Let’s be overrated hacks

I'm mousy overrated twat Jonathan Franzen. Everyone's forgotten me but I was a big thing several years ago.

Washington Post's Charles Lane. He writes like a somewhat bright but sanctimonious 15 year old. His writing is ok until you realize that he's a middle aged man working at a major paper rather than a high school sophomore. Sad.

I'm the Irish woman who wrote a vastly overrated book called Regular People or something to that effect.

I'm Maya Angelou.

I'm DOCTOR Phil.

I always got on the spectrum vibes from Didion

I’m Taylor Sheridan. Humorless author of the Yellowstone universe.

I’m Jonathan Capehart.

I initially refused to say anything bad about DJT because I’m a social-climbing starfucker & didn’t want to alienate even a C list celeb.

I'm Maureen Dowd. I lick the feet of a powerful right wingers while never hesitating to trash dems. I'm very sad and very bitter.

I’m Roxane Gay. Some people think I have an exceptional intellect.

I'm the brothers Dylan Geick and Eric Cervini.

There was a writer back in the 90's I was convinced was a talentless hack. But I've forgotten his name. O well.

I’m Tori Amos

I’m Ronan Farrow.

I'm David Foster Wallace. Everyone pretends to have read my babbling crap but no one really has.

OP, the meaning of the noun 'hack' is evolving.

I'm Woodward and Bernstein. I skate by on my one accomplishment, taking down Nixon.. But we are both quintessential DC swamp creatures.

I'm Felice Picano, turning out terrible books and coasting on being the last surviving member of the Violet Quill.

Come on OP. Slouching Towards Bethlehem had brilliant pieces. She may not be to your liking or you may not understand her work but Didion is hardly a hack.

I'm Judith Butler.

Yikes. r18 again, looking up Felice to see what's he's been up to. He self-published this, can't imagine why.

City on a Star book 3: A Bard on Hercular

Eisenstein Syzygy Kell, now grown to adulthood and known as Ice, is a galactic singing superstar, the Troubadour of all Troubadours. When he gives a concert on Hercular, he escapes a bombing and kidnapping attempt. A group of winged young people whisk him to safety through many of the five independent environments of this seeded world. The tale that began in Dryland’s End with the fall of the Matriarchy in the Center Worlds concludes at the planets in the outer reaches. A Bard on Hercular chronicles new generations on new adventures.

Michelle " Let me see what they are saying on Twitter to form my opinions, I have no original thoughts of my own" Goldberg.

I’m Augusten Burroughs!

Thread closed.

Elizabeth George. Annoying Anglophile with no real understanding of British culture.

I’m David Sedaris.

I’m Clooney.

I’m Steve Kornacki, ingenue.

The OP has started another stupid thread where we have to blame the publishing industry for advertising their product.

Sensible people ignore advertising and think for themself.

I’m Janet Jackson

R28 = Spielberg Fabelman

I’m Aaron Sorkin!!!!!!!

I’m the NYT.

I’m the Financial Times.

I'm Lindsey Buckingham. Tori Amos and I are "geniuses."

I’m M. Night Shyamalan

I'm Spielberg Fabelman and I charge the OP with malicious tomfoolery.

I say 'Ignore the fools, turn off your Datalounge and read a genuine book and exercise your own mind'!.

I'm William Shakespeare.

I’m Elon Musk

Ugh, I’m Gene Roddenberry.

I’m America’s Test Kitchen.

I’m Austin, TX, and my faggotry is megalithic.

I’m Zelensky’s tshirt.

I'm Chadwick Boseman.

Where my damn Oscar?!

I’m The Actor’s Studio.

I’m David Yurman.

I'm Bono

I’m Atlanta.

Aren't hacks only supposed to be writers?

I'm Viola Davis.

I love Cornac McCarthy - no hack but his new books are total balls.

I’m Netflix, and I am trying to appeal to Cambodians or whoever because I am so desperate.

Oh, dear r50

I’m Obama.

I’m the Hamptons.

I’m MALCOLM FUCKING GLADWELL

I'm the top, I'm the Louvre Museum.

I’m Yale.

I’m Yottam Otttolenghi or however the fuck my name is spelled.

I’m Anderson Cooper.

I'm this thread.

I’m Barnes and Noble.

I’m Christmas tree decorating sticks called “picks.”

I’m the Old Testament.

I'm King Charles III, you fucking bitches!

