The case against Armond White

This is Armond White:
He writes reviews for "New York Press," an alt-weekly, has written many books, has had a distinguished career contributing to the New York Critics circles, and is a total f**king douchebag, and we need to talk about why.

This weekend, White gave Toy Story 3 a negative review and Jonah Hex a positive review. Let that shit wash over you like a filth shower. TS3 was sitting at 100% "fresh" on Rottentomatoes before White dropped his douchebomb, and Hex had a whopping 8% positive response before White deposited his douchethoughts. Could Hex be fun and TS3 be overrated? Yeah, sure, youbetcha. They aren't, but they could be. That's not what we need to address here.

See, this contrariness is nothing new for Armond "Captain Ass-brain" White, champion not of truth nor justice but of himself. He pans quality films routinely in order to get personal attention, celebrates trash to get noticed, and once suggested that Noah Baumbach should have been aborted. Roger Ebert calls him a troll. White agrees with the overwhelming popular consensus a slender 52% of the time. In his Toy Story 3 review, he unfavorably compared the film to Transformers 2. He is the scourge of movie critics everywhere, and not because he disagrees with most of us. He's a piece of shit because he's trying to minimize and mock what we do.

My theory has been for quite some time that White is more or less a performance artist. Yeah, you heard me. He treats his paper like a stage, the internet like a theater. He saunters out, recommends crap and pans quality, then retreats behind the curtain to let people ask "Who was that guy?! Why would he do that?!" It would be brilliant if, you know, I didn't take it seriously and film criticism weren't already under attack.

What bothers me even more: It only works if he's the only one doing it. So, his moderate amount of fame and quasi-celebrity is based on me and others like me doing a good job and going virtually unknown. Thanks for that, Armond, now if you could go choke on Michael Bay's manhood, everything would be great. I know that movie critics aren't beloved anymore (if they ever were), but I love writing about movies and talking about them with others. I like talking about them with people who disagree with me the best, which is why White sucks so bad. You can't discuss movies with a guy like that. Because it's all an act, because it's some nonsensical work of theater he's perpetrating, you can't really respond to his criticisms. How do you reasonably discuss something with someone who is arguing that Transformers 2 has merit? How do you do that? You can't. He shuts down conversations, not starts them. He tries to show how pointless thinking about and reflecting about movies is, he does not encourage it. He's a jester. A clown. A "troll" attempting to make his own "art" on the works of other, actual artists and the critics who respond to them.

And just so we're clear, I don't mind people with bad opinions. People are entitled to bad opinions. For example, there's another chode named Cole Smithey, whose reviews I have read more times than I'd care to admit despite their being penned just outside the third grade reading level. He panned Toy Story 3 shortly after Armond "the turd" White did. Why am I not raging against Smithey? He's an idiot with bad perspective. I think he's wrong and bad at what he does, not mean spirited and self-aggrandizing at the cost of others. He misses the point because (in my opinion) he's just wrong. White misses it on purpose. White is incredibly intelligent, a rather talented wordsmith, and fully capable of producing work of merit. He just doesn't do so because he wants attention, because he wants to skewer me and others like me, and because he wishes he were gifted in a different area that he isn't.

This will be the last time I do more than just make Armond White jokes, as giving him attention is, quite obviously, his entire endgame. I encourage you to think of him as an asspimple, then more on from him. More or less, I wrote this because I'm pissy and because I wanted you all to be in on the jokes when they start rolling, which they will shortly.

So, in conclusion, Armond White you suck. Not because you have a different perspective, a unique window of insight, but because you are an affront to hundreds of other people and a thief of the attention deserved to other works of art. Shame on you.

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