The New York Times is an idiot

[koganbot]

William Rhoden in the New York Times argues that each generation is getting softer than the last. He says that Eli Manning's inconsistent and apparently unimpassioned play at quarterback, compared to his father Archie Manning's consistent greatness, is due to Eli's not growing up with the hardships that his father experienced.

Rhoden actually makes this argument. In a major newspaper. In the major newspaper. There is no hint of parody, or irony.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Boggles the mind.

A friend of mine just recommended Lewis Bagby's article on Mikhail Bakhtin (on his "discourse typologies" focusing on Russian literature) from the early 80s. The main argument (in 20+ pages) seems to be that some literature has not only TEXT but SUBTEXT. And, what's more, sometimes an author might write one thing, but actually mean another.

An actual quote: "In literary dialogue, language occurs first and foremost as an aesthetic fact. Bakhtin's attention fell not on the word in and of itself, but on the word's relation to another word, utterance, context, message, or medium."

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of him or his dad, so I had a look on Wiki, and the son's win-loss record is much better than his dad's, who never had a winning season. Even aside from the fundamental stupidities elsewhere in this argument, and accepting that that one stat isn't everything, it does make this a pretty crappy example to symbolise an inferior generation.

[koganbot]

Not to mention the son's older brother.

[koganbot]

I looked at this and realized my response was cryptic if you don't know American football. Eli's older brother, Peyton Manning, is generally considered one of the two best quarterbacks currently playing the game and probably one of the top ten quarterbacks of all time, and since Peyton obviously grew up in the same family and in the same supposedly posh circumstances as Eli, Rhoden's argument isn't only nonsense, it's nonsense that has an obvious in-your-face counterexample that simply anyone who follows the sport will immediately think of. Utter imbecility. You wonder if the guy was drunk when he wrote the column.

[koganbot]

(Well, one of the three best quarterbacks if you still think Favre is at the top of his game.)