Posted on 11/30/2024 2:41:50 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
One secret of column-writing: Offer platoons of facts that give readers the delight of discovery.
It is tempting but mistaken to say that the current administration of the universe is defective because people are not required to read op-ed columns. That thought is too adjacent to progressivism, which, a critic has said, does not care what people do as long as it is compulsory. Besides, a smaller readership can be superior to a bigger one.
Most people do not read newspapers; most who do skip the op-ed page. This means that the few, the happy few, who do read columns do so because their mental pantries are stocked with curiosity, information and opinions. So, the columnist can assume the readers’ foundation of knowledge, which enables large arguments in small spaces.
The 15th century produced what remains the most consequential communication technology ever: Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type. Glassy-eyed Americans squinting at their smartphones for videos of kittens might consider it quaint to ascribe history-shaping potency to mere print, especially during today’s digital typhoon. Media constantly clamor for Americans’ attention, which is increasingly elusive and of decreasing duration.
A newspaper column — one musty option on a rapidly expanding menu of distractions — requires reading, which, unlike passive grazing at an endless buffet of graphic distractions, is an activity. It demands one’s mental engagement. So, a column had better be pleasurable from the start, even if its subject is not pleasant. Here is Murray Kempton (1917-1997), in a column on President Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigning in Florida in 1956:
“In Miami he had walked carefully by the harsher realities, speaking some 20 feet from an airport drinking fountain labeled ‘Colored’ and saying that the condition it represented was more amenable to solution by the hearts of men than by...”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
George is the poster child for high self-esteem for no apparent reason.
He’s a modest man. And he has a lot to be modest about.
George Will was always the "conservative voice" that left-leaning newspapers ran columns from so that they could have the appearance of being "balanced".
We have been in the middle of a fight for the future of our country—and Will sat on the hillside throwing rocks at our side.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/15/george-will-backs-harris/
Kramer: I’ll tell you who is an attractive man… George Will.
Jerry: Really?
Kramer: Oh yeah! Yeah, he has a clean look. Scrubbed, and shampooed...
Elaine: He’s smart.
Kramer: No, no I don’t find him all that bright.
I call them the House Quislings.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Will can’t help himself, delusional and doomed
Word salad Will? C’mon George. The best piece I ever read from Will was a column about baseball.
GeorgeWillasaurus groans from the tar pit of extinction. He will be forgotten, completely, when he assumes room temperature.
If you read the front page of the Washington Post you have read the editorial page. The editorial page has become similar to the "two minutes of hate" in George Orwell's nover 1984.
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily period during which members of the Outer and Inner Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state, and his followers, the Brotherhood, and loudly voice their hatred for the enemy and then their love for Big Brother.
Paywall. Tell me, how did he work his awareness of the French Revolution into an article featuring #34?
I’ll always remember him for giving an incorrect definition of the Hawthorne effect.
I read op-eds a lot more than eds.
Very well stated!
You have a terrific “about” page.
They are the go-to sources for lies and propaganda.
If I should reach the age of 83, I would not presume that anyone would care to hear my opinion about anything.
Will these petrified Boomers ever just quit the stage? The Most Self-Absorbed Generation.
Hey George, you are about 30 years past your prime. Retire.
There’s nothing you can say that people want to hear. RINO-ism is dead.
And to think that I once thought this guy had something worthwhile to say. BLAHBLAHBLAH
SMH...
What a blowhard.
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