Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Fuck You Julia Keller You Fucking Cow

It's possible that I may alienate some portion of my audience with that obscenity laden title. Fuck them. They don't belong here. Some concepts are obscene. Some people are obscene. Some things just can't be described any other way. One of those things is Julia Keller, the Chicago Tribune's "Cultural Critic". I am a participant in our culture, as are we all, and I want to say right now and for all time that I for one do not appreciate the critique.

There are a lot of things going wrong in my life, now and always, but in a perverse way, I want to thank Keller, for allowing me to focus my rage upon her.

I have detested this woman for years. She writes absolute tripe. Reading her work, you're overwhelmed by the sensation of being condescended to by someone who enjoys not the slightest fraction of your intellect. This is not a pleasant sensation. Her columns purport to bring the enlightenment of her powerful erudition to us mouth breathing masses by referencing great literature or whatever and "cleverly" strewing it with idiotic pop culture. Example, last year she wrote about how Oprah, due to her literacy promotion efforts, should be referred to as "Guttenberg's galpal".

I want to torture her, slowly and methodically.

There are other local hacks who inspire fury, but at least Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has the decency to write about stuff I've never heard of while he's implying that I'm a moron. And he's such a hilarious parody of himself that he's great to have around.

I don't think I've been able to get through an entire column of hers since at least 1999. The fists start curling up and I start to get afraid I'll break something.

Her new series of columns is about how she's auditing a class at Depaul about Jonathan Swift. She hates Jonathan Swift. She *hates* Jonathan Swift! Seriously, who *hates* Jonathan Swift? He's probably one of the single brightest spots of the 18th Century canon, and most sane people would probably prefer him to like, ten zillion of his contemporaries. But not our girl Julia who has no use for his "lofty sarcasm [and] misanthropic superiority". She's taking the class because she wants to give him "a second chance". He's been jumping up and down in his grave for this opportunity so I hope he doesn't blow it. She hasn't told anyone in the class about that she's a reporter. She suspects her "cover" is safe because "so many studies show that the under-30 demographic never reads newspapers, they'll surely remain in the dark all quarter long, even as the stories appear."

GRRRRR...KIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL HEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR...GRRRRR....

Then I read (as much as I could stomach) the second part of the NINE PART (rabid Keller fans beware, George Lucas fans were hoping for nine Star Wars movies and our hearts were broken) series today.

What can I say about an article ostensibly about studying Gulliver's Travels that begins, utterly inexplicably with the words "Donald Rumsfeld I salute you" and then goes on to say virtually nothing about Donald Rumsfeld? Okay, she references Rumsfeld because he stands up during his press conferences (like pretty much everyone stands up during press conferences) and she stands during class. Or something, I really don't know. I could go on, but it would take a braver man than I to wade through this typeset muck.

But the best part of the column? The part that I read and immediately knew I would be writing about here? The fact that the column is titled "The Da Vinci Code of its day".

Her crimes against logic, language and literature defy both comprehension and forgiveness, but because I am a fundamentally compassionate man, I offer these words of warning to Ms. Keller: Don't ever let me catch you in a dark alley, BITCH!

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