Our readers save us the trouble

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on June 3rd, 2010

Longtime FOS Shaun Eli took exception to the following passage in a review of Conan O’Brien’s stage show by NYT hackette Alessandra Stanley:

Comedians are not known for good sportsmanship of course. Eighteen years on, David Letterman is complaining about losing “The Tonight Show” to Jay Leno. But Mr. Letterman has always laced his humor with private rancor. Mr. O’Brien’s comic persona was always lighter and less intimate; he led a new breed of healthily irreverent comedians who mocked show business and its lunacies from the margins.

Setting aside the bizarre notion that hosting a talk show at 12:30 AM five nights a week on a network owned by a company with $157 billion in annual revenue can be called “the margins,” we present Mr. Eli’s letter to the editor:

“Comedians are not known for good sportsmanship, of course.”

Are you kidding? You cite two examples not of comedian-related issues but of TV personality-related issues.

Do you know any comedians?

“Journalists are not known for accuracy, of course.” Would that be a true statement if I found two examples of bad journalism? And then those examples were TMZ and the National Enquirer?

Why is it that journalists seem to want to point out that comedians are mean-spirited, unhappy people when there’s really no evidence to support our being any different from anybody else, just funnier?

I think you owe comedians an apology.

Indeed she does owe comedians an apology.

Ms. Stanley is currently noted as much for her errors as she is for any insightful writing in the paper of record. (We would put the National Enquirer’s recent track record up against hers any day.) Forgive us if we’re not shocked that she throws around the occasional generalization.

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