PicoBlog

Sam Tanenhaus’s review of my book is pretty weird! Weird in that I’m not sure what its thesis is or why any one paragraph follows another, weird in that (as is common with Tanenhaus) it’s written from a schizophrenic ideological position that nevertheless represents itself as the voice of sanity, weird in that its arguments and observations congeal across its length with no internal coherence or purpose whatsoever. Tanenhaus is a guy who forced Politico to issue a correction saying that Tanenhaus is not a conservative, but who could not then actually articulate his politics to Politico in a minimally coherent way. And he writes similarly, his books yawing back and forth from one comfortably middlebrow observation to the next, peddling one chin-stroking bromide after another, keeping the reader in the safe quasi-profundity of his warmed-over ideas, a Barnes & Noble of the mind. I am confused by the review, not offended, because to be offended I would have to know what the review is arguing; its headline makes a valiant effort at locating a thesis, but as far as I can tell that headline has literally no engagement with the piece it hangs over.

Now, I have a bit of an objection to assigning Tanenhaus to review my book: in maybe 2017 I very publicly insulted him on Facebook, and I was told at the time that it had gotten back to him and he was mad. Specifically, I said “I wouldn’t have lunch with Sam Tanenhaus if my dick was on fire and he had the last glass of water on Planet Earth.” I admit that’s a little crude, but it doesn’t change the fact that he maybe shouldn’t have been given this task.

The bigger issue is this: he makes a very big deal of pointing out that I shared the details of my Substack deal two and a half years ago, and particularly mocks the fact that I said so that I was doing so in the name of gender equity. But he includes no links to my doing so to make the context comprehensible. At the time, there was a huge controversy over who was being given these contracts, what their terms were, and why they appeared to only be going to white men. In that context, I opened the books and shared what my deal was, and in that context, I said that doing so was in the interest of gender equity. Of course it looks weird when you start a review of a book published in September 2023 with a totally irrelevant reference to a newsletter post from March 2021, without describing that context at all! His readers have no idea that I shared that information during a raging controversy that made my sharing it make sense. It’s a deeply deceptive way to begin a review, and without a link, it’s inexcusable. He further mocks my “47K+ SUBSCRIBERS,” designed to make you think that I had bragged about that, when in fact he’s pulled it directly from Substack’s CMS, something that I can’t control. He also makes fun of the fact that I say I’m trying to provide value for my paying readers because… well, I’m not sure. I am in fact trying to provide that value. I work for a living, Sam.

Personally, I think the lack of context here - no acknowledgement that I shared those financial details two and a half years ago and in the midst of a loud public controversy where people were calling for transparency - constitutes dishonesty large enough to merit a correction. But I shall receive no such consideration. The subhead derisively refers to me as a “Substack pundit,” but I have written for most of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the world, including for The New York Times on multiple occasions. If I’m not a freelancer with sufficient credits to avoid the condescension, who is?

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