Wisdom of Solomon
Humor-deprived Philadelphia Magazine writer uses selective editing to create a false impression of Solomon Jones
Another day, another manufactured controversy from one of the professional scolds at Philadelphia Magazine.
This time the target is Solomon Jones, who contributes a weekly parenting column to the Daily News. The attacker is the dyspeptic Sandy Hingston, who covered herself in gory (sic) with a recent acidic, and unwarranted, attack on WHYY's Terry Gross, who almost everyone else regards as among the best in the business.
Hingston's attack appeared online, which means practically no one saw it. I learned of it by seeing something Solomon had posted on his Facebook account. (I didn't know he and I are "friends.")
Since this is online and I can, I will post her blathering screed (click here):
The first point to be made is that Jones' work is on parenting, which is what Hingston had long written about in the print edition of Philadelphia Magazine, so there might be an element of professional jealousy.
Second, Jones always approaches the subject with warmth and humor, which are foreign to the (from her work) deeply unhappy Hingston. She now writes for the magazine under the title of "Crankcase," which seems entirely appropriate.
Third, to cherry-pick passages from Jones' work is immediately suspicious and any reader ought to be alert to that tactic. I have seen with my own eyes Barak Obama declaring his "Muslim faith." That was on a video, edited, and he is not declaring his Muslim faith because he is not a Muslim.
Someone with a grudge can patiently mine an author's words to create a false impression.
Hingston rides her sad little pony named Grievance in an attempt to show that Jones is mired in the past (he's too young for her to attack as being "old"), meaning the present is so hypersensitive that a genuine loving husband, father (and cat guardian) is basically, a clueless sexist pig. Oh! She also is steaming because Jones describes his wife as being sexy and pretty, in addition to smart and loving. Them's fightin' words to a senseless feminist. Jealous?
She says he lives in a world of Mayberry or the Lockhorns, stumbling into the truth — those are humorous, as is his column.
It's sad when dedication to an ideology of oppression blinds someone to life's gifts.