It was so sad when they went from Garrison Keilor's Mr. Blue, which was the best advice column ever, to Cary Tennis, who, whatever his gifts and merits as a human being, is a horrible advice columnist.
Yeah -- he sucks on the basic 'answering the question' metric. If you want to dither about what does 'rape' really mean, fine, but do it after you've told the idiot who wrote in to run for the hills. If it's an advice column, you have to actually give advice.
I actually really like Cary Tennis, primarily -- though not solely -- because he never answers anybody's questions.
because usually -- who the fuck cares? That exclamation is implicit in his nonresponses, and I enjoy it.
Also, what's with the herringbone fedora? I thought those were now worn solely by hip-hoppers and fashionistas.
His answer is "Just watch a brief advertisement to get a FREE Site Pass for today."
That's what he tells everyone.
Today my answer was "no."
No means NO.
I just plain don't read Salon anymore. I used to read his column avidly when I did, though, primarily because of the non-answering thing, as stated above.
This particular answer strikes me as somewhat overlong and perhaps even insensitive -- perhaps some good old fashioned Dan Savage paternalism was in order here.
Really, this called for an answer along the lines of "What are you, stupid? Get out NOW." The story the guy told the letter-writer was not only scary, but pretty likely false in some regards -- who here thinks that a rape-crisis center is going to let a guy with a history like that volunteer, regardless of how credibly he assures them that he's all better now. This was really not a reasonable situation for one of Tennis' 'Far be it from me to judge anyone' answers.
I agree, LB, the story sounds like exactly the sort of tale a known predator would concut if he were trying to work the reformed angle to his advantage. Tennis alludes to some extratextual conversation with the woman—my first question would be, "Have you ever seen him working at this clinic? Have you spoken with the clinicians about him? And if you did, did you slap them all upside the head for betraying their mission (helping victimized women who may not be psychologically prepared to accept the fact of a reformed rapist)?" Something along those lines.
My initial thought was... "He probably uses that line on ALL the women he manipulates into having sex, you stupid twit."
I'm also intrigued at how the author of the letter does discusses all the women as "ugly", etc. It completely brings to mind that the woman writing the letter is probably very self-conscious about her looks as well.
Savage would have set her straight.
Oh that's a good idea. But I think the letter was as long as his entire column usually is.