If you follow a movie critic on Twitter, chances are you follow him because you admire his ability to critique the many offerings of Hollywood. Unfortunately, if you follow Roger Ebert, you also get endless tirades on greedy corporate fatcats, ”nutjob Teabaggers,” and how dumb Sarah Palin is.
But that's only recently. Ebert managed to also trash Rush Limbaugh during Limbaugh's heart attack scare over the holiday while Limbaugh was still in the hospital. (Momentarily coming to his senses, Ebert later apologized.) He lost it, too, during the election and joined the bandwagon of Palin bashers, stooping so low as to mock her physical appearance. All of this from a man who had unfortunate and serious health problems, leaving him unable to eat and drink without a tube and unable to speak at all. I'm not saying his health problems have caused Ebert's bitterness - his essays about his troubles have been fairly straight-forward and make for compelling reading. No, I suspect he's harbored this bitterness all along and now that he has new methods of communicating - in addition to his reviews, he blogs and tweets as well - and it's through these outlets his bile pours most freely.
After the Rush incident, I can no longer read his reviews. I see my last link to one of his columns was way back in June but just five days before that, I'd noted how he lost it over Bill O'Reilly.
There are plenty of movie critics out there to read - I've been a fan of Stephen Hunter for a long time but he took a buyout from The Washington Post and I'm not sure how regular his gig is over at Commentary so his reviews are hard to find. I'll manage somehow to learn about the movies we intend to see; it's sad that I just won't be able to rely on Roger Ebert anymore.
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