His wife has nothing to do with anything and I don't agree with her being brought up. It's one degree of separation too far.
I disagree. If we're going to discuss Cole Smithey for 58 pages, or indeed his brother over an entire forum, then it's not unreasonable to also bring up his wife. We're so far past standard conceptions of normalcy and decency that it's completely senseless to start suddenly drawing lines in the sand now. Remember where you are.
The whole idea that people who criticize Cole are generic beer-swilling, superhero-watching corn-fed nitwits from Mid-America is a sentiment that you undoubtedly share with Cole Smithey.
I don't have a problem with people criticizing his work, especially people who aren't coming from a place of ignorance. I'm just confused at how many people feel the need to mock him as a human being, when he seems like a pretty reasonable guy to me. My observation was that most of this mockery is a result of cultural differences between Mid-America and the coasts.
That's your opinion and you are welcome to it. For the record I don't think he's a great writer either.
motivated by grotesque jealousy (see his review of Life Itself
I just read it, and I didn't see any jealousy at all. He points out that it's a weak documentary. He makes the observation that it would be a stronger documentary if the unsavory aspects of Ebert's life were discussed. (undoubtedly true of any biographical documentary) He then goes on to say that he's a big fan of Roger Ebert's work, even though he's not a big fan of what he's heard about his personality, and he doesn't think that Ebert is as influential a figure as he's reckoned to be. I don't think Smithey's iconoclasty and lack of hushed reverence for the deceased Ebert counts as grotesque jealousy. Do you think that any kind of criticism one levels at a person more successful than oneself is automatically motivated by jealousy? Smithey goes out of his way to mention his deep respect for Ebert's work. Those aren't the words of a jealous man. I am not sure what you were expecting, to be honest. To ignore the flaws in the film or the flaws in Ebert's character would be doing a pretty shitty job of being a critic.
as well as his comments on critics that Ebert gave a platform to -- a wide variety of personalities who have in common only the trait that they're not named Cole Smithey
I'm not sure what you are referring to so I can't comment.
and has a deep feeling of inadequacy, which you can see both in his puffing up of his published outlets (it's a tiny handful of alternative weeklies
I don't see any inadequacy. He seems happy, relaxed and confident to me. He's never lied about any of his published outlets. He doesn't make a point of how insignificant they are, but who would? You can't blame a man for failing to deliberately undermine his own credibility. Part of his job (if you can call it that, to me it's more like a serious hobby than a job) is to promote himself. Do you think that because his achievements are modest, he shouldn't be allowed to mention them at all?
largely in the kind of places you mock
I didn't and don't mock anywhere.
and his hilarious purchase of fans for his social media pages.
Obviously this is a mistake on his part and is a pretty lame thing to do. He isn't the only person to make a mistake like this though. Plenty of real big shots have done it too. Again though, his job is to promote himself and his film criticism. You assume that Smithey purchased fake fans to try and act like he's some kind of big man. I think it's more reasonable to assume that it was a misguided marketing technique for his enterprise. We'll never know his motivations for sure, and I doubt we'll agree either.
But definitely, Cole would agree with you that they're just entirely too pleb to appreciate his refined tastes.
Plenty of people get pissed off and defensive when they are confronted with stuff they don't understand, and it pisses them off even more when people take something that is familiar to them (like a Hollywood movie) and put it into a context that they don't understand. This is a definite factor in human nature, and you've failed to convince me that it isn't constantly in play in this thread.
