The long read

/ Alex Good

Just a note to let you know that after an eight-month hiatus I’m back posting book reviews at Goodreports.net. This was my first website, launched in 1998 (!) and I’ve operated it continually ever since. Seeing as I post a lot of reviews here, and I’m doing less reviewing in general, Goodreports hasn’t been as active in recent years. But I’ll try to keep things going with weekly updates. Most of the books are non-fiction, with a lot of current events and political matters being discussed. I kick things off with a quick look at Nouriel Roubini’s MegaThreats. Depressing stuff!

11 thoughts on “The long read”

    • Yeah, I made the decision not to have comments on that site years ago when I was ruffling a lot of feathers. Didn’t think it was worth the effort of policing. I think Eddie felt the same way at FA. Makes life a bit easier.

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      • Eh, long story.

        For the Guardian it was first commenting on a post by a couple of feminist authors who had a new book out. I think they were the ones doing the moderating. Anyway, I had nothing bad to say about the book but just pointed out that their argument was basically repeating that of another book that had come out a few years earlier. The comment was blocked. I honestly thought there’d been some mistake, as I hadn’t said anything bad or even critical, so I rewrote the comment and it was blocked again.

        I had a second comment blocked about George Clooney.

        The third time was more dramatic. It was just before the 2016 U.S. presidential election and they had someone writing a column talking about how well loved Hillary Clinton was and how terrible it was she was getting bad press. I wrote a comment that the piece was written by a close personal friend of Clinton’s and so couldn’t be taken as being objective and that the Guardian wasn’t helping anyone by having her writing political columns. That comment was scrubbed. I then wrote a second comment repeating the statement and saying it was in line with previous comments I’d made about Hillary’s popularity (which was a real problem) going back a couple of years. That comment was scrubbed along with all of the previous comments I’d made on the site, going back years.

        The one thing that bothered me about this was that there was a piece the Guardian published around the same time talking about how their moderators suffered from PTSD or something because the amount of obscenity and hate they had to protect us from by scrubbing the comments was more than any of us could imagine. Needless to say, I’d never used obscenity or expressed any hate in any of my comments. I think what they didn’t like was that the comments I’d made were critical (and I think gently critical, at that) of columnists.

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      • Without condoning it I can certainly understand the feminists blocking your comment out of self-preservation! That Hillary thing, though — that’s just crazy. I don’t know that it had much to do with columnists; I’d guess it had a lot more to do with preserving the narrative. But then to retroactively delete years of other comments! That’s just vindictive. And they wonder why no one trusts the MSM anymore.

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      • It may have more to do with preserving a narrative or groupthink, but they use the line about protecting their columnists from criticism (always interpreted as unfair or hateful) in order to justify it. And I don’t care about that part of it. What bothers me is the rhetoric about how hard a job moderators have shutting down only the most vile, hateful comments, etc. Back when I commented on news sites (ten years ago) I was often shut down and I never said anything remotely inappropriate. So that part is just a lie.

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