Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Patterico Channels Big Lizards!”

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January 28, 2006

Patterico Channels Big Lizards!

Hatched by Dafydd

In this passionate and snarly post, Patterico rightly takes the L.A. Slimes to task for being unwilling to bring itself to call Hamas a terrorist organization (though they seem to have no trouble calling the Bush administration one).

Of course, Pat is right; he is nearly always right, excepting only when he disagrees with Big Lizards. But in this case, he may have taken his agreement with us too far -- actually manifesting symptoms of our own ridiculous affectation of bolding lots of phrases in order to emphasize the important bits, as if the esteemed readers were too dense to get them on their own.

Compare this passage of Patterico, for example, to virtually any Big Lizards post:

It is, quite simply, a murderous, terrorist organization. That’s not all it is, of course. It is also a selfless creator of hospitals and schools — just like that other selfless creator of hospitals and schools, Al Qaeda. But its creation of hospitals and schools doesn’t change the fact that it is a terrorist organization.

A news organization that can’t admit this — such your newspaper, Michael — has a real credibility problem. To call this “picking at minor issues of syntax and diction” is to trivialize a very serious complaint about the paper’s willingness to speak simple truths.

Or this:

Kim Jong Il is evil. Hamas is a terrorist organization. If you can’t bring yourselves to acknowledge and articulate such obvious facts, how can you expect anyone rational to trust you?

Or even this:

Let’s say, hypothetically, that I were to write the following:

Although Adolf Hitler has been branded by the Allies as a racist who has ordered massive genocide, he built autobahns, liked dogs, and was a vegetarian.

Big Lizards' insistance upon liberal use of boldface, or "paint," as we say in the business (and by "the business," I of course mean the industry), which most readers confidently cite as a sign of senile dementia on the part of the reptillian authors, has now infected what was once one of the highest regarded rocks of the blogosphere. Even worse than when Patterico allows the Mad Mollusk to guest post.

(In fact, Patterico does have a long history of bad taste in guest posters; we understand he used to allow some brain-shrivled Welshman to post on his site under the improbable nom de plume of "Dafydd ab Hugh.")

We worry that Patterico may begin to pick up some of our other nasty habits; soon we may find him dropping rocks and tree stumps on cars from a freeway overpass -- lying curled in an opium den on Los Angeles Street, visions of candied gallstones dancing in his head -- raising yak -- heading for Skid Row dressed as a lamp-post, waiting for a bum, and belting out a couple of choruses of "There's no business like show business like no business I know!"

If he continues emulating Big Lizards, he may soon quit his job and go to work as a male model, invest in Beano futures, regurgitate worms into the mouths of his children, vote for Hillary Swank, and attend random funerals in the Greater Los Angeles area wearing coral-pink cowboy boots, Groucho glasses, and a glow-in-the-dark "Disco Bigfoot" tie.

It's time for Patterico to take himself in hand. There is only one Big Lizards. Actually, there must be at least two, since the name is plural... but you know what I mean. Unless he's come to demonstrate his prowess on the 20-foot alpenhorn, he is better off eschewing the demented annoyances of Blog Lizards and working on some demented annoyances of his own. We have the patent on paint!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 28, 2006, at the time of 6:50 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Barney15e

Wow, slow day huh?

The above hissed in response by: Barney15e at January 28, 2006 7:34 AM

The following hissed in response by: Patterico

This reminds me of the time that I read a review of a solo album by Roger McGuinn (the lead singer of the 60s band the Byrds). The reviewer said that McGuinn was just copying the style of Tom Petty.

The above hissed in response by: Patterico at January 28, 2006 9:00 AM

The following hissed in response by: John Sobieski

I think I may be guilty of excessive bolding myself. I usually do in bits of BBC or Guardian or NYT nonesense, mostly because it makes me angry when they choose a certain word or phase that makes me blow my top. I'll try to be more disciplined. It can get addictive.

The above hissed in response by: John Sobieski at January 28, 2006 2:46 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

J & P:

Of course, we here at Pig Lizards have no plans to change. We actually use paint like artists... after editing the post (including bolding for point-making reasons), but before publishing it, I use preview and deliberately defocus my eyes so that I see the paint (bolding) just as patterns, not the specifics of what is bolded.

Sometimes I daub a little more paint on; other times I scrape some off. I picked the colors of Big Lizards deliberately to allow for this; that's why we're brown on tan-yellow, not black on white: to facilitate the use of paint for aesthetic purposes.

I just opined that Pat used a bit too much paint on that one post, particularly for a black-on-white site. Patterico's Pontifications wants more Mondrian than Pollack; it has a minimalism that charms and entices, but too much paint in such an environment increases reader anxiety.

Big Lizards is intentionally more van Gogh... or at least, we try!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at January 28, 2006 5:52 PM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

This is the most thoroughly BORING biglizards post ever produced, in this century.

The above hissed in response by: RBMN at January 28, 2006 9:11 PM