That's it! The only ism I want to come out of your mouths is jism. Overacademic Bullshit Must Die.

Of course, with the invasion of the Internet and the fact that almost anything can be Googled into understanding, this point may be at present moot. There was no such thing as the Internet for the average Jane/Joe back then, however. There weren't even computers at the grade school I went to back then. So it wasn't as if I could look up "Robyn Hitchcock" as easily as I could look up "redoubtable" back then, just to name an example.

I just think that when it comes to criticism that would've been read by a wide audience back in the Dark Ages Before the Internet Was Available in Any Public Library, people should've worked hard to not include elements in the opinion piece that would've been damned impossible to look up. Words are one thing -- I mean, everyone in here has had a dictionary in their possession for all eternity, right? Even slightly obscure historical events could've been found out through a quick interrogation of one's favorite history teacher. But trying to figure out who the hell "G.G. Allin" is/was back then -- I think I would've had much better luck finding out through my teachers what happened during the Second Peloponnesian War.

p.s.: I knew who The Smiths were back when I was 13. I should've -- I was a fan of theirs back then. (Still am, in fact. Ever loyal me.)

I'm sorry, the "average sports column" is total dreck! What are you thinking of here?

These days even the teachers would have to google for that.

Hey, me neither, but that was part of the fun/mystique! You found out stuff however you could, bit by bit, maybe going through the microfiche Rolling Stone collection at the library, or reading a 100-word review in a Trouser Press guide.

Abraham saw signs of God and believed. Now the only sign is that all the signs in the world make no difference. Is this God's ironic revenge? But I am onto him."

I want a miccio barbie so bad.

I am not a rock critic. I post and read ILM. I don't really care if someone uses "overacademic bullshit" language or not. So quit assuming you speak for anybody else.

Thanks,

hstencil

Was I a rockcrit when I was 12? No.

Anyway, your argt stinks. "I can't name any --> they don't exist."

(and like i was talking about you, hstencil)
/good-natured ribbing

A: Even my dad knows Skip Bayless is an idiot.

If academia has proven anything, it's that throwing a firework into a boring study hall always produces more boring study halls than it does fireworks. Did you really expect us all to say 'shit, he's right!', throw the A through K section of our bookshelves out into the street and never come back?

And Daria, isn't theory the development of ideas? How can you get rid of that in an academic environment?

(and someone please answer one more question: what thread sparked this one? i want to read it)

YES. Do it, now.

For instance, relying on jargon or buzzwords or theorists without taking the time to explain them to those who are not intimately acquainted with them. This doesn't mean writing for a 13-year-old: this simply means writing outside yourself. I'm looking forward to seeing Sterling's article on Jay-Z and Bakhtin -- but since I only have a cursory understanding of dialogism, I'm hoping that he'll elucidate Bakhtin's theories somewhat to get me more interested and involved in the piece. (It will also allow him to better support his argument.) There's also just plain bad writing that's dense or labored or whatever, and I think we all agree that Xgau, in his attempts to be pithy and allusive, sometimes fails to communicate his basic message.

Often this all comes across as elitist because readers think I-don't-get-it-I-guess-I'm-dumb, but too often it's just the critic's laziness (or unwillingess) to explicate. And if we are indeed talking primarily about journalism (instead of academic criticism that's explicitly written for an inside crowd), then this seems worthy of critique.

That's a whole new thread I don't even want to touch yet.

and why is it so important have a clear stance on that?

It depends on what your ultimate goal is. If you are an evaluative critic, the kind that gives points and letter grades, then it's important to let the reader know how and why you liked something, to give them some sense of where you're coming from so they can better predict if they'll like it or not.

If you're more of an analytical critic, I don't think it's as important to state your personal likes or dislikes. But I think it's still important to have a well-defined perspective or approach, so the reader knows whether you actually agree with Derrida's point and find it useful, or if you're just being gratuitous.

the potential helpfulness of such a word — of any jargon word — is that it compacts all into one place a lot of apparently different activities/concepts not otherwise so gathered: and the gathering may be laborious and you don't want to do it all over again, so you use the word as a shortcut for "go see the work [x] did categorising/arguing this, which is very telling, and i wd only spoil it if i tried to summarise"

i am v.naughty when it comes to citing ppl as if it's obvious to all what they think and say: this is (partly) because i am pathologically bad at precis, and get in a terrible panic if i am asked to summarise a paragraph ("unless i read every word ever written in the english language, i do not truly understand this sentence and must let it stand for itself")

i am not in fact quite so naughty when it comes to words like "postmodernism", which i mainly think are failed attempts at genre-marketing and NOT handy codifications of related ideas

i think the shortcut is fair enough (explaining things everyone present already knows can be tedious and offputting — or just look silly cf "the popular beat combo supergrass"), but i think asking for the longer version is completely fair enough also