Frank Kogan

Geoff wants to talk about Underwood, because people are listening to her already. You want to talk about Miranda, because you think people should be listening to her.

This is entirely fantasy on your part and has nothing to do with either Geoff or me. Of course I'm referring back to something I wrote two weeks earlier, so I can see why you wouldn't necessarily get what I was saying, but I have no idea where you got that from and I think you're pretty confused. In any event, Geoff barely said anything about either Miranda or Carrie other than to make the claim that Miranda challenges listeners' assumptions whereas Carrie reassures listeners, and the bouquets that Geoff was throwing at we the Miranda fans was to congratulate us for challenging ourselves, which of course doesn't challenge us at all, it just sucks us off (or would if we took it seriously). Whereas I challenge my readers not because I write about Miranda Lambert (my guess is that I challenge them far more by writing about Ashlee Simpson and Taylor Swift, actually, though you'd be right to say that my primary motive is that Ashlee and Taylor are interesting rather than that my writing about them challenges readers) but because I continually ask my readers questions about why people such as us - incl. my readers, presumably - justify music in the way that we do, e.g., by calling certain things "authentic." And right, in this column I didn't go into what it is I do that challenges my readers, but I think it's pretty obvious.