Have you heard of "The Matt Walsh Blog"?
I'm not putting his picture up and I'm not posting a link to his blog, but his posts get a lot of attention and are shared on Facebook by many of my friends. You might recognize his post "Abstinence is unrealistic and old-fashioned" or "You're a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?"
Sound familiar?
He has powerful opinions and what he has to say is interesting and usually worth the read, but he can be a meanie. I hope to never meet this guy. If I do, I'll probably say or do something he won't approve of and then he'll blog about me. He'll go home and create a 30 paragraph long post (aka - rant) based on what I said or did.
Ever since I first read his thoughts on the stay-at-home mom, I can't help but pick it out of each of his posts. When he told a woman that his wife was at home with their babies the woman said, "Oh fun! That must be nice!" That's it. That's all she said. And that merited her the titles of "quietly presumptuous and subversively condescending" and "rude, pompous, and smug".
Woah. "Oh fun!" sounds like something I would say. It would just come out - it's friendly conversation.
I hope I'm not being hypocritical here by posting about him. After all, it is his criticism and strong views on touchy subjects that make his words so interesting to read, but does he really think like that as much as he makes himself out to?
Thoughts? Have you noticed it too? Would you want to meet him?
I have noticed it too. He can make good points, but I think he is also promoting the very judgment that he gets ranty about. The answer to disagreement is not "wow, that person said ___ so they must be a ____." We get enough of that during election campaigns...
ReplyDeleteI also don't like the way he titles his posts because the people who are going to click on it are the ones who disagree with it. i.e. if someone reads "abstinence is unrealistic and old-fashioned," they may agree with it and thus not click on it (or let's just say they just read it but decide to keep scrolling down their news feed), and then they are left with that statement in their memory instead of the counter to it - which is what he actually discusses in the post.
DeleteIt seems to be a trend right now to title a blog post the opposite of what it's really about. It catches attention when the author can be "tricky". You may be right, but the opposite happened for me - I didn't care to click on the "abstinence" link until one of my friends who supports abstinence shared it on FB and wrote "this is awesome!"
DeleteI agree. It seems like people really like to pick apart what other people say. When it's short, off-the-cuff stuff, you shouldn't judge a person too harshly.
ReplyDeleteEver since I read your post a couple days ago, I've been slowly reading excerpts from themattwalshblog (it takes me a while to read anything now, you know) and I wanted to form my own opinion of this guy before commenting. Well, I'm sorry...I like him. I mean, I agree with you that he's a pretty cranky, abrasive guy sometimes (I bet he'll make a great old man one day) but as a whole, he's a good writer and I agree with a lot of his opinions.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the "oh fun!" woman though, you're right, he was definitely too harsh. I think he expects too much out of people, not everyone will come up with a well thought out response on the spot. He's got the advantage of sitting at a computer for a while before sharing what's on his mind. And, to be honest, I would have said "Oh fun" too because sometimes being a stay-at-home mom IS fun! I bet his wife would agree. Dude needs to lighten up.