is an understanding, of sorts, amongst Scott's "crew" that I don't like him... or something like that... It's a mystery, really.

So anyway... I like Scott Beveridge's writing. His writing reminds me of Anthony Bourdain... When I read what Scott writes, I get the impression that he could wander into any town between here and there, stumble into some hole in the wall for a piss and a sandwich, and somehow always end up in a place that has the greatest this or the most awesome that of any place anywhere in the world... i get the impression that he could randomly walk up to any person in the street and somehow, he'd always pick the most interesting person you have ever met. He makes interesting the most mundane and bland topics... like diner food and Donora... with a zeal that I would have to labor intensely to create... all the while doing it effortlessly. He sees a half-lit bar sign and discovers a transcendant ruben sandwich, whereas I would not have even realized that it was a place that sells food.

But apparently, that reverence doesn't bleed through... So I just have to come out and say it:
I LIKE SCOTT BEVERIDGE... Please do not suggest otherwise.