R52. Did you read The Passenger? dDid you read - ugh - Stella Maris? A rip off of The White Hotel & fun loving incest romp? It wasn’t good (in part & in whole)

Jesus Christ I am MARK BITTMAN.

I'm Christine McVie after my death.

NOW I'm everyone's favorite.

R56 Gold star for you!

Ew, I’m the New Yorker’s cartoons.

I have spent the last five hours debating whether or not I want to be on this thread. I mean, I should be mentioned everywhere and all the time. But I don't want to be considered a hack. But how can people not mention me when they talk about, anyone? I don't know what to do.

I’m New Year’s Eve parties.

Joan Didion wrote one wonderful book and never wrote anything good again.

On the one hand, very few people write one wonderful book.

On the other hand, she milked it for all she was worth which turned out to be not so much.

I’m Steven King.

I’m James Cameron.

I'm Fran Lebowitz and I approve this message R72

I’m Delilah, from the radio.

I’m Garrison Keillor.

I’m that guy from the Lincoln Project.

I’m Jordan Peterson

We're Dr. Laura and Dr. Phil

I’m Brown university.

I’m Tom Friedman!!!

I’m Lin Manuel Miranda.

I’m Robert Redford, cigar store Indian.

Yoo-hoo!

I’m Pixar Studios

I'm Shonda Rimes

I’m Christopher Nolan.

I’m Christopher Meloni, squinting.

We’re the Pre-Raphaelites!

I’m AP style.

I'm John Wayne.

I’m the NHS.

No one *overrates* Brown, lol. Try Harvard and Yale.

I’m NYU.

I'm the idiotic Oberlin, still squeezing students after slandering the bakers.

I’m Santa Fe.

I’m modern Broadway.

I'm Margaret Atwood. Perhaps not a hack but more of a technician than an artist.

(I almost lost a friend - and got called an "uncultured swine" - over this opinion so am prepared to be violently disagreed with)

R16 I guess oldies will be old

I’m all the writers of the shiny new books that your local library put on display in the new book section, not the ones who wrote the banned ones out in the dumpster behind the library

I'm Lizzie Borden

I’m Mike White, who writes about my bougie vegan yoga vacation life and is somehow mistaken for a genius now.

Joan Didion is not a hack.

I'm the piss-elegant Joan Didion. I adopted a human named 'Quintana Roo'.

She was piss-elegant, and she named her daughter after a tropical Mexican state, but the bitch could write.

R106 Often. Not always. Smug. Slouching Towards Bethlehem -yes Year of Magical thinking - very much so. Otherwise not really. (As always, for me). Not a hack like Renata Adler for sure. I wrote above about the artlessness of Cormac McCarthy’s latest books . The first had ideas that were fine written exhaustively. The second pure hack. Back to Joan: the book about her daughter was fearful, hesitant, and deeply unaware (her daughter the drunk) Book of common Prayers - god awful. I was not a fan of play it as it lays. (And i know her cult is beholden to it.)

I'm Judd Apatow and I haven't made a funny movie in 15 fucking years.

Omg

I'm not overrated. I'm from East.

I'm Edward Albee.

I’m all the graduate students in the humanities who thought they could ride the queer theory train to tenure. Churning out dissertations and articles according to the formula.

Bitchez, you got played. It’s all intersectionality now. (The next formula for the new hacks.)

Brene fuckin Brown, she has no insights into the human condition, she just rehashes Louise Hay bullshit as her own and blows air up Oprah's ass.

Eckhart Tolle, and any other new ager, author, snake oil salesman Oprah had peddled,

G...

Nicole Kidman, i can always tell it's Nicole Kidman acting, she never convinces me she's the character

r114 Oprah included Anna Karenina years ago, so not ALL are shit

Gillain Flynn. Ok as nothing more but a pulpy trash writer but not a quarter as insightful as some insist. Her " cool girl" rant was just a self pitying screed repeated as wisdom endlessly by weak BPDs with no sense of self and a willingness to change everything about themselves to land a partner. You don't want to wax yourself raw? Well don't do it dumbass.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Maureen Callahan. A miserable, hateful, and petty bitch. Works for Daily Mail now. Very similar to Maureen Dowd.

R119 . . .

“Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Harvard University professor and author of several award-winning books, was accused of plagiarizing another author's work for her best-selling and award-winning history The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987).

