When you write about serious political, economic and ecological matters - the stuff any left publication would need to tackle - you assume a voice from which all the gee whizedness and sermonizing jackassery have been ruthlessly wrung out, like a perpetually filthy dish towel you should have tossed away years ago.
In place of all that, you stuff your thoughts with the kind of cheerfully black sun cynicism Chandler gave to Marlowe; it's a special breed of happy-go-luckiness, one that acknowledges the punch heading your way but makes a quip before fist and jaw meet. Instead of wringing your hands about "Girls Gone Wild" in the church lady way (remember that exciting Ariel Levy imbroglio? aka the multiple ass spanking incident), you admit to rubbing one out to pictures of Tiffany lifting her Smirnoff soaked top on cue. Sure, you feel bad about it, you're a feeling bad about things sort of bloke. And no doubt, there are issues there, which you'll get to, eventually and accurately, but on the way to all that, we're going to have a wee bit of sinister fun.
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Here's Matt Taibbi on journalists generally and Field Commander Hitchens specifically (taken from his NY Press pub essay, "Shoveling Coal for Satan"):
All journalists are cowards. Hitchens knows it, I know it, everybody in this business knows it. If there were any justice at all, every last goddamn one of us would be lowered, head-first, into a wood-chipper. Over Arizona. Shoot a nice red mist over the whole state, make it arable for a year or two. A year's worth of fava beans and endive for the children of Bangladesh: I dare anyone in our business to say that that wouldn't represent a better use of our rotting bodies than the actual fruits of our labor.
[...]
<http://www.nypress.com/17/26/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm>
That's the stuff.
That's the tone I'm talking about. You don't write: "Brit Hume, in his role as news commentator for Fox News Sunday, is helping bring America several steps closer to fascism." You write: "Brit Hume is apparently very fond of three things: creative frowning, expensive suits and crazy ass ideas that smell an awful lot like almost fully baked fascism."
When the eXile's "War Nerd" wrote about Hezbollah, he (no lefty, it should be pointed out) didn't bang his head against the wall, wondering whether any praise of Hezzie tactics made him vulnerable to the charge of being a terrorist sympathizer, he looked at the facts and reached the conclusion that Hez (Hiz) bollah was the "coolest goddamn army on Earth." Then he backed that assertion up with the point for point game the Internet has made as common as rats around dumpsters.
Of course, this approach wouldn't work for every topic; some things need to be reported hard and straight and clearly with as few frills as possible. Still, there's a galaxy's worth of subjects that need the touch of the world weary bastard. The women and men who know all the fancy words and concepts but get to the point with panache.
.d.
>From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Raymond Chandler
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/