Peter Bart is editor in chief of Variety. Met him for an interview a few years back, and he couldn’t have been nicer - or more well versed in all things Hollywood.
But his initial foray into blogging has been … less than a triumph. His recent assault on Rush Limbaugh was truly uninspired. Surely, the radio titan is ripe for some critiques, but Bart’s comments were content-free smears.
Check out his most recent entry … and my response - it’s the first comment on his site.
Here’s Wikipedia’s take on “scare quotes” -it’s pretty informative:
Scare quotes is a general term for quotation marks used for purposes other than to identify a direct quotation. For example, authors might use quotation marks to highlight special terminology, to distance the writer from the material being reported, to indicate that it is someone else’s terminology, or to bring attention to a word or phrase as questionable or at least atypical in some way.
I think it’s great that right and left-leaning critics can argue online over movies. Debate is healthy, and it can teach both sides a thing or two. I wouldn’t want to read solely conservative content on today’s movies. But Bart doesn’t seem very interested in hearing the other side.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
jic 07.15.08 at 3:25 pm
Note Bart’s gratuitous use of “far-right”. It’s revealing how he also uses the same “scare quotes” and condescending tone for a conservative who actually liked the movie. It’s fairly obvious that for Bart, being a conservative is a problem in itself. I don’t actually see the point in trying to have a “constructive dialogue” with somebody like that.
cftoto 07.15.08 at 3:35 pm
Agreed, jic … I had a problem with so much of what he wrote that I left out any comments on the ‘far right’ label.
His unwillingness to hear an opposing view is stunning.