> Every so often some "nice" but vapid book or fad comes along and makes a lot of money from people in that literate but dull IQ range of 104-106 and while it'

> Every so often some "nice" but vapid book or fad comes along and makes a lot of money from people in that literate but dull IQ range of 104-106 and while it's never fun to smilingly fend off recommendations from well-meaning friends ("You should read this! It's really inspiring!") it's all pretty harmless. While I'm not defending McKuen, if you are going to be a critic at least be an interesting critic. To quote the linked article: > Even the critics who weren’t quite so overtly snobby clearly disdained McKuen’s fans for the crime of merely being ordinary. Hentoff witheringly describes the crowd at Carnegie Hall as “contingents of thirtyish women who might have come from the airline offices, the telephone company, innumerable typing pools.” Future Hollywood writer Nora Ephron wrote a McKuen takedown in Esquire, called “Mush,” that observes the audience at a D.C. show: “You won’t see any of your freaks here, no sir, any of your tie-dye people, any of your long-haired kids in jeans lighting joints. This is middle America.” When Nora Ephron calls you middlebrow: sheesh! That at least is at interesting. > He's really easy to hate though. I hated him before I even knew his name. Fuck you, Rod McKuen. Hating on something easy to hate - how dull and vapid. Try - instead - hating on the faux-intellectualism of HN or its even more explicit intellectually snobby brethren (looking at you lesswrong). Criticism of easy targets with few defenders is as forgettable and boring as the material it seeks to attack.