The author Lynne McTaggart discovered the plagiarism in the late 1980s, threatened legal action, and reached a quiet settlement with Goodwin's publisher, Simon & Schuster. Goodwin didn't come clean even about her “inadvertence” until news of it broke later in the Weekly Standard.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Oates can be quite good but she's one of those writers that revels in ugliness and degradation and that can be quite tiresome.

Dave Foster Wallace

I am Jack Nicholson.

Stephen Fry

Judy Garland

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson

Party Hummer limo pulling up! We are:

Spielberg

G. Lucas

Seth McFarlane

Josh Whelan

Mike McMahan

James Gunn

Bryan Singer

Ryan Murphy

Greg Berlanti

G. Martin

The Duffer Brothers

Rachel Maddow

Steve Kornacki

[Whoever's behind the MAGAT porn known as The Yellowstone Saga]

Andrew Goldman. Talentless little creep.

I’m Joss Whedon. My snarky, self ware dialogue is SO refreshing and cool!

[ I don't know who that is in R124 , but by God, he looks like a raging asshole and douchebag.]

"Whedon" not "Whelan"

I’m Martin McDonagh. If you thought my depiction of Missouri was stupid, my Irish one is no better.

I’m Sting! Scowling and pouting in videos, clutching novels in photos and pretending to care about Indians and the environment convinced people I am a Serious Thinker. My lyrics are actually pretty awful, though.

I also foisted my extremely annoying, surpemely self important Joan Rivers look alike wife onto the public - you’re welcome!

Was Aretha Franklin really The Queen of Soul?

Anne Hathaway, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Oscar Wilde

Madonna

I'm the hipsters that pooh-pooh because I'm not like the others, I'm unique, I'm rebellious, I am so much better than you,.. all my hate is media and social media influenced. I have no real opinions of my own. I am only a product of the peer pressure around me. You're all not even worthy of being hacks, learn to code but don't you dare say that back to me because I'll be triggered.

I'm Jordan Peele. My movies are shallow and half-finished but somehow, critics love my movies and think I'm incredible!

I'm Martin Luther King Jr.

Stephen Colbert

R132: Bret Easton Ellis - arguably himself a strong contender for this thread - laid into David Foster Wallace [1962-2008]

I'm George Clooney.

My entire one note acting repertoire consists of tilting and bobbing my head while wide eyed mugging for the camera. I've "acted" in and produced more forgettable movies than hits. I use the same set of actor friends over and over again.

For this I have won two Oscars, four Golden Globes, BAFA, AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and now a Kennedy Center Medal and Honor!

I pontificate about justice and human rights while cashing 40M Nespresso checks reaped from child slave labor picking coffee beans. I've also convinced the public I'm straight. My real talent is deception.

South Park mocked me in an episode titled "Smug Alert". It was spot on!

George Clooney's lambasting of the paparazzi after Diana's death is so cringeworthy. I remember at the time some people found his words profound but really, it was a just a bunch of celebrity nonsense.

Joan Didion kept on and on about her dead husband. JFC, get over it already!

“On the spectrum vibes,” R6? Anyone who uses a phrase like that has no basis to criticize Didion.

MONKEY MONK aka DIRK DIGGLER aka Mark Wahlberg

he's an overrated GUTTER SNIPE hack

No one overrates Marky Mark. He’s just secret dirty pleasure, R149.

I’m the news.

Funny enough R15 I read Infinite Jest. It gave me a great understanding of depression at a time when my partner was going through it. I found it fascinating when he said people don't kill themselves from depression. They usually kill themselves when they feel it coming on because they would rather be dead than experience it again. I guess DFW reached the same decision.

I must have been going through some masochistic phase because I read that right after reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

I’m Colin Firth.

I’m the current iteration of the Warshington Post.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS, Y’ALL!!!!!!

Oh, I’m unreadable, by the way.

I’m spaghetti.

I'm Michael Kors. I became a billionaire by first doing high-end knock-off collections of much more talented designers, then I licensed my name on everything from toothbrushes to shoelaces. Then I sold my garbage bag of a fashion company to the quickest bidder.

And I’m Hazan’s butter sauce.

Je suis Justin Trudeau.

Hello, we’re the Kennedys.

I’m the Dalai Lama.

I’m all Ted Talks ever made.

I’m Hillary Clinton.

R152 That’s some heavy lifting - more power to ya

Toni Collette

^ signed ...

Eddie Murphy.

