Guess Who Got A Thesaurus For His Birthday? Or, How To Win A 'Sully'...

That's not writing, that's typing.  - Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac's On The Road

The Washington Post pays people to write stuff like this:

The state of the union is obstreperous. Dyspepsia is the new equilibrium. All the passion in American politics is oppositional. The American people know what they don't like, which is: everything.

And this:

We are at a strange moment: a crescendo in American anger even as the man in the White House hums along in a state of preternatural equanimity.

And this:

The Againstness Epidemic has been years in the making. Individual strains of opposition have been cultivated in the petri dishes of special interest groups, religious fundamentalists, blogs, cable TV shows, talk radio, fringe subcultures (birthers, truthers, tea partiers). They feed into, and are fed by, entrenched industries of disagreeableness (fossil fuel companies, labor unions, the Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh). We live in a country in which being contrarian now means advocating a mainstream initiative.

And this:

There is much talk these days about populism, the political movement advocating the interests of ordinary people rather than elites and capitalists. Increasingly, populism is inseparable from anger. Can someone be a happy populist? Not today: All populists must carry metaphorical pitchforks.

And this:

The political winds are gusting, and in no particular direction. Conventional wisdom has become conventional disorientation. The party in power is utterly powerless. The president's last true friend is his dog.

Fickle is the new steadfastness.

And then can't figure out why it's going broke!

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Note: Evidently Joel Achenbach is the best modern journalism can provide. Which explains a lot about the present state of journalism, come to thing of it. And I bet you couldn't tell he's got an Ivy League edjamacation. could you?

Comments

[David]

Capote was a fey, fudge-packin' freak with only one very good book in him. But he was right about Kerouac. JK's the most overrated 20th century American novelist, hands down. And it's a crowded field, including (but not limited to) Mailer, Vidal, Bellow, Updike and some other guy whose name I've forgotten. Must be the polio weed kicking in.

The sad thing is that the Achenbachs of the world make those other bastards look like literary giants.

[just passin by]

"He also had a high school crush on the older sister of skater Rodney Mullen"

This was listed under "Career" in his wiki. What a bobblehead.

And these clowns wonder why we hold them and their OSavior in such contempt.

[Simon]

JPB

And 'He often makes a point of noting that during his freshman year, he lived next door to David Duchovny.'

I wonder if David Duchovny does the same.

Guy's wiki page makes Paris Hilton's look like an entry from 'Who's Who'.

[just passin by]

Simon,

I wonder why he didn't list that he was one of the "cool kids" in high school.

[richard mcenroe]

David -- Heller?

[Simon]

Burroughs, Faulkner, Barth, Pynchon, Roth, Auster, Salinger, F Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West.

Not Heller.