Comments on: Brooke McEldowney and the Imbecile Factor

By: Keera

Keera — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:41:48 +0000

Bill, you and I won’t agree on Brooke’s intention. I see neither harm nor insult, whereas you do.

By: Cidu Bill

Cidu Bill — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:31:29 +0000

Keera, there’s a difference between shutting out critics and going into attack mode.

By: Keera

Keera — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:53:21 +0000

Small Berries, I interpret Brooke as being sane: Any artist who wants to go on enjoying making his art may find it necessary to shut out the critics. (At least he lets his wife keep track.) If we don’t like what he makes, we can stop reading his strip. Comments are allowed for Pibgorn, BTW.

By: p

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:55:56 +0000

wait, wait, wait… Brooke McEldowney is a MAN?!

By: John Small Berries

John Small Berries — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:05:22 +0000

Having read McEldowney’s blog post in question, I find it quite telling that (a) he doesn’t permit comments on his blog, and (b) he comes right out and states that he never reads responses from his readers (not even the objection to the ‘imbecile’ strip, which his wife characterized as a ‘winner’, and which had her laughing).

This is a man who, it seems, not only cannot bear criticism of his work, but who holds his audience in utter contempt; while he provides an email address both on his blog and under every strip on comics.com, he will not read anything sent to it (”I never do”); his readership’s opinions are apparently wholly worthless to him.

By: Cidu Bill

Cidu Bill — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:11:58 +0000

No, CTew, Brooke doesn’t get to create a causality loop and then blame it on somebody else.

By: Cidu Bill

Cidu Bill — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:10:33 +0000

Possibly true, CTew — assuming Brooke is as precise in his use of language as you are; but to use your own example, how long do you think the grocery store manager would last if he put up a sign saying that anybody who can’t figure out the parking lot signs is an imbecile?

Even if a lot of the customer would agree with him.

Actually, though, I was in a movie theatre parking lot the other night where cars were routinely driving through the “no exit” lane because if you’d never been there before, and didn’t know the Egress Secret, you could find yourself in an infinite loop and be stuck there for life. It was like a Roach Motel for moviegoers.

By: CTew

CTew — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:02:59 +0000

BTW2, if one reads Brooke’s post with a common, everyday understanding of the English language, the person who thinks of Brooke’s readers as “dolts and idiots” is not Brooke himself but the “winner” who first commented on the cartoon. How low can the standards of Idiot America (read the book) be that we engage in this kind of nonsense without bothering to understand the language most of us speak and read as our native tongue?

By: CTew

CTew — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:54:52 +0000

BTW, “an” is singular. One imbecile per cartoon created. That’s hardly denigrating one’s entire readership. In fact, that hardly reflects what I see every time I visit the local grocery store and note how many less than astute people can’t comprehend the arrows that show in which direction traffic is supposed to flow through the parking lot.

By: CTew

CTew — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:45:59 +0000

I never thought of either of Brooke’s cartoon series as intended for children, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to entangle him in with Sendak’s personal battles. The subjects Brooke’s tackled this past year certainly are not stories for children. I still think the original Chickweed cartoon was funny, and I did and do think that Brooke was targeting some of the goblins who try to post on his site. If anything he has posted sounds like an apology, he has displayed less fortitude than I would expect from a violist.