I tried to watch the Joan Didion documentary but had to stop when she described how seeing a child on heroin was “pure gold” because it launched her career or something.

Fuck her.

Jennifer Jason Leigh

Gus Van Sant

Kenneth Branagh

Oh, and that old American guy who is married to the young British diver.

Trevor Noah

Let me lay on my back in a forty dollar hack.

Banksy

R159- They're overrated CROOKS- especially Joseph Kennedy

I'm Donald J. Trump

R175- with a TINY mouth

Oliver Greed is Good Stone.

I’m Chuck Todd.

I’m John Stewart, and I need to go on.

I’m the majority of celebrity roast participants.

I’m Bill Maher, “Celtish” until called out.

I’m Chick-fil-a

I’m Gary Shandling.

I’m Crane stationery in its current iteration.

Don't forget, Oliver Stone considers Putin a friend.

I’m Ethel Merman.

We’re Lee and Paula Strasberg!

For the last time hacks are writers!! Not just people you don't like.

I’m r188.

I’m NPR.

Old rapey white guys with mushroom 🍄 dicks admire poo-tain.

I’m A.A. Fucking Gill, and I just wasn’t very good. Perhaps I didn’t really have the old school upper class education needed to achieve what I was going for?

I’m all frau radio morning show personalities everywhere.

I’m Indian doctors.

I’m Peter Jennings, simpleton.

I'm Vegan.

[quote] I'm Jordan Peele. My movies are half-finished

I'm Don Peebles. My "diverse" skyscraper is unfinished

I'm Beyawnce

Troll

200 posts and no one named Capote, Vidal or Mailer?

Jay McInerney

R197,something named Affirmation Tower seems guaranteed to result in failure.

Its a hideous tower.

It really is, it looks soulless. The architecture looks almost Brutalist to me. An awful style that should have never been invented.

Kate Hudson

Jamie Lee Curtis

Melissa Etheridge

Chris Hayes

John Belushi

Amy Schumer--nepotism baby.

Tina Fey

Amy Poehler

R211, Not when they hosted the Golden Globes.

I'm Shonda Rhimes

I prefer calling it Shvartze Skyscraper

I'm Damien Chazelle

I'm Guy Ritchie.

Sometimes I'm Taika Waititi.

OP- For a sec I thought your thread title was overrated Blacks

Since we're on the subject

Whoppi Goldberg and that Qween who slapped Chris Rock

I've been beaten to the punch in terms of mentioning that tired old, worn out hack maureen dowd of the NYT but would also add in her colleagues at that paper as follow: The entitled & superfluous bret stephens. The condescending and self-absorbed maggie haberman. And also the smarmy kenneth vogel.

R186- I LOVE her disco album.

I’m Kate Winslet.

I’m Ken Burns, and I own this thread.

I’m lobster macaroni and cheese.

I'm Susan Sontag, expressing disdain for the Datalounge but also hoping a Google alert will show someone, anyone, anywhere has mentioned me again.

I’m Nessun Dorma.

I'm Viola Davis

I’m Brad Bell.

I'm Timothey Chamalay

I’m Jimmy Stewart.

I'm Lillian Hellman.

We’re Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

As for Lillian Hellman, "No... She's not an "overrated hack" but rather she deserves all the credit she gets.

In fact, among her plaudits, she stood up to the nixon-led HUAC Committee (when nixon was still in Congress) in the 1950's "Red Scare" era.

And she wrote "The Children's Hour" which was eventually turned into an envelope-pushing early 1960's film that dealt with lesbianism. Check it out the next time it runs on TCM. It stars Audrey Hepburn and Shirley McClaine.

We're the overwhelming majority of television news anchors and podcasters.

Lillian Hellman did the same as a lot of people who testified for HUAC and refused to name names. And we all know how compromised the two Hollywood versions of her play were.

R231, Tallulah Bankhead loathed Lillian Hellman.

Jacqueline Susann

maggie haberman

R230- That movie about them ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN was also overrated.

^^^ ^^^^^ No, not really... I saw it at the theater when it played years ago as a first run release and when the episode it retold was still a fresh "current event".

And I only saw it for the 2nd time last year. I was both amazed at how well the All The President's Men had held up over the years and also how relevant it was to us now in the post-tRUMP Administration period. But I was also alarmed as to how much I had forgotten about the fact-based narrative and information it was based upon.

My recommendation is for folks to both read the book AND see All the President's Men.