I'll regularly go hours into holes reading fascinating articles about obscure topics. I even wanted to learn more about this, but I just could not stomach his awful writing. He thinks he's more important than he is and he clearly does not know his audience, which is what got him into trouble in the first place.
He is legitimately a bad writer. He's not even mediocre. And the majority of comments here on HN seem to agree, and this is hardly the "knee-jerk" reaction forum of the internet.
So yes, he does need help in the writing department but, as someone mentioned before, he just lost that.
Well, he did just get fired and lose al the editors he worked with for decades.
Goes to show how important editors are and writers really benefit from editors.
Especially when he illustrates that with examples of him being the bad guy.
I see instances where he makes perceptive mistakes and possibly cavalier. Bad? No.
If he’s _bad_ then if we look at the world at large, then over 50% of people are _bad_.
He’s more of a victim of a purity crusade by people who also are the same “bad” but either don’t see it, don’t admit to it, or are following a popular trend.
It reminds me of the cultural revolution where in order to save themselves neighbors, friends and family would denounce each other for doing “bad” (baselessly accused of being counterrevolutionaries) just to get ahead of being accused of doing “bad” things. In the end there was great injustice, but Mao got what he wanted out of it.
In his own words, he is an asshole some of the time
>> Am I really an asshole? I don’t think so. Not most of the time.
Many of us have worked with men like this and they're awful.
I mean, this example was pretty poor because it combines him being an asshole and his interpretation of the word "drug", Dictionaries disagree with him.
>> Now, there is an exception: if you’re an editor and you write an error into my copy, I can definitely be an asshole.
[...]
>> To give an example: an editor once went through a story of mine and changed all the references to vaccines to “drugs.”
>> I went over and said, “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Vaccines and drugs are different. A vaccine is something you take to prevent illness. A drug is something you take when you’re already ill.”
Chambers:
> 1. Any substance used in the composition of medicine to cure, diagnose or prevent disease
Mirriam Webster:
> b: a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication c according to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1) : a substance recognized in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary (2) : a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease (3) : a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body (4) : a substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a component, part, or accessory of a device
The idea that "is sometimes an asshole" means "is a bad person" is flat-out wrong, and is a big part of what is wrong with the internet: you get a short, context-free soundbite of something that may or may not have actually happened, and that's it for someone's career and life's work.
I read all four parts of his story, and found it riveting. Life is in the details. But those details are too boring and don't generate clicks and ad impressions, so the vast majority of the people who hear about this will only know "a NY Times reporter was fired for saying the n-word to kids in Peru, supporting colonialism, claiming white privilege doesn't exist, and getting his photo taken with naked underage girls", and will immediately assume the guy is a racist, perverted piece of garbage, and never know that they're being lied to.
I think your and my definition of bad differ. Bad to me means being directly significantly detrimental to others who were not doing bad to you.
Being a writer, he probably comes from a culture where people write lots of words and has many friends who respect people who write verbosely.
Someone's level of articulateness provides no information whatsoever of how truthful their writing is. There are countless extremely articulate lies told by people with mastery over their medium.
Wow, I was barely able to get through the first part and honestly the whole time I was thinking "I can't believe this guy has been a professional writer for decades. He desperately needs help from an editor."
I find the content interesting, but the writing seems to wander unnecessarily and I wish he'd focus more on getting to the point than needlessly interject his, at least to me, obnoxious attempts to defend his character rather than let the audience decide for themselves. Yes, I realize the entire point of this article is to defend himself, but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."
To each